"Egyptian Surrealism and 'Degenerate Art' in 1939"
Don LaCoss
“A group of artists that has been formed in Egypt which calls itself the ‘Degenerate Art Group’ is now in the process of breaking up,” began a report by ‘Aziz Ahmad Fahmi in Cairo’s al-Risala in early July 1939. “It has failed to find the support it had hoped for among artists, the media, and the general public. Not one writer, journalist, or other visitor has called at its headquarters in the Shari‘ al-Madbagh building to hear what its members have to say.”
Fahmi, an arts critic on al-Risala’s editorial board, went on to explain why he felt that, fundamentally and conceptually, this had been a doomed project from the start. He wrote that the kind of degenerate art that this group was calling for was not possible because the term itself is oxymoronic: True art could never be degenerate, since, by definition, art is the supreme expression of the human spirit, and as such it is “honest,” “elevated,” and “high-minded” - it could never be “degraded” or “corrupt” in the way that degenerate things are. The value of artistic work is assessed on the artist’s heartfelt commitment to beauty and craft rather than the work’s style or subject matter; texts, images, or objects routinely turned out by disinterested hacks for reasons other than deeply held personal vision or expression are either “tomfoolery” or “merchandise” and so do not qualify as “art.” The idea of “degenerate art,” then, was a wrongheaded contradiction in terms.
"Occupation Turned Free University in Pavia, Italy"
Anonymous Comrade
Here you find a call, addressed to researchers all over Europe, to support the student movement in Pavia (Italy) that is trying to create a mutualistic self-organized space in their city. On Friday 28th of January, students occupied a structure of the University abandoned since 2003. The aim of this action is to create inside that building a range of self-organized autonomous welfare services for students and precarious young workers: a copypoint, a library, a dining hall, a consultancy centre addressed to student (in particular immigrant ones) and precarious workers and a residence hall able to provide them low price housing. Furthermore the aim is also to create an alternative space to organize conferences, seminars and lectures promoting free culture and critical thinking.
Now students in Pavia are involved in a difficult negotiation with the academic institution. In order to help them in realizing this interesting and meaningful venture, some local scholars have written down this call. You can subscribe it sending an e-mail to studentincrisi@gmail.com containing your name and affiliation.
Theorizing Wikileaks
Los Angeles, Feb. 12, 2011
Call for Papers
[“The notion of “heterology” refers to the ways in which the meaningful fabric of the sensible is disturbed: a spectacle does not fit within the sensible framework defined by a network of meanings, an expression does not find its place in the system of the visible coordinates where it appears. The dream of a suitable political work of art is in fact the dream of disrupting the relationship between the visible, the sayable and the thinkable without having to use the terms of a message or a vehicle. It is the dream of an art that would transmit meanings in the form of a rupture with the very logic of meaningful situations. As a matter of fact, political art cannot work in the simple form of a meaningful spectacle that would lead to an “awareness” of the state of the world. Suitable political art would have a double effect: the readability of a political signification and a sensible or perceptual shock caused, conversely, by the uncanny, that which resists signification.” -Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics/The Distribution of the Sensible]
Julian Assange describes a "corrosive servility” that has come to infuse present day life and our resignation towards the established political order. As we, as bourgeois bohemians, buy organic at Trader Joe’s, dutifully download Democracy Now episodes and make sure to buy the next Arundhati Roy bestseller as glib gestures of a boutique liberalism in between lining up recommendations for our MFA applications, a tacit acceptance of our impotence in the face of a repugnant sociopolitical order, verging on involuntary complicity, is so hackneyed so as to not even need to be stated.
2011 MLG Institute on Culture and Society
06/20-24/2011, University of Illinois at Chicago
Call for Papers
2011 Marxist Literary Group Institute on Culture and Society
Special Topic: "What Is Revolution?"
Deadline for Proposals: March 1, 2011.
The Marxist Literary Group´s 2011 Institute on Culture and Society
(2011 MLG-ICS) will convene this summer (June 20-24) on the campus of
the University of Illinois at Chicago. As always, any submission that
engages seriously with Marxist thought will be considered, including,
but not limited to, Marxist considerations of literature or literary
considerations of Marxism. This year´s special topic will be "What is
Revolution?" What is class struggle? Can there be one without the
other, as horizon or precondition? How does radical social change take
place? Is it necessary to have a theory of revolution, or is it better
to pursue an intelligent opportunism? Does Marxism require revolution?
Does revolution require class? What would a plausible political
subject, or a plausible subject of history, look like today? Does our
present moment hold any revolutionary possibility? What contemporary
movements, possibilities, and practices hold promise (or do not)? Is
there a plausible relationship today between aesthetic practices and
the end of capitalism (as we know it)? How does one represent what is
only possible, not actual? Is "struggle" another name for the
possible? What is the relationship between politics as such and the
economic as such? What is the relationship between politics and
thinking, between revolution and philosophy? These questions and
others will be the focus of this year´s Institute. Selected papers
will be invited for submission to Mediations (mediationsjournal.org).
Recent years´ programs can be accessed at mlg.eserver.org/the-institute.
"The Net Delusion": Do Cell Phones Work During Revolutions? Cory Doctorow
We need a serious critique of net activism. Morozov's book "The Net Delusion" argues that technology isn't necessarily good for freedom – but how else can the oppressed have a voice?
Call for Papers: Radical Democracy Conference, New York, April 4-5, 2011
April 4 April 5, 2011, New York, NY
Paper Abstracts Submission Deadline: January 31
Notification Date: February 18
Full Papers Deadline: March 21
The Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research, incollaboration with the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, is sponsoring a two-day graduate student conference interrogating the concept, history, and implications of radical democracy. Striving to assess the legacy of antiquity o ncontemporary radical democratic theory, as well as explore the work of contemporary theorists such as Abensour, Arendt, Castoriadis, Mouffe, Negri, Ranciere, and Wolin, we invite you to submit abstracts on any theme pertaining to the history, meaning, development and application, or critique of the concept of radical democracy.
International Week of Actions in Solidarity with the Reykjavik Nine
An international week of actions has been called for 10th - 16th of January, 2011 in support of the Reykjavik Nine, nine individuals including anarchists and radical leftists, who face up to 16 years in prison for protest against the Icelandic parliament.
Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune Film Review by John Pietaro
PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE Directed by Ken Bowser (www.philochsthemovie.com). Released, January 2011.
Small Efforts To Contribute To Working Class Resistance In Today's United States Kevin Keating
Since the early 1990's, actions in the San Francisco Bay Area around mass transit, described here,
http://www.infoshop.org/myep/love2.html
the initial impetus behind this,
"Desire Was Everywhere"Adam Shatz
Reviewing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives By François Dosse, translated by Deborah Glassman [Columbia, 651 pp, £26.00, August 2010, ISBN 978 0 231 14560 2]
Pages
