Radical media, politics and culture.

Theory

January 16, 2004 - 12:32pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist writes

"What is the Meaning of Autonomy Today?


Subjectivation, Social Composition, Refusal of Work"
Bifo


I do not intend to
make an historical recapitulation of the movement called
autonomy, but I want to understand its peculiarity through
an overview of some concepts like "refusal of work",
and "class composition".
Journalists often
use the word "operaismo" to define a political
and philosophical movement which surfaced in Italy during
the 60s. I absolutely dislike this term, because it
reduces the complexity of the social reality to the
mere datum of the centrality of the industrial workers
in the social dynamics of late modernity.

The origin of this philosophical
and political movement can be identified in the works
of Mario Tronti, Romano Alquati, Raniero Panzieri, Toni
Negri, and its central focus can be seen in the emancipation
from the Hegelian concept of subject.

In the place of the historical
subject inherited from the Hegelian legacy, we should
speak of the process of subjectivation. Subjectivation
takes the conceptual place of subject. This conceptual
move is very close to the contemporary modification
of the philosophical landscape that was promoted by
French post-structuralism. Subjectivation in the place
of subject. That means that we should not focus on the
identity, but on the process of becoming. This also
means that the concept of social class is not to be
seen as an ontological concept, but rather as a vectorial
concept.

January 15, 2004 - 12:02pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Net Culture:

Culture Between Conformity and Resistance"

Wolfgang Schirmacher

The human individual is a cultural being that with the aid of linguistic symbols creates a world not provided for by nature. We are ‘artificial by nature,’ as the philosophical anthropologist Hellmuth Plessner emphasized, and our cultural achievement consists in technological ingenuity, in the constructs of institutions; it reveals itself ideally in media and art. With culture we create a human sphere and establish realms of private and public encounter. In the last few years a cultural phenomenon has developed with the Internet which seeks its equal in history in its intellectual consequence and incomparable power to generate and foster communal belonging. Not even in their golden ages did the world religions possess such global force of attraction, allowing a world culture to hold sway and rendering regional differences obsolete. In the Internet, cultural imagination meets with the material conditions of many varied societies and transcends these. The long dominant difference between public and private sphere has been suspended, and the Internet has become the universal venue of encounter. The functioning of society at a very basic level is affected here, one which usually escapes our attention. The cultural change effected through the new media cannot be overestimated, but it is yet uncertain where it will lead.

January 7, 2004 - 9:47am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Anarchism, or The Revolutionary Movement
of The Twenty-First Century"

David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic

It is becoming increasingly clear that the age of revolutions is not over. It's becoming equally clear that the global revolutionary movement in the 21st century will be one that traces its origins less to the tradition of Marxism, or even of socialism narrowly defined, but of anarchism.

January 7, 2004 - 4:16am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

The Call of the Void
Is there anything common between the US-British invasion of Iraq, the American rule over Afghan disorder, the implosion of Argentina in 2001-2002, a mass resurging protest that claims to be anti-capitalist, and the downfall of what was yesterday heralded as the coming of a new technological era ? (1)

January 5, 2004 - 7:52am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Comrade Fls writes:

Antonio Negri, Alex Callinicos: Multitude or Working Class?

We all agree to the fact that we want to fight capital and renew the world. But I think this ain’t conceivable as a poetical process. Because the name »multitude« is not a poetical notion, but a class concept. When I talk about multitude as a class concept, I talk about the fact that workers today work in the same and in different ways compared to those they worked some centuries ago. The working class and its class composition are quite different in the distinct periods that followed each other since the beginning of the industrial age.

January 4, 2004 - 4:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Creativity Out of Chaos: Anarchy and Organizing"

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera


Creativity versus managerialism

Creativity is said to be highly desired in post-modern and post-industrial organizations (for a presentation of the new creative organizing, see e.g. Letiche, 1998). It ensures the development of ideas and people, and is crucial for innovatinevess, knowledge and learning, perhaps the most preeminent traits of postmodern organizing (Hatch, 1997). Ola Alexandersson and Per Trossmark (1997) write about creativity and anarchy as opposed to managerialism.

