ANNOUNCEMENT: RECENT EVENTS
to get information on the next few events in the series, see sidebar of UPCOMING EVENTS and SEMINARS
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Niklas Frykman on the Revolutionary Atlantic
Join Niklas Frykman on Saturday, OCT 3rd for a long history of the class and political compositions that comprised resistance struggles against Empire during the Late 18th-Century. Frykman will focus on the naval wars of the 1790s, the “shock proletarianization at sea,” and the wide-scale desertion and mutiny of workers forced into warships.
At the height of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, hundreds of mutinies repeatedly pushed military discipline in Europe’s war-fleets to the very brink of collapse, and sometimes beyond. Please join Niklas Frykman in remembering one of the largest, most radical frontline resistance movements of our history.
The event will take place at Bluestockings Bookstore at 7pm on Saturday, OCT 3rd. Niklas Frykman currently lives in Pittsburgh where he is finishing his PhD with Marcus Rediker (author of The Many-Headed Hydrawith Peter Linebaugh) at the University of Pittsburgh.
You can find Frykman’s article, “Seamen on Late 18th-Century European Warships” here.
Michael Hardt on “Commonwealth”
On Thursday, September 17th (7PM), at Abrons Art Center in the Lower East Side, Michael Hardt will be speaking on the publication of Commonwealth, his latest book co-authored with Antonio Negri. When Empire appeared in 2000, it defined the political and economic challenges of the era of globalization and, thrillingly, found in them possibilities for new and more democratic forms of social organization. Now, with Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri conclude the trilogy begun with Empire and continued in Multitude, proposing an ethics of freedom for living in our common world and articulating a possible constitution for our common wealth.
Drawing on scenarios from around the globe and elucidating the themes that unite them, Hardt and Negri focus on the logic of institutions and the models of governance adequate to our understanding of a global commonwealth. They argue for the idea of the “common” to replace the opposition of private and public and the politics predicated on that opposition. Ultimately, they articulate the theoretical bases for what they call “governing the revolution.”
Though this book functions as an extension and a completion of a sustained line of Hardt and Negri’s thought, it also stands alone and is entirely accessible to readers who are not familiar with the previous works. It is certain to appeal to, challenge, and enrich the thinking of anyone interested in questions of politics and globalization.
Michael Hardt will be in dialogue with Neil Smith, renowned critical geographer, about the social relations of the metropolis as they function as the site for the production of common life, the site of hierarchy and exploitation, and the site of antagonism and revolt.
“Connective Mutations” Seminar with Franco Berardi
Thursday, SEPTEMBER 3rd 2009 at 5PM Friday, SEPTEMBER 4th from 12pm to 10pm Saturday, SEPTEMBER 5th from 11am to 10pmSunday, SEPTEMBER 6th from 11am to 10pm
16 Beaver Group, 16 Beaver Street, Fourth Floor
New York, NY 10004
The recent militant publishing project Minor Compositions and 16 Beaver are organizing a four-day seminar with Bifo, from Thursday, September 3rd to Sunday, September 6th. “Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the Pathologies of Post-Alpha Generation,” Bifo’s most recent book will be available for free to all seminar participants.
The seminar will take place at 16 Beaver: Thursday schedule will be from 5pm – 8pm. Friday will be from 12:00pm to 10pm. Saturday, and Sunday will go from 11:00am to 10pm. A sliding scale fee of $25-50 is requested to help defray costs associated with bringing Bifo to NYC, as well as covering food for the 4 days.
Updates and readings are available at the 16 Beaver website here and other queries can be directed to subject [AT] 16beavergroup [DOT] org.
Affective Politics & the Imagination of Everyday Resistance
Summer Seminar 2009
Wednesdays 4-6PM (July 15th to August 26th)
Bluestockings Bookstore
Lower East Side | 172 Allen Street (btw. Stanton and Rivington)
Instructors: Jack Z. Bratich & Stevphