warpunk-dept. writes:

"Warporn Warpunk!
Autonomous Videopoiesis in Wartime"

Matteo Pasquinelli

Warpunk is a squadron of B52s throwing libidinal bombs and radical images into the heart of the Western imagery.

Grinning Monkeys



How do you think you
can stop war without weapons? The anti-war public opinion that fills squares
worldwide and the cosmetic democracy of International Courts stand powerless in
front of the raging US military. Against the animal instincts of a superpower
reason cannot prevail: a homicidal force can be arrested only by another,
stronger force. Everyday we witness such a Darwinian show: history repeating
itself through a cruel confrontation of forces, whilst what rests is freedom of
speech exercised in drawing-rooms. Pacifists too are accomplices of instinctive
forces, because animal aggressiveness is inside us all. How do we express that
bestiality for which we condemn armies? Underneath the surface of the self-censorship belonging to the
radical left (not only to the conformist majority), it should be admitted
publicly that watching Abu Ghraib pictures of pornographic tortures does not
scandalize us, on the contrary, it rather excites us, in exactly the same way
as the obsessive voyeurism that draws us to videos of 9/11 videos. Through such
images we feel the expression of repressed instincts, the pleasure rising again
after narcotized by consumerism, technologies, goods and images. We show our
teeth as monkeys do, when their aggressive grin looks dreadfully like the human
smile. Contemporary thinkers like Baudrillard and Zizek acknowledge the dark
side inside Western culture. If 9/11 has been a shock for Western
consciousness, Baudrillard puts forward a more shocking thesis: we westerners
were to desire 9/11, as the death drive of a superpower that having reached its
natural limits, knows and desires nothing more than self-destruction and war.
The indignation is hypocrisy; there is always an animal talking behind a video
screen.

Icon of Death...

...composed from one thousand portraits of American soldiers killed in the Iraq war...

Anonymous Comrade writes: FYI... Negri trashing par excellence...

"Antonio Negri: The Nostalgic Revolutionary"

Johan Hari, London Independent

Now his prison days are over, the notorious Italian 'philosopher-terrorist' Antonio Negri, accused of leading the Red Brigades, is taking on London. But when Johann Hari meets him, he proves to be a slippery customer. August 17, 2004

In the late 1980s, the Italian President Francesco Cossiga described Antonio Negri as "a psychopath" who "poisoned the minds of an entire generation of Italy's youth". Negri has been accused of murdering Italy's former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, and of being il grande vecchio — the grand old man — behind the Red Brigades, one of the most notorious terror groups to attack post-war Europe until al-Qa'ida. In prison he co-wrote an anti-globalisation bible, Empire. Now he's out, and he's heading to London. I am waiting patiently at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, to have my mind poisoned.

"The ESF Looks in the Mirror"

James Heartfield

Leftist Hilary Wainwright called the World Social Forum the 'people's UN'. But as the festival of the anti-capitalist movement developed it has fragmented along regional and now national lines, and lost its collegiate style and optimism. Gathering in London, the European Social Forum last weekend drew anti-globalization activists from many countries, but could not disguise the loss of momentum. A demonstration against the occupation of Iraq did follow, but the more lively actions were taken against the platform — when assorted 'Wombles' and anarchists sought to prevent first an Iraqi 'trade unionist' and then London Mayor Ken Livingstone from speaking. Across London, meetings were held with the title of 'Alternative Social Forum' or 'Beyond the Social Forum', before the London ESF had even begun.

"On Jacques Derrida"

Judith Butler

"How do you finally respond to your life and your
name?"

Derrida raised this question in his final interview
with Le Monde, published in August 18th of this year.
If he could apprehend his life, he remarks, he would
also be obliged to apprehend his death as singular and
absolute, without resurrection and without redemption.

At this revealing moment, it is interesting that
Derrida the
philosopher should find in Socrates his proper
precursor, that he should turn to Socrates to
understand that, at the age of 74, he still did not
quite know how best to live.

"The Year Of Surrendering Quietly"
Alexander Cockburn, New Left Review


Every four years, liberals unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way to a better tomorrow is to vote for the Democratic nominee. But unless the nominee and Congress are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by the country’s supreme commanders and their respective parties. In the American Empire of today, that path is never towards the good. Our task is not to dither in distraction over the lesser of two evil prospects, which will only turn out to be a detour along the same highway.

As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the cia and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, imf, wto; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day—namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda.

The Year Of Surrendering Quietly
Alexander Cockburn

Every four years, liberals unhitch the cart and put it in front of the horse, arguing that the only way to a better tomorrow is to vote for the Democratic nominee. But unless the nominee and Congress are pushed forward by social currents too strong for them to ignore or defy, nothing will alter the default path chosen by the country’s supreme commanders and their respective parties. In the American Empire of today, that path is never towards the good. Our task is not to dither in distraction over the lesser of two evil prospects, which will only turn out to be a detour along the same highway.

