Radical media, politics and culture.

Announcements

October 10, 2005 - 11:39am -- stevphen
Announcements
War

Social Text Call for Papers, "The Ends of War"

War is back and seemingly forever. In recent years the pacific neo-liberal rhetoric of globalization has been replaced by the Hobbesian war of all against all. This pervasive metaphorization of war blurs the boundaries between military and civilian, combatant and non-combatant, state and war machine, wartime and peace. But war discourse also operates as a strategy that partitions, separates and compartmentalizes knowledge, offering a highly seductive, militarized grid through which to interpret the world. Though the contemporary scene shows striking parallels with the neo-colonialism, counter-insurgency and "dirty wars" of the Cold War era, the current proliferation of war discourse often masks older continuities and material interests. Like a virus, it seems, war tropes have spread throughout the body politic and global economy.

What are the ends of war? This special issue of Social Text invites contributions that engage this critical question: by challenging teleological narratives of endless conflict; by confronting the seductions of metaphorization and militarization; and by analyzing the historic and material interests that they serve. “The Ends of War” will insist on the contingent and instrumental nature of war discourse and on the need to think beyond its global reach. Contributors are invited to challenge the hegemonic force of war, and contest its tendency to compartmentalize knowledge, divide and rule.

Contributions that link the work of gender or postcolonial studies, area studies, or political economy to analyses of war culture and technology will be particularly welcome. Possible areas of interest might include: the gendered imaginary of war; the Left’s ambivalent relationship to the seductive metaphorization of war; the colonial genealogy of contemporary war discourse; race and the military; buried histories of postmodern war culture in other conflicts; the arms trade and the permanent war economy; the militarization of intellectual life; media consolidation, censorship and the reporting of war; and the economic and environmental impact on the Global South.

Submission deadline: May 1, 2006

Essays of 7,000 to 10,000 words, including endnotes, and following The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, should be emailed as Microsoft Word documents to Livia Tenzer, Managing Editor, Social Text: ltenzer@rci.rutgers.edu. Hard copies may be sent to Social Text, 8 Bishop Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08903.

October 7, 2005 - 9:49am -- jim
Announcements
Culture

Culture Articles from The New Masses

Available in PDF Format here.

Title of article in The New Masses — Date of Publication —
Pages

“Author’s Field Day,” NM 12 (July 3, 1934): 27-32 nm001.pdf

Mike Gold, “Proletarian Realism,” NM 6 (September 1930): 5 nm002.pdf

Gold, “Go Left, Young Writers!” NM 4 (January 1929): 3-4 nm003.pdf

Philip Rahv, "The Literary Class War," NM 8 (August 1932): 7-10 nm004.pdf

Gold, “Notes of the Month,” NM 5 (January 1930): 7 nm005.pdf

Harlan Miners materials, NM Dec. 1931 nm006.pdf

Anatoli Lunacharski, “Marxism and Art,” NM 8 (Novemebr 1932): 12. nm007.pdf

Stanley Burnshaw, "Revolutionary Poetry," NM February 1930 nm008.pdf

Edward Dahlberg, "Review of Farrell, Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan," NM February 1930 nm009.pdf

Wallace Phelps, ‘The Methods of Joyce,” NM 10 February 20, 1934): 26 nm010.pdf

Eugene Gordon, “Black and White, Unite and Fight!” NM 13 (October 23, 1934): 24-25 (rev. of Endore, Babouk) nm011.pdf

Obed Brooks, “In the Great Tradition,” NM 13 (November 27, 1934): 23 nm012.pdf

Granville Hicks, “Revolutionary Literature of 1934,” NM 14 (January 1, 1935): 38 nm013.pdf

Edwin Seaver, “Socialist Realism,” NM 17 (October 22, 1935): 23-25 nm014.pdf

Joshua Kunitz, “In Defense of a Term,” NM 28 (July 12, 1938), sect 2: 145-47 nm015.pdf

October 5, 2005 - 7:59pm -- jim
Announcements
Independent Media

Queering Development:

Genders, Sexualities and Global Power

Call for Papers

Global development initiatives are designed to eradicate poverty and rethink
social distribution, yet most development theories and policies have yet to
take into consideration the lives and experiences of those who do not fit
within prescribed gender and sexual roles in their societies.


