The Politics of Postanarchism

Sure to provoke more debate on the surprisingly vituperative anarchist academics discussion list, Saul Newman's new work.

Apocalypse Choice

Your choice is either some unspecified polar ice-cap meltdown:

Or line drawn nuclear mushroom cloud (so 1980s...):

After having suffered the misery of 2012 on DVD; the world has to be 'cleansed' of over 5 billion people so some miserable hack pretentious writer who sold less than 500 copies of his palpably awful book can get back with his wife and family, after neatly dispatching the rather kind and useful stepfather (but he was a plastic surgeon...), I could do without any more apocalypse for a while. Perhaps though, after Alberto's suggestion, we should have a panel on apocalypse delayed at HM this year.

Review Copies

This is indeed by itself a sufficient reason for writing a book ; but add to this what has many a time wrung books from modest authors, the impetuous appeals from known and unknown friends. Moreover, he had bought a big work, and, what is worse, had read it, and this labour was not to be thrown away. Thence originated the present treatise, which, we flatter ourselves, will fully satisfy the reader ; for the main part he will not understand, another part he will not believe, and the rest he will laugh at.

Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (download here)

"So soon as Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia was printed, for whose publication he had been eagerly waiting, he bought the volumes at seven pounds sterling, and this at a time when Kant, the privat-docent, was anything but well off, and when that amount of money meant more than it does now."

Robert Hoar

Thanks to Alberto for noting Kant's recognition of the need for a review copy...

X-post: Fanaticism video podcast

For all those who couldn't make it here is the video podcast of Alberto's excellent talk, thanks to Helen for this.

California Über Alles

I've always wanted to use that as a post title and Evan on California at Mute gives me the excuse, although reading the wikipedia entry on the song it's libertarian (from the right) 'message' is a bit of a disappointment... Still can't beat 'Life Sentence' however - I'd rather stay a child and keep my self-respect / if being an adult means being like you'.

Knights of the Round / Square table

I can recommend a reading of the Deleuze 'Roundtable' mentioned below, for a certain kind of comedy as well as for intellectual reasons. It's amusingly stacked pro-Deleuze (Eric Alliez, Claire Colebrook, Nicholas Thorburn, and Jeremy Gilbert versus Peter Hallward...), although Peter does, as usual hold his own. In terms of positioning Eric Alliez offers the most sophisticated, although patronisingly articulated, defence of Deleuze / Guattari located in terms of the analysis of real subsumption and the contemporary mutations of capitalism. Colebrook's 'normative' defence (w/o mentioning Canguilhem) of the Deleuze of life seems to embody the problems for me, rather than the solution. Thorburn, who has written a very interesting book on Deleuze and politics, which I don't entirely agree with, seems to end up rather side-lined.

In terms of interesting moments I quite agreed with Alliez on the anti-war demonstrations / marches in the UK - which the doxa now tends to regard as completely failed / an instance of clean hands / pseudo-protest. His suggestion that the potentialities of that series of protests may not be exhausted and 'not in my name' is not (necessarily) a sign of withdrawal, chime with my feelings. Peter notes we may just not know yet. As I noted in the post below I have most sympathy with what I perhaps unfairly called Peter's 'paleo-leftism', although vectored through communisation which would probe the limits of the affirmation of workers' identities. Despite Alliez makes the best attempt no-one really seems to much grapple with the question of the congruence of Deleuze and Guattari with the capitalism they analyse, more offering relentless and reiterated insistence that the Deleuzian analysis of affects, composition, minor/molar will provide key forms of analysis. There are also some amusing moments when it seems things got pretty nasty... at least on my reading.

Deleuze and Politics

The current issue of New Formations is devoted to Deleuze and Politics, and the pdf of the roundtable discussion is available, as is the editorial and an article by Jeremy Gilbert. Looks pretty interesting, although you'll have to wait for the book for my true opinions (on Deleuze and politics). Thinking on the communisation project, however, I do note an interesting congruence in terms of the re-invention of strategy in the absence of a functioning left (I have some sympathy for Peter Hallward's more 'paleo-leftist' stance, although not in terms of will).