Radical media, politics and culture.

Announcements

Eric Goldhagen writes:


On Thursday November 24 2005 the struggle for justice and fair housing lost one of its greatest fighters, Carmen Rubio.


Among the many gifts she gave to the community on the Lower East Side is the Children's Magical Garden, a once rubble strewn lot that she and her life partner Alfredo Felicanio transformed into a beautiful space for the children of the community.

Announcement of mayflybooks

Today, at one and the same time, scholarly publishing is drawn in two directions. On the one hand, this is a time of the most exciting
theoretical, political and artistic projects that respond to and seek to move beyond global administered society. On the other hand, the publishing industries are vying for total control of the ever-lucrative arena of scholarly publication, creating a situation in which it is increasingly hard to publish works grounded in research and in radical interrogation of the present. As a result, as publishers become fixated on the textbook market and academic books become ever more expensive, with many books only ever being sold as hardbacks these days, which means that they are more likely to get dusty on university library shelves rather than read, and rarely read by those that authors might hope to reach.

In this context, a new book publishing press is being established: mayflybooks. This press draws on the most exciting contemporary theorising concerned with organization, its theoretical and political consequences and presumptions. It specifically seeks to publish works that are currently excluded by the publishing industries, either because of their progressive politics or their apparent lack of a mass market. mayflybooks will draw on the now available new technologies for distribution, specifically, distribution of downloadable PDFs via the internet and cheap paperbacks published in very short production runs. mayflybooks will publish
high-quality books that are available either free of charge (as PDFs on the internet) or as easily affordable paperbacks. This press is a truly not-for-profit operation. It will publish books that matter, and at present this involves bypassing the 'publishing' industry, which is no longer in public hands and hence fails to represent any public.

ephemera Volume 5:4 Inscribing Organized Resistance

Stephen Dunne, Eleni Karamali, and Stevphen Shukaitis

Thoughts, antagonisms, innovations, demonstrations, elaborations, expectations and refutations. This is all to say, field-notes, from an array of politically engaged, non-objectifying theoretical work projects. Behold, the current issue of ephemera! Foolish is s/he who would seek to encapsulate a supposedly complete or somehow representative spectrum of such concerns within this, or indeed any format. Foolish also are those who would hope to find herein a necessary ‘image of thought’ (Deleuze 1995). It is its conditions of impossibility that emphasize the necessity of a worthy task. A task guided by a certain futility then. Yet it is precisely continuation and openness that constitutes the materially valuable. "[T]he hypothesis understood as provocation (knowledge)" (Tronti-Panzieri 1962), not understood through itself, but as a relation to an other which destabilizes and recomposes and a self which is dispersed and paradoxically reformed. To formulate without hoping to formalize, to formulate the to-be-de-formed. Our task, attempted here through this medium.

The concern(s) at hand are the ways in which social research (re-) creates the distance between the researcher (as subject) and researched (as object), in so doing silencing the voices, needs, concerns, knowledges, and practices of the researched. Critical scholarship, by creating fixed and stable positions, becomes complicit within the very practices it seeks to avoid. To point this out is not to say that any critical scholarly endeavor is not worthwhile, destined to failure from the outset. It is to point out that ‘critical’ endeavors must take the paradox of their existence seriously if the claim towards criticality is not to be sneered at.

::Table of Contents::

Editorial / Introduction by the Issue Editors

::Articles::

Event Horizon – The Free Association

Treasonous Minds: Capital & Universities, the ideology of the intellectual and the desire for mutiny – Dave Eden, Australian National University

Introduction to Colectivo Situaciones – Nate Holdren and Sebastian Touza

Further Comments on Research Militancy. Footnotes on Procedures and (In)decisions – Colectivo Situaciones, Argentina

Grassrooting the Imaginary: Acting Within the Convergence - Paul Routledge, University of Glasglow

Sewing Stories, Knitting Knowledge and Acting Activism: Women’s Leadership, Learning and Critical Investigation Through Drama and Craft - Darlene Clover, University of Victoria

::Notes from the General Intellect::

Beyond Solidarity and Academic Freedom: A Conversation Between Luther Blissett and Karen Eliot

::Reviews::

Nietzsche in the Streets - Ruud Kaulingfreks, University of Humanistics

Gift, She Said - Valerie Fournier, University of Leicester

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See details of how to be regularly informed about new ephemera issues here.

Rethinking Worlds of Labour: Southern African labour history in international context

A conference from Friday 28th to Monday 31st July 2006, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Organised by the History Workshop and the Sociology of Work Unit, at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Scholars of labour are invited to the upcoming "Rethinking Worlds of Labour: Southern African labour history in international context" conference, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from the 28th to the 31st July 2006.

The aims of the conference are to
1. Promote a transnational and regional view of labour history, with reference to southern Africa, and to comparisons of the less developed and semi-peripheral regions of the global "South"
2. To reflect on the implications of the "first" globalisation of the 1870s to the 1930s for the "second" globalisation that started in the 1970s
3. To foster collaborative work between scholars, particularly those based in Africa, Asia and Latin America

International perspectives

Although the southern African region is a core area of interest, the conference organisers welcome papers on aspects labour history in other regions that lend themselves to comparative and transnational analyses. Scholars from other regions of the global "South" are therefore especially welcomed.

It is anticipated that the conference will provide the basis for new and collaborative work on comparative and regional labour history, and the panels will be structured to draw together different themes in a stimulating manner.

With best wishes

The organising committee

Peter Alexander, Andries Bezuidenhout, Phil Bonner, Jon Hyslop, Noor Nieftagodien, Nicole Ulrich, and Lucien van der Walt.