Likewise, to the
extent that most frameworks of development and globalization are
heteronormative and gender-normative, they do not provide the possibility of
imagining a “queer” economic, social or political future.

Queering Development
addresses the often invisible relationship among sexuality, gender identity,
development and globalization in examinations of global poverty and social
change. This volume will bring together scholarship from various disciplines,
including but not limited to feminist economics, sociology, anthropology, and
queer, ethnic and postcolonial studies, to examine the meaning and making of
global development in its queer iterations.

October 5, 2005 - 1:57pm -- jim
Announcements
Independent Media

ian@ianpace.com writes:

La Veille Taupe?

Ian Pace

I'm wanting to know more about the French bookshop/publisher La Vieille Taupe, who I've seen often referred to in the context of the Chomsky/Faurisson affair.


It seems this was originally a Marxist organisation specialising in works of the Situationists, writings of Bordiga, etc., then later after a period of closure became associated with Holocaust revisionists (including even some bizarre ultra-leftists who moved towards this position)? If anyone here knows more about this, and especially about whether claims of points of convergence between some of the French ultra-left and far right have any validity to them, I'd be very interested to hear. What connections exist between the two different incarnations of this bookshop/publisher?


There seems so much political capital made out of this by conservatives, anti-Chomsky liberals and others (including Pierre Vidal-Nacquet) that I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing.

October 5, 2005 - 9:13am -- jim
Announcements
Prisons & Prisoners

Kate Gibbons writes:

Helping Political Prisoners Overseas

http://www.prisonersoverseas.com


This site has been created to provide comprehensive information and advice for families with loved ones imprisoned overseas or at home.


We aim to provide a 24 hour lifeline of information online. What is not currently on the site, we will research for you. Please let us know what you need at admin@prisonersoverseas.com.


We also aim to raise awareness for political and religious prisoners and the organisations that support them, and the many other organisations who tirelessly campaign for human rights.


We are also keen for people to share their experiences and submit information and research that may help families and prisoners. The hours and days after arrest can be crucial for the prisoner.


We hope to alleviate some of the stress families endure, by quick and easily accessible information online. The stress and trauma often felt by families with loved ones imprisoned overseas is often intensified by the distance and isolation this causes.


If you are a family member of a loved one imprisoned overseas or at home and would like to be put in touch with other families, please contact us at admin@prisonersoverseas.com.

September 30, 2005 - 2:29pm -- nolympics
Announcements
In the Streets

The New Space
(The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education)

Fall 2005 Courses start next week!

READING JOHN HOLLOWAY’S _CHANGE THE WORLD WITHOUT TAKING POWER_
Instructor: Andrew Kliman
6:00 - 7:30 p.m., alternate Wednesdays Oct. 5 - Dec. 14
Sliding scale

A READING OF HEGEL’S _PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT_
Instructor: Alex Steinberg
7:30 - 9:00 p.m., every Tuesday Oct. 4 - Dec. 20
Sliding scale

BANKING AND INVESTMENTS
Instructor: Howard F. Seligman
6:00 - 7:30 p.m., every Tuesday Oct. 4 - Nov. 8
Sliding scale

See course descriptions below. See the New SPACE website for registration info.
__________________________________________________ _________

Fall 2005 Talks

THE ECOSOCIALIST VISION
Joel Kovel
Wed. Nov. 2 at 7:30 p.m.

THE PEOPLE’S PENSION: THE ANARCHIST ORGINS OF SOCIAL SECURITY
AND TODAY’S BATTLE OVER ITS FUTURE
Eric Laursen
Wed. Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m.

MODERN CRISIS THEORY: WHY A DYNAMIC UNDERSTANDING OF TODAY'S
CRISES IS CRITICAL FOR ORGANIZING A PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
AND VISION OF AN ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY
Roz Bologh and Len Mell
Wed. Nov. 30 at 7:30 p.m.