If creativity is understood as anarchy, then the management ideal means perhaps an ordering antithesis. They are depicted as two different forms of knowledge (cf. Björkegren, 1993). Some do not use the word anarchy to signify the spontaneous and unplanned creative expression. Instead, creativity is connected with freedom. To create what one feels for, to express one"s ideas--that is what creativity is about (p. 124).

January 2, 2004 - 11:59am -- hydrarchist
Announcements
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in
which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a
conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall
clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency."—Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History"

December 31, 2003 - 3:12am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist writes "Anonymous Comrade writes

Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom

Saul Newman

1. Max Stirner and Michel Foucault are two thinkers not often examined together. However, it has been suggested that the long-ignored Stirner may be seen as a precursor to contemporary poststructuralist thought.[1 ] Indeed, there are many extraordinary parallels between Stirner's critique of Enlightenment humanism, universal rationality, and essential identities, and similar critiques developed by thinkers such as Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others. However, the purpose of this paper is not merely to situate Stirner in the "poststructuralist" tradition, but rather to examine his thinking on the question of freedom, and to explore the connections here with Foucault's own development of the concept
in the context of power relations and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, both thinkers see the classical Kantian idea of freedom as deeply problematic, as it involves essentialist and universal presuppositions which are themselves often oppressive. Rather, the concept of freedom must be rethought. It can no longer be seen in solely negative terms, as freedom from constraint, but must involve more positive notions of individual autonomy, particularly the freedom of the individual to construct new modes of subjectivity. Stirner, as we shall see, dispenses with the classical notion of freedom altogether and develops a theory of ownness [Eigneheit] to describe this radical individual autonomy. I suggest in this paper that such a theory of ownness as a non-essentialist form of freedom has many similarities with Foucault's own project of freedom, which involves a critical ethos and an aestheticization of the self. Indeed, Foucault questions the anthropological and universal rational foundations of the discourse of freedom, redefining it in terms of ethical practices.[2 ] Both Stirner and Foucault are therefore crucial to the understanding of freedom in a contemporary sense--they show that freedom can no longer be limited by rational absolutes and universal moral categories. They take the understanding of freedom beyond the confines of the Kantian project--grounding it instead in concrete and contingent strategies of the self.

December 31, 2003 - 2:24am -- hydrarchist
Announcements
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes "NEURO -- networking europe

From February 27.-29, 2004 the second version of the makeworlds festival will take place in Muffathalle, Munich (DE). A new generation of media and network initiatives from all over Europe and different parts of the world present and work on their projects in a broad interactive framework that explores the different conceptual and practical idioms used to articulate and create new social, political and artistic practices. Originating within the networking culture of open communications and free exchange the event aims to connect contemporary debates on mobility, migration and social movements with new media instruments, information and communication technologies. NEURO will be a major opportunity for forming creative alliances - within a coherent discursive field - between all those that share the aspiration to raise theory and activity to a level adequate to the practice of digital generations.

December 8, 2003 - 11:06am -- jim
Theory

John Duda writes:

"Instincts and Institutions"

Gilles Deleuze

[Originally published in 1955, and collected in "L'Ile Desert".

Translation by John Duda, 2003.]

That which one calls an instinct, and that which one calls an
institution, essentially designate processes of satisfaction.


On the
one hand, the organism, in reacting to external stimuli naturally,
pulls from the exterior world the elements of a satisfaction of its
tendencies and its needs; these elements form, for different animals,
specific worlds. On the other hand, the subject, in instituting an
original world between its tendencies and the exterior
environment [milieu], elaborates artificial means of satisfaction,
which in submitting it to something else liberate the organism from
nature, and which in introducing it into a new environment transform
the tendency itself; it is true that money liberates one from hunger
-- on the condition that one has some, and that marriage spares one
the search for a partner -- through submission to other tasks.

This
is to say that all individual experience supposes, as an a
priori, the preexistence of an environment in which the experience is
conducted [mennée], an environment of specificity [mileu
spécifique] or an institutional environment. Instinct and
institution are the two organized forms of a possible satisfaction.

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