Do not hesitate to contact us with any queries.
history-workshop@social.wits.ac.za

Click for the online conference web page.
http://www.wits.ac.za/historyworkshop/conferences.htm

I found this hotel yesterday and it's pretty amazing, a twenty story modernist building that could be anywhere. Except that this hotel has been taken over by its workers, and is a fascinating example of 21st century self-management. Whe I saw The Take I was a bit sceptical about a prescription of the future based on the production of ceramics and suits in the fordist style, but the takeover movement is much broader than that, please see the book/directory Sin Patron for more details.

Help Save the Bauen Hotel

Dear Friends,

The movements of worker-run businesses in Latin America are growing, creating dignified democratic jobs in the rubble of neoliberalism¹s ruinous experiments on that continent.

In Caracas recently, the first pan-Latin meeting of recovered companies was a tremendous success, with 600 workers from 263 companies in eight countries taking the first steps to build an alternative trading network that will deepen and broaden the power of these new social movements.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION!

THE THIRD ANNUAL NEW YORK CITY GRASSROOTS MEDIA CONFERENCE

FEBRUARY 11, 2006

Brought to you by the NYC Grassroots Media Coalition. A project of Paper Tiger Television
Hosted by the Department of Media Studies and Film New School University

The fight for media democracy will not be won by academics, or lobbyists, or people representing one race, class or gender working separately. In order to
effect change in the control and access to media, grassroots leadership is needed from diverse constituencies who understand that access and fair representation in the media is essential for realizing victories in social justice.

Since 2004 the Grassroots Media Conferences have convened thousands for a weekend of workshops, skills-sharing, dialogue, debate and strategizing sessions about media making, media policy and how to use media to support grassroots organizing efforts.

This year we are looking for innovative and collaborative panels as well as action oriented projects to keep attendees motivated and active long after the
conference.

The Third Annual New York City Grassroots Media Conference is now accepting workshop proposals:
http://nycgrassrootsmedia.org/proposals
advertising requests and table reservations:

http://nycgrassrootsmedia.org/2006promotions
endorsements and more: http://nycgrassrootsmedia.org/2006endorse

Social Movements Conference
Manchester, UK, Apr. 19-21, 2006

From 1995 to 2005, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a
series of very successful annual international conferences on
'ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST'.


We're very happy to announce that the Eleventh AF&PP
Conference will be held, between Wednesday 19th April and
Friday 21st April 2006.

The Conference rubric remains as in previous years. The aim is to
explore the dynamics of popular movements, along with the ideas
which animate their activists and supporters and which contribute
to shaping their fate.


Reflecting the inherent cross-disciplinary nature of the issues,
previous participants (from over 40 countries) have come from
such specialisms as sociology, politics, cultural studies, social
psychology, economics, history and geography. The Manchester
conferences have also been notable for discovering a fruitful and
friendly meeting ground between activism and academia.

Venezuelan Anarchists Invitation to Alternative Social Forum

Caracas, Jan 24-29, 2005

The Venezuelan anarchist movement invites you to participate in the Alternative Social Forum at Caracas in January 2006, a gathering of anti-establishment social movements, in response to the bureaucratic World Social Forum promoted by the Venezuelan government.


Groups and individuals from the radical, antiauthoritarian left in Venezuela are promoting an Alternative Social Forum (ASF), in parallel with the "official" (and state-managed) World Social Forum (WSF) that will take place from January 24 to 29, 2006, in Caracas. In this initiative are involved the local anarchists, including the CRA (Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas), the CESL (Centro de Estudios Sociales Libertarios), the newspaper El Libertario and similar collectives. When discussing the defining characteristics of this ASF, we insisted that it should give wide room to the anarchist proposals and experiences for social struggle, which has been widely accepted by the rest of the event promoters, since certainly they have great interest in listening and debating what we have to say.

CUNY Grad Center Hosts "Anarchisms Research Group"

When: Friday, 2 Dec., 2005 at 5 PM

Where: Sociology Lounge, Room 6112 on the sixth floor of the CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, NYC.
(Directions and
maps available here).

Throughout its history anarchism as a theory and a socio-political
movement has gone through periodic peaks and troughs in popularity and
notoriety. Over the past ten years anarchism has again been on the rise.


CUNY students call for the formation of a new student group to pursue
interests in anarchist thought, and to advance its legitimacy in the
academy. The new student group, which is applying for incorporation by
the Doctoral Student Council at the Graduate Center, has three proposed
aims:

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, INTERVENTIONS AND COLLABORATION:

Hacklab: Technology, Creativity, Social Organisation

A weekend gathering for collaborative and creative reflection

February 3/4/5 – 2006

Institute for Advanced Studies

Lancaster University, North West England.

You are happily invited to the “Hacklab”, which is a follow-up event to
(sadly titled?) "Making Global Civil Society" (the funders liked it)
that took place in Lancaster, November 4/5/6. It is hosted at and with
the support of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Lancaster
University. Since the gathering will be defined by those who get
involved in preparing it, the lists below are merely suggestions.

The plan is to experiment with formats and settings, looking for
helpful, creative moments. Suggestions so far include smaller groups,
with intimate, intense, and longer discussions about a particular topic.
For instance, 10-12 people in a room for 3-4 hours, discussing a human
rights article in relation to social movements, a question, some
concept, whatever - and, for example, write a declaration, compile a CD,
or based on note taking and audio recordings.

The ideal is to go beyond conventions.

To play and to experiment there wil also be themed spaces (hacklab setup
with alt/DIY media intros/hands-on stuff) - suggest something!

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