Suggested Donation for Talks: $7 - $10

See the New SPACE website for details, and please check our website for additional talks to be scheduled.

__________________________________________________ _________
The New SPACE has moved to the

Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center at 107 Suffolk Street, NYC.

Located between Rivington and Delancey Streets in the Lower East Side.
We meet in the second floor Art Gallery. F train to the Delancey Street
station or J, M, Z to Essex Street station. See the New SPACE website for a map.

The New SPACE
(The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education)
http://new-space.mahost.org
new-space@mutualaid.org
Tel: 1 (800) 377-6183
__________________________________________________ _________
Fall course descriptions:

Reading John Holloway’s _Change the World Without Taking Power_

Andrew Kliman
Alternate Wednesdays, 6:00pm - 7:30pm
6 Sessions: Oct. 5 & 19,
Nov. 2, 16 & 30, Dec. 14
Tuition: $75 - $100, sliding scale

Revolution has frequently been identified with the capturing of state power. This notion is now discredited. But the idea of revolution itself will also be discredited unless a different concept of revolution that can replace it is worked out concretely. In _Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today_ (Pluto, 2002), John Holloway argues that genuine revolution cannot be a process of capturing power – not even in order to abolish state power and other relations of domination. Power must be dissolved.

The premise of this course is that, whether one ultimately agrees or
disagrees with this idea, Holloway’s book deserves serious consideration. It is an important recent effort to come to grips with the need to work out an alternative concept of revolution for today. We will read and discuss the whole of _Change the World_. Since fetishism and anti-fetishism are among its major concepts, we will also read and discuss the section on the fetishism of the commodity in Marx’s Capital. Other readings include Peter Hudis’ and Cyril Smith’s reviews of Holloway’s book.

Students should read the Preface and first two chapters of _Change the
World_ (a total of 19 pages) before the first class session and be prepared to discuss them. See the syllabus for the other readings, which are available online. For more information contact the instructor at Andrew_Kliman@msn.com.

Andrew Kliman taught a course on Volume I of Marx's _Capital_ last Spring at the New Space.
Kliman, a professor of economics at Pace University, has published extensively on Marx’s _Capital_, crisis theory, and value theory. Co-editor of _The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics_ (2004), he has recently finished a book that reclaims Capital from the myth of internal inconsistency. Many of Kliman's writings are available at his new website: http://akliman.squarespace.com

BANKING AND INVESTMENTS

Howard F. Seligman
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 7:30pm
6 Sessions, October 4 – November 8
Tuition: $75 - $100, sliding scale

This course will explore banking, investment, and financial markets. We will begin with an introduction to financial accounting and discounted cash flow in order to construct a toolkit for further analysis.

Using several conventional MBA textbooks, we will examine fractional reserve banking -- the underlying mechanical basis of monetary expansion in the United States. We will also scrutinize the role played by "the Fed" in money creation and economic regulation, and look at stock and bond markets from both a historical and a regulatory perspective.
The techniques of security analysis and asset valuation will, then, be
presented in simple lay persons' terms (and in mathematical detail if
students are interested). The same tools will also be applied to
non-investment materials such as air pollution and birth control.

Finally, we will compare different banking systems across the globe -- with an eye toward the impact of emerging economic powers like China and India on the world scene.
Howard F. Seligman taught a course on taxation and finance last Spring at the New SPACE. He has been a self employed financial and tax consultant since 1984. His practice specializes in the arts and entertainment fields, and he serves as the treasurer to more than fifteen arts and cultural organizations. Howard has taught accounting and finance at The Pratt Institute. His hobbies include playing Howie Solo, a singer and stand up comedian who can host your local fundraising event. He is currently researching a book on the history of the Jewish gangster in America.

A READING OF HEGEL'S _PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT_

Alex Steinberg
Tuesdays, 7:30 - 9:00pm
12 Sessions, October 4 – December 20
Tuition: $150 - $180, sliding scale

The True is the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk.
--from Preface to the _Phenomenology of Spirit_

It has been said that one cannot understand much of what has transpired in terms of art, culture, politics or philosophy in the last 200 years without having read Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_. For good reason, many have considered this work to be the culmination of the Western philosophical tradition that began in ancient Greece.

