Review of Gary Genesko’s Félix Guattari: A Critical Introduction
Isabelle Ruelland
Félix Guattari, A Critical Introduction is Gary Genosko’s third book on this radical French thinker. In this volume, Genosko first addresses a contextual portrait of facts that mark Félix Guattari’s life as an intellectual and militant. He outlines the different forms of social and political practices he engaged in, his theoretical and conceptual creativity, as well as the social movements and a variety of personalities whom he often opposed or was inspired by. Through chapters organized around key dimensions of his life and thought, Genosko delivers contextual material, explanations of concepts, and how the concepts are still relevant. According to the author, “the question of reading Guattari today is embedded in a longstanding problem within the secondary literature of Deleuze studies” (p.13). While the contribution of Genosko work is that it demonstrates Guattari was not an eccentric post-humanist or simply a minor theorist in Deleuze’s shadow, it is a work that assumes extensive knowledge of the poststructuralist epistemology he worked in.
Does the Notion of Activist Art Still Have Meaning? Alain Badiou
[Is it still possible to propose a general definition of a militant vision of artistic creation? Alain Badiou proposes a work of art which is in relationship to local transformations and experiences, which is intellectually ambitious and which is formally avant-garde in the classical sense of the substitution of presentation for an ornamental vision of representation. A Lecture presented at the Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York City, October 13, 2010, in collaboration with Lacanian Ink.]
Protesting Degree Zero:
On Black Bloc Tactics, Culture and Building the Movement
Marc James Léger
[The following considers the use of Black Bloc tactics at anti-capitalist demonstrations with a particular focus on the Toronto 2010 protest marches. My conclusion is that the calculated use of violence, usually the smashing of windows of retail chain stores, can best be understood through an aesthetic appreciation of political action – politics interpreted through the lens of culture. I relate Black Bloc tactics to three works of contemporary art that examine contemporary conflicts in terms of training and role-playing. While anarchist politics typically refuse the logic of representation, mediation could be said to return in the symbolic performance of conflict. The fact that capital feeds on subjective violence, and the fact that systemic violence cannot be attributed to individuals, as Žižek argues, allows us to perceive both the merits of anarchist practice and some of its theoretical limitations.]
Bowles-Simpson: The Unequal Marriage of Reaganomics and RubinomicsPeople's Pension Eric Laursen
The Bowles-Simpson plan isn't a fair and equitable way to reduce the long-term federal deficit, whatever its co-authors might claim. In fact, it's the biggest proposed experiment in supply-side economics since early Reagan.
Capitalist Instability and the Current CrisisHillel Ticktin
Q&A: An Interview with Noam ChomskyDavid Samuels
The world’s most important leftist intellectual talks about his Zionist childhood and his time with Hezbollah
"Raging Skull"Adam Rathe
Outrage, MisguidedNoam Chomsky
The U.S. midterm elections register a level of anger, fear and disillusionment in the country like nothing I can recall in my lifetime. Since the Democrats are in power, they bear the brunt of the revulsion over our current socioeconomic and political situation.
More than half the "mainstream Americans" in a Rasmussen poll last month said they view the Tea Party movement favorably-a reflection of the spirit of disenchantment.
Against Kamikaze Capitalism Oil, Climate Change and the French Refinery BlockadesDavid Graeber
On Saturday, 16th October 2010, some 500 activists gathered at convergence points across London, knowing only that they were about to embark on a direct action called Crude Awakening, aimed against the ecological devastation of the global oil industry, but with no clear idea of what they were about to do.
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