‘This is Forever’: From Inquiry to Refusal
A Discussion Series Dedicated to Understanding the Current Composition of Political Movements and Struggles Using the Lens of Autonomist Thought.
‘This is Forever’ – this is for the future. This is an inquiry into the current composition of political movements and struggle, which seeks to understand acts of refusal that are taking place both on the terrain of everyday life and on the level of planetary antagonisms. This is an attempt to theorize from these positions toward new ways of life and new ways of organizing society.
Almost all of our events and discussions are hosted by Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan’s Lower East Side (172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington). At times, the series finds its home in other spaces in NYC as well as other cities in the US.
SERIES DESCRIPTION
‘This is Forever’: From Inquiry to Refusal is a series of discussions dedicated to an inquiry into (1) the current political and class composition of movements and struggles particularly in the United States, and generally across the planet; (2) the technical composition of the imposition of work and under capital, in both productive and reproductive spheres, and its changing nature in capitals neoliberal phase; (3) the myriad of mechanisms which capture, overcode, divide, and suppress our desires and creative capacities; (4) and the ways in which act of refusal and resistance are in exodus from the relations of power that define capital and the state-from, as well as the gender binary, heteronormativity, race, legal status, and other socially constructed divisions and power relations.
This series finds its inspiration by using concepts developed within the Italian autonomous movements and ‘autonomist Marxism’ generally, and from varied theorists and groups such as: Harry Cleaver, Silvia Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa; George Caffentzis, Peter Linebaugh and the Midnight Notes Collective; Guy Debord and the Situationist International; Retort Collective; current developments in Post-Anarchism; Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – ‘This is Forever’ will seek to engage in the act of theorizing from the moments of refusal that exist in our movements and struggles.
‘This is Forever’ is a point of encounter seeking to address critical questions facing movements and struggles in the United States today. Topics could include, but are not limited to:
* Exodus, non-state democracy, and the construction of the commons.
* The creation of political counter-institutions: infoshops, social centers, radical bookshops, bike spaces, community gardens and community supportive agriculture, free schools, cooperatives, restorative justice programs, and do-it-yourself projects.
* “Reading” the political composition of contemporary movements and struggles, and the rise of new social protagonists.
* The increased immaterial, precarious and affective nature of work and biopolitical production under capitals neoliberal phase.
* The changing relationship between productive and reproductive labor, and the continued gendered nature of reproductive and unpaid work.
* Going beyond the gender binary, heteronormativity, race and other socially constructed divisions and relations of power.
* New forms of independent media, radical communication networks, and cultural resistance.
* Aesthetic and cultural experiments in becoming new selves and new social agents.
Related topics for the series include:
* Readings the struggles around, in and through the current financial and economic crisis.
* Understanding the role of energy/oil as well as war/militarism.
* Inquiring into the roots of the crisis of social reproduction.
* Exploring current forms of the commons and communing activity, building self-reproducing movements.
* Investigating the crisis of organizing in the US context.
The ideas behind the series are multiple:
The series arose over the past few years out of various experiences of a small group of individuals in New York City in which our inquiry and organizing attempts were informed by autonomist thought as the lens with which we explored social and political composition. The purpose of the series was to further these ideas and provide a forum for interesting and engaging researchers and militants to speak in NYC in a collective attempt “to understand current class composition so that we can theorize and strategize around that moment” and utilize that as a basis for political mobilization and understanding. The series is a contribution to the many recording devices available to movements and struggles that are already taking place.
In addition to hosting discussions and presentations, a second tier to the series provides spaces for movements, struggles, and projects in NYC to speak. We want to hear about these organizing experiences function, who participates, ask (openly) about its limitations, where they are being successful, where they are not, how they are building political power, etc.
Hosted By: Bluestockings Books, New York City
Sponsors: Autonomedia; Bluestockings Bookstore; Team Colors.
Series Curators:
The series has been organized around the shifting attentions and contributions of a small group of people, most of whom are or have been based in NYC at one time or another.
Past and present contributors include Kevin van Meter, Jack Z. Bratich, Stevphen Shukaitis, Craig Hughes and Malav Kanuga.