In this 12-session series, we will explore the different shapes of
consciousness that have inhabited our culture and continue to shape our
world. We will go on a journey that takes us from the Inverted World, to the Master-Slave dialectic, to the Unhappy Consciousness, to the Beautiful Soul, to Absolute Freedom and Terror and finally to Absolute Knowing. Along the way, we will consider Hegel's relationship to the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the French Revolution, and to his student, Karl Marx.
By the end of this study, students should be able to judge for themselves what is living and what is dead in the work of this titan of the Western tradition. No prior background in philosophy is expected or assumed.

Students should get the A.V. Miller translation of the _Phenomenology_
(Oxford University Press). The reading for the first session is Hegel's (not Findlay's) Introduction -- not the Foreword, which is supposed to be read last. The instructor has prepared an annotated reading list.

Alex Steinberg holds an MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social
Research; he left the PhD program after participating in the student
takeover of the New School following the Kent State massacre in 1970.
Steinberg is facilitator of a philosophy and literature discussion group in Brooklyn and author of several essays, including "The Case of Martin Heidegger" and "From Alienation to Revolution: A Defense of Marx's Theory of Alienation." He has also served as a member of the WBAI Local Station Board (2004) and as Chairperson of the WBAI LSB Programming Committee.

See the New SPACE website for more details about courses and registration info, as well as our pluralism page.
__________________________________________________ ________________

The New SPACE teachers, speakers, and organizers include:
Stanley Aronowitz, Roz Bologh, Jack Z. Bratich, Stephen Eric Bronner, Andrea Fishman, Jeannette Gabriel, Loren Goldner, David Graeber, Robin Hahnel, Jesse Heiwa, Charles Herr, Joshua Howard, Anne Jaclard, Andrew Kliman, Louis Kontos, Joel Kovel, Raymond Lampe, Eric Laursen, Len Mell, Alan W. Moore, Bertell Ollman, Howard Seligman, Stevphen Shukaitis, Tom Smith, Alex Steinberg, Bill Weinberg, Seth G. Weiss


                                                                    **********************

The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (New SPACE) is a new anti-capitalist educational project dedicated to developing and advancing ideas for liberatory social change. Together with the new movements for global justice, we believe that "another world is possible" -- a world free from the domination of capital and free for the flowering of human powers and talents.

The New SPACE holds that free dialogue and the protection of dissenting views are essential for the development of liberatory ideas and for forging real unity among those struggling for liberation. We reject the suppression of dissenting views and individuals in the name of "unity," convinced that such suppression is antithetical to the working out of real unity. "Freedom," as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, "is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." Accordingly, one distinguishing aspect of our mission is to create an educational space - not existent at present - in which pluralistic dialogue and dissident perspectives are respected and encouraged.

The New SPACE will be a place for exploring challenging questions that today's movements confront, such as: How do we build non-hierarchical movements that can sustain themselves? How can such movements safeguard grass roots democracy? How do consciousness and ideas relate to movements for social transformation?

Resolutely anti-authoritarian and non-sectarian, the New SPACE brings together anarchists, humanist Marxists, and others. All those who share our mission and goals are invited to join us as students, teachers, and partners in the development of this project. In particular, we will encourage and facilitate the participation of women, people of color, GLBT people and others who face exclusion and discrimination. e also envision a new space that young people, without ties to the old Left, will find welcoming. We seek, through our classes and other activities, to create an environment in which youth, working people from diverse backgrounds, intellectuals, and activists can dialogue and collaborate in order to make sense of, and transform, our world.

New York City
November 8, 2004
__________________________________________________ ________
The New SPACE
(The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education)
http://new-space.mahost.org
new-space@mutualaid.org
Tel: 1 (800) 377-6183"

September 27, 2005 - 9:05am -- jim
Announcements
Electoral Politics

Olek Netzer writes:

"Open Forum on Political Organization"

Olek Netzer

Some weeks ago a person who, as I understand, is one of the leading voices in the British radical scene, posted here an article about Strategy and he had written, specifically, "we do not know how to organize effectively."


I have done much work learning and researching human behavior to answer my own and other persons need to organize for becoming politically empowered without falling into the pitfalls of traditional movement or party politics. So far, attempts to humanize organized power-politics have been invariably failing, giving rise to the expression "Paving One's Road to Hell with Good Intentions".

That was my early life's very painful experience too, and since then I have been busy finding out why exactly it happens and what the practical alternatives, if any, are.

September 19, 2005 - 1:30pm -- jim
Announcements
Events

Anonymous Comrade writes:


"The Plan for the Zapatista Departure"

Subcomandante Marcos, Sept. 16, 2005

Compañeros and compañeras, in keeping with our brief tradition, I am informing you how the campaign of support closed as of this September 11, two months after we began the call: 55 political organizations of the left have joined, a month and a half ago there were 30; 103 indigenous organizations and Indian peoples of Mexico, and there were 32 a month and a half ago; 162 social organizations and movements, and there were 47 a month and a half ago; 453 non-governmental organizations, collectives and groups, and there were 210 a month and a half ago; 1624 individuals or persons representing their families, barrios or communities, and there were 690 a month and a half ago.

September 16, 2005 - 12:25pm -- jim
Announcements
Independent Media

"Remembering Julian Beck"

Hanon Reznikov

We are thinking of Julian today, on the twentieth anniversary of his departure from our midst. We remember in living color his voice, his vision, his poetry and the theater he enlarged with them. Tom, Ilion , Malina and myself drove out to Cedar Park Cemetery this morning and gathered at his grave. Judith read Shelley's "The West Wind," which they used to read aloud together and I read the poem below, by Dacia Maraini.


src="http://www.autonomedia.org/images/jblove.jpg"


"Now Julian, You Walk Barefoot"

Dacia Maraini

To Julian Beck

Now Julian, you walk barefoot

Now Julian, you eat frozen roses

Now Julian, all the cats have fled

your lap, not even a flea

would take you for its father

In a hall in Cinecittà

you ate pasta and beans

on a plastic plate

Julian, your fingers dirty with green lacquer,

you spoke of liberty,

your mouth full, your eyes laughing

so white

and so full of air

Julian, what was the theatre

under your thin feet

divided in hot and bitter zones

between gushes of an imaginary reality

the geometry of your intelligence

your colorless ascetic's tongue

made you seem a ferocious monk

but you liked touching walls,

bodies, machines, the earth.

Julian, with your face of a predatory bird,

you smoked like an old Turk,

sliding in your black trousers

along the paths of thought

and Judith with her hair swelled

like a wild owl's wing

gold prospectors you and she bent

under the stage's boards

digging for treasure, so she was born

like a mouse between flying stagelights

and you behind

with an acrobat's grace

in winter's glittering evenings between glass panels

and Dutch linens, between taffeta flowers

and paper crowns, Julian when you will look at us

we will already be faraway

and you, great archer in your world

of ringing silences will look at us

through your reversed binoculars

and we will salute each other as from distant ships

raising our arms and a white rag

There is a wonderful tribute to Julian put together by Gary Brackett here
and another by our Italian comrades at here.

September 15, 2005 - 12:23pm -- jim
Announcements
Culture

Steve Franco writes:

"Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’

Washington, DC, Nov. 2–Dec. 11, 2005

A Play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo from spoken evidence

Directed by Serge Seiden

Tight, tense and boldly current, Guantanamo tells the gripping true stories of four British residents imprisoned at Guantanamo and paints an unforgettable portrait of America’s controversial prison. Guantanamo tackles one of the most significant and troubling issues of our time, the U.S. government’s arrest and imprisonment of terrorist suspects without due process. Actor Harsh Nayyar, who played Mr. Begg, father of Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg, in the New York production, returns to the role at The Studio Theatre.

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