CUNY Grad Center Hosts "Anarchisms Research Group"

When: Friday, 2 Dec., 2005 at 5 PM

Where: Sociology Lounge, Room 6112 on the sixth floor of the CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, NYC.
(Directions and
maps available here).

Throughout its history anarchism as a theory and a socio-political
movement has gone through periodic peaks and troughs in popularity and
notoriety. Over the past ten years anarchism has again been on the rise.

CUNY students call for the formation of a new student group to pursue
interests in anarchist thought, and to advance its legitimacy in the
academy. The new student group, which is applying for incorporation by
the Doctoral Student Council at the Graduate Center, has three proposed
aims:

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, INTERVENTIONS AND COLLABORATION:

Hacklab: Technology, Creativity, Social Organisation

A weekend gathering for collaborative and creative reflection

February 3/4/5 – 2006

Institute for Advanced Studies

Lancaster University, North West England.

You are happily invited to the “Hacklab”, which is a follow-up event to
(sadly titled?) "Making Global Civil Society" (the funders liked it)
that took place in Lancaster, November 4/5/6. It is hosted at and with
the support of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Lancaster
University. Since the gathering will be defined by those who get
involved in preparing it, the lists below are merely suggestions.

The plan is to experiment with formats and settings, looking for
helpful, creative moments. Suggestions so far include smaller groups,
with intimate, intense, and longer discussions about a particular topic.
For instance, 10-12 people in a room for 3-4 hours, discussing a human
rights article in relation to social movements, a question, some
concept, whatever - and, for example, write a declaration, compile a CD,
or based on note taking and audio recordings.

The ideal is to go beyond conventions.

To play and to experiment there wil also be themed spaces (hacklab setup
with alt/DIY media intros/hands-on stuff) - suggest something!

CALL TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE FORMULATION OF
THE ANARCHISMS RESEARCH GROUP

When: FRIDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2005 AT 5 PM

Where: THE SOCIOLOGY LOUNGE, Room 6112 on the sixth floor of the CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, NYC.

(Directions
and maps available here:

).

Throughout its history anarchism as a theory and a socio-political
movement has gone through periodic peaks and troughs in popularity
and notoriety. Over the past ten years anarchism has again been on
the rise.

CUNY students call for the formation of a new student group to pursue
interests in anarchist thought, and to advance its legitimacy in the
academy. The new student group, which is applying for incorporation
by the Doctoral Student Council at the Graduate Center, has three
proposed aims:

1. To promote the analysis of the history, plurality, and
trajectory of anarchism as a theory and practice.

2. To facilitate the development of anarchist research and theory
at CUNY and in the academy at large.

3. And to promote the study and teaching of anarchism within CUNY
and the academy at large.

We will have our first meeting to discuss the mission, projects, and
organization of the new student group (to be named "The Anarchisms
Research Group") on Friday, 2 December 2005 at 5 PM in the Sociology
Lounge, located in room 6112, on the sixth floor of the CUNY Graduate
Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, NYC. You must have photo
I.D. to enter the building if you are not a CUNY Grad Center student.

We invite students from various disciplines, backgrounds, political
practice and struggles, and CUNY campuses to join our first meeting.
Please bring ideas, proposals for projects, and your enthusiasm.
Vegetarian pizza will be served at the meeting!

For more information, please contact Yvonne Liu at YLiu5@gc.cuny.edu.

"Metastasizing Capital" Conference:
The Logic of Unbridled Growth

St. Catherine's, Ontario, Apr. 10–11, 2006
Keynote: Antonio Negri

The Faculty of Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Institute
in cooperation with the Critical Theory Group and the Depts of
Philosophy, Child and Youth Studies, and Dramatic Arts are coordinating
a conference entitled " Metastasizing Capital: The Logic of Unbridled
Growth," to be held in St Catharines Ontario at Brock University, from
April 10–11, 2006.

