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Dreampolitk: Presentation w/ Stephen Duncombe NYC 3/27
Dreampolitik: Presentation and Brainstorm with Author Steve Duncombe
March 27 - Change You Want to See, NYC
The Change You Want to See is thrilled to host author and activist Steve Duncombe for a presentation and discussion of his acclaimed manifesto Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. Beyond talk, this is also an applied strategy session – irrigate the irrational, practice your “spectacular vernacular”, exercise your imagination as we craft a creative street action in support of the Coalition of Imakolee Workers' campaign against McDonald's.
BYOB encouraged, as brainstorm and beer are like butter and bread.
Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30pm
The Change You Want to See Gallery and Convergence Stage
L to Bedford, G to Metropolitan, J/M/Z to Marcy
84 Havemeyer St, Brooklyn NY 11211
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
917-202-5479 or 646-221-7845DREAM
What do Paris Hilton, Grand Theft Auto, Las Vegas, and a McDonald's commercial have in common with progressive politics? Not much. And, as Stephen Duncombe brilliantly argues, this is part of what's wrong with progressive politics. According to Duncombe, culture -- and popular fantasy – can help us define and actualize a new political aesthetic: a kind of dreampolitik, created not simply to further existing progressive political agendas but help us imagine new ones.
Dream makes the case for a political strategy that embraces a new set of tools. Although fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time, Duncombe points out that liberals continue to depend upon sober reason to guide them. Instead, they need to learn how to communicate in today's spectacular vernacular -- not merely as a tactic but as a new way of thinking about and acting out politics. Learning from Las Vegas, however, does not mean adopting its values, as Duncombe demonstrates in outlining plans for what he calls “ethical spectacle.”
An electrifying new vision of progressive politics by a lifelong political activist and thinker, Dream is a twenty-first-century manifesto for the left, reclaiming the tools of hidden persuaders in the name of spectacular change.
REVIEWS
Two opposite conclusions can be drawn from the fact that enjoyment is a political factor in late capitalism, that its politics are politics of fantasies: either a purist withdrawal into dessicated rationality or...or what Stephen Duncombe proposes, beating the enemy at its own terrain and thereby opening up a new field for radical politics. The book is simply the sine qua non for any renewal of Leftist politics - a must for anyone who wants the Left to overcome its purist shame!
-- Slavoj Zizek
Imagination is central to all successful political projects and yet the mainstream left has allowed its imaginative faculty to atrophy in recent years. Duncombe shows how the methods of some of today’s most creative social movements can teach the left how to dream again and, by exercising its imagination, to create a winning progressive politics.
-- Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Duncombe teaches the history and politics of media and culture at the Gallatin School of New York University, where he is an associate professor. He co-founded the community activist organization the Lower East Side Collective and was one of the main organizers for the New York City chapter of the international direct action group Reclaim the Streets. He is the author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, and the co-author of The Bobbed Haired Bandit.
Dreampolitik: Presentation and Brainstorm with Author Steve Duncombe
March 27 - Change You Want to See, NYC
The Change You Want to See is thrilled to host author and activist Steve Duncombe for a presentation and discussion of his acclaimed manifesto Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. Beyond talk, this is also an applied strategy session – irrigate the irrational, practice your “spectacular vernacular”, exercise your imagination as we craft a creative street action in support of the Coalition of Imakolee Workers' campaign against McDonald's.
BYOB encouraged, as brainstorm and beer are like butter and bread.
Tuesday, March 27, at 7:30pm
The Change You Want to See Gallery and Convergence Stage
L to Bedford, G to Metropolitan, J/M/Z to Marcy
84 Havemeyer St, Brooklyn NY 11211
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
917-202-5479 or 646-221-7845DREAM
What do Paris Hilton, Grand Theft Auto, Las Vegas, and a McDonald's commercial have in common with progressive politics? Not much. And, as Stephen Duncombe brilliantly argues, this is part of what's wrong with progressive politics. According to Duncombe, culture -- and popular fantasy – can help us define and actualize a new political aesthetic: a kind of dreampolitik, created not simply to further existing progressive political agendas but help us imagine new ones.
Dream makes the case for a political strategy that embraces a new set of tools. Although fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time, Duncombe points out that liberals continue to depend upon sober reason to guide them. Instead, they need to learn how to communicate in today's spectacular vernacular -- not merely as a tactic but as a new way of thinking about and acting out politics. Learning from Las Vegas, however, does not mean adopting its values, as Duncombe demonstrates in outlining plans for what he calls “ethical spectacle.”
An electrifying new vision of progressive politics by a lifelong political activist and thinker, Dream is a twenty-first-century manifesto for the left, reclaiming the tools of hidden persuaders in the name of spectacular change.
REVIEWS
Two opposite conclusions can be drawn from the fact that enjoyment is a political factor in late capitalism, that its politics are politics of fantasies: either a purist withdrawal into dessicated rationality or...or what Stephen Duncombe proposes, beating the enemy at its own terrain and thereby opening up a new field for radical politics. The book is simply the sine qua non for any renewal of Leftist politics - a must for anyone who wants the Left to overcome its purist shame!
-- Slavoj Zizek
Imagination is central to all successful political projects and yet the mainstream left has allowed its imaginative faculty to atrophy in recent years. Duncombe shows how the methods of some of today’s most creative social movements can teach the left how to dream again and, by exercising its imagination, to create a winning progressive politics.
-- Michael Hardt, co-author of Empire and Multitude
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Duncombe teaches the history and politics of media and culture at the Gallatin School of New York University, where he is an associate professor. He co-founded the community activist organization the Lower East Side Collective and was one of the main organizers for the New York City chapter of the international direct action group Reclaim the Streets. He is the author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, and the co-author of The Bobbed Haired Bandit.