As now constituted, presidential contests, focused almost exclusively on the candidates of the two major parties, are worse than useless in furnishing any opportunity for national debate. Consider the number of issues on which there is tacit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties, either as a matter of principle or with an expedient nod-and-wink that, beyond pro forma sloganeering, these are not matters suitable to be discussed in any public forum: the role of the Federal Reserve; trade policy; economic redistribution; the role and budget of the cia and other intelligence agencies (almost all military); nuclear disarmament; reduction of the military budget and the allocation of military procurement; roles and policies of the World Bank, imf, wto; crime, punishment and the prison explosion; the war on drugs; corporate welfare; energy policy; forest policy; the destruction of small farmers and ranchers; Israel; the corruption of the political system; the occupation of Iraq. The most significant outcome of the electoral process is usually imposed on prospective voters weeks or months ahead of polling day—namely, the consensus between the supposed adversaries as to what is off the agenda.

To be sure, there are the two parties who vituperate against each other in great style, but mostly this is only for show, for purposes of assuaging blocs of voters in the home district while honouring the mandate of those paying for the carousel. In the House, on issues like dumping the us Constitution in the trash can of the Patriot Act, there are perhaps thirty representatives from both sides of the aisle prepared to deviate from establishment policy. The low water mark came on September 14, 2002, when a joint resolution of Congress authorizing the president to ‘use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001’ drew only one No, from Barbara Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from Oakland. A stentorian July 2004 endorsement of Bush’s support for Sharon’s ‘peace plan’ by the House of Representatives elicited 407 ayes and 9 lonely noes. [1]

"The Labor of Fire:
On Time and Labor in the Grundrisse"

Bruno Gulli, Found Object

Labor is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time. — Marx, Grundrisse

1. The Thisness of Time and Production

The Grundrisse is a work about time, and it is so in a fundamental sense. This means that time is the most fundamental category of the Grundrisse. Again, it means that time is the subject of Marx’s critique of political economy–subject in the double sense of subject-matter (or object) and of ground (or foundation). This becomes evident as soon as one opens the Grundrisse : "The object before us, to begin with, material production" (Marx 1973, 83). This is how Notebook M starts.

But material production is time, both as objectified and as subjective labor. The tense of this time, which is immediately labor, is alternatively the perfect or present tense: "The difference between previous, objectified labor and living, present labor here [i.e., in the accumulation of capital] appears as a merely formal difference between the different tenses of labor, at one time in the perfect and at another in the present" (465-466; brackets added). Material production is, then, time both as having been produced and as producing, as having become and as becoming. The difference between these two modalities is the difference between the substantial form of capital and living labor, between the capitalist and the worker. It is a difference, which presents itself immediately as antagonism and opposition. It is, in fact, the structural constitution of the class struggle.

"The Labor of Fire:
On Time and Labor in the Grundrisse"

Bruno Gulli, Found Object

Labor is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time. — Marx, Grundrisse

1. The Thisness of Time and Production

The Grundrisse is a work about time, and it is so in a fundamental sense. This means that time is the most fundamental category of the Grundrisse. Again, it means that time is the subject of Marx’s critique of political economy–subject in the double sense of subject-matter (or object) and of ground (or foundation). This becomes evident as soon as one opens the Grundrisse : "The object before us, to begin with, material production" (Marx 1973, 83). This is how Notebook M starts.

But material production is time, both as objectified and as subjective labor. The tense of this time, which is immediately labor, is alternatively the perfect or present tense: "The difference between previous, objectified labor and living, present labor here [i.e., in the accumulation of capital] appears as a merely formal difference between the different tenses of labor, at one time in the perfect and at another in the present" (465-466; brackets added). Material production is, then, time both as having been produced and as producing, as having become and as becoming. The difference between these two modalities is the difference between the substantial form of capital and living labor, between the capitalist and the worker. It is a difference, which presents itself immediately as antagonism and opposition. It is, in fact, the structural constitution of the class struggle.

"The Italian Effect Conference: A Shambolic Review"

Tall Paul

The Italian Effect conference was an important event that brought together activists and academics from all over the world in early September. Leading up to the conference there was the usual debate amongst activist circles that the event would be mostly a talking shop amongst intellectual ‘gatekeepers’ intent on keeping the level of discussion at an abstract and inaccessible level to outsiders. This view stems from the belief that academics use social movements to further their careers, writing about participants in movement as objects without necessarily including them in the discourse as intellectual equals.