This conference will bring together thinkers from a variety of
disciplines in the social sciences and humanities to discuss perhaps
the most pressing issue facing the planet today. In short, how can the
world best move beyond what currently ails it: from a malignant
neo-liberal hegemony into a sanative state of consistent remission and
recovery? Which alternative therapies can arrest the tumescence of
capitalism and provoke a cure? What forms might an unexpected healing
crisis take? Is the only available form of care palliative? By
examining the emergence of the afflictive neo-liberal phenomenon, by
providing an anatomy of its contemporary realities and contagions, and
by plumbing the social imaginary for remedial lines of flight,
participants at this gathering will engage with the most promising
forms of well being: the possibility of ever elusive states of
post-capitalist subjectivity.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

“Spaces of Dissent:
The Borders of Transnational Dreams”
8th Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group

Tallahassee, Florida, Mar. 30–Apr. 1, 2006

Keynote Speakers: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Peter Hitchcock

March 30-April 1, 2006 at the University of Florida

As the networks of global capital become increasingly complex, we are compelled to rethink the idea of borders. The obsolescence of national borders may lead to the transnational-corporate dream of the end of history, but identities historically determined and likewise freed by disappearing borders have reemerged in figures like the refugee. Following Marx’s distinction in The German Ideology, the “refugee serfs,” rather than requiring an abolition of capitalism’s system of labor like the proletariat, assert their rights to production and arrive at free labor. Much like the “refugee serf,” the global capital refugee realizes an impossible (Real) structural dimension through which capital itself is called into question—the refugee is the paradox or contradiction of capitalism’s driving force: the very opposition capitalism tries to integrate into itself again. In light of these conceptions, does the refugee represent a missed opportunity to re-establish a resistance to the coordinates of global capital's structure?

Kate Gibbons writes:

Nguyen Tuong Van Sentenced to Hang

We would like to publicise the fact that Prime Minister John Howard refuses to personally and publicly plead for clemency for Nguyen Tuong Van to the President of Singapore. Shame on you Mr Howard, you have left this young man to hang.

SAVE THE LIFE OF VAN TUONG NGUYEN

URGENT ALERT

He now faces execution, possibly within 10 days.

NOT BORED! writes:

"Guy Debord's Letters, 1957–1972"

Not Bored!

"I believe that all of the people who prefer personal letters to the [situationists'] journal lack the ability to elevate themselves to the generality of the same problems. Thus, they don't see that it is the same position, the same thing, but more utilizable by more people. Of course, if it is a question of saying, "we are all better than that" (than all writing), this is obvious. It is one of our basic themes. But an epistolary correspondence, even with a friend, even if one is understood, seems to me further away from the importance of living than the most profoundly calculated texts. It is even less satisying." — Guy Debord, letter of 2 September 1964 to Ivan Chtcheglov

Despite Guy Debord's reservations about epistolary correspondences, he engaged in a great many of them — so many, in fact, that it's going to take six full-sized volumes for Editions Fayard to publish them all. To date, four of them have come out: Volume 1, 1957–1960 (published in 1999); Volume 2, 1961–1964 (2001); Volume 3, 1965–1968 (2003); and Volume 4, 1969–1972 (2005). It isn't known what will be contained in Volume 5 (1973–1976? 1973–1994?). But it is known that Volume 6 will include the pre-1957 period, plus letters that have been received between 1999 and the conclusion of this immense work.

In her introduction to Volume 1, Alice Becker-Ho (a.k.a. Alice Debord) writes:

This global correspondence, which is rich in lessons on the personality and active role that he had during these forty years, thus take their place in the complete works of Guy Debord. It will perhaps orient differently the always growing number of biographers who are pressed to draw premature conclusions from all sorts of legends that have surrounded someone who was especially pleased to have a well-known bad reputation.

Free and Open Source Software Series from Pakistan

FOSSFP Technical Essays Series on Free and Open Source Software

FOSSFP

"FOSSFP Technical Essays Series" is part of our commitment to share Free and
Open Source Software knowledge for benefiting the society. The technical
essays are researched and compiled by the FOSSFP Research & Development
Division on a regular basis. Currently the following technical essays are
available for download under Open Content Terms & Conditions:

Technical Essay 1 Title: "Some Common Commercial Software and their
equivalent FOSS options"

Document Ref no: fossfp/tech/001-9-2005 Version 1.0
Dated: 21-09-2005

Download:
here



Technical Essay 2 Title: "Graphic Design Tools — Free and Open Source
Software Alternatives"

Document Ref no: fossfp/tech/002-10-2005 Version 1.0
Dated: 17-10-2005

Download:
here



Regards,

Fouad Riaz Bajwa

General Secretary

FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan
R
FOSSAC ' 2006 Secretariat

Punjab University College of Information Technology

University of The Punjab, Allama Iqbal (Old) Campus

The Mall, Lahore-54000, Pakistan

Phone #: 92 (042) 111-923-923 Ext: 27

Cell #: 92-333-4661290

e-mail: bajwa@fossfp.org

Lahore-Pakistan.

URL: www.fossfp.org

Ubuntu-Pakistan

URL: www.ubuntu-pk.org

el Journal de Aesthetics and Protests writes:

Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

Issue 4 Available Online

With a creaky call, issue #4 of the LA based Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is now available.

http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/iss ue4.php

We are dancing in the dark. Tough luck kids. In January 2005, we held a dark mass and wailed. We are now dark energy. Darkness has shifted with this ever-expanding fucked-up system. Our dearly held agendas and assumptions- once truisms- are now suspect. How can we work in this glue gloom?

On May 13, 2004 cultural production in 5 cities in the Center of the United States just stopped. The towns themselves didn’t seem to notice, their TV’s still brought in moving images, their radios still played the programmed music. It was unclear if the disappearance was a coordinated act of refusal, or if the producers were taken away. It is unclear whether similar events have occurred elsewhere. Are they dead? Have they disappeared, are they dead or are they in hiding?

This fourth issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest has been most difficult to put together. We conceived the Journal when all things felt possible: just a few years back the Bush Administration was impotent, everyone was high on Hardt and Negri and activists of grassroots globalization were infecting everything with “possibility.” Insurgent action was metastasizing into a holy universal of Zapatista inspired world dance revolution party. Locally, nationally, and internationally, activism was beginning to affect policy. Journal issue number two came together as we were touching on concepts of the grassroots as “Second Superpower…

But now we are unable to hide behind dreams of possibility – there simply is no sublime to buoy our relationship with the current US regime. Some of our previous forwards seem now funny. We, and the movement have changed. What recently seemed achievable now feels impossible: currently the strongest freak-culture is not an anarchist collective but the Bush cabinet.

In piecing this issue together we looked at several contemporary models of resistance from the United States and abroad. From the States, it was difficult to find something not developed in relationship to the recent presidential elections – replaying themes of carnival, intervention, pop-culture dissent. These models are inspiring and locally effective, but few of them leave hints of how to work broadly in the current political context.

Jean Baudrillard in NYC

for the publication of The Conspiracy of Art

Ed. Sylvere Lotringer. Trans. Ames Hodges

Nov. 1 at 6:30 PM

THE PATAPHYSICAL CHALLENGE

A dialogue bet. Jean Baudrillard and Sylvere Lotringer

The French House (Maison Francaise), Bluel Hall, Columbia Univ.

116th and Bway, NY

Nov. 3 at 7 PM

JEAN BAUDRILLARD ON THE CONSPIRACY OF ART

A New Deal for Art Book Party

The Roosevelt Room at the Tilton Gallery

E 76th St and 5th Ave, NY

Nov. 4 at 6 PM

THE PARALLAX OF EVIL: DOMINATION, DOMINATION AND HEGEMONY

A Lecture/Dialogue bet. Baudrillard and Sylvere Lotringer

Moderated by Chris Kraus

The New School, Tishman Auditorium

66 W 12th St at 5th/6th, ground floor, NY

For more info: http://semiotexte.com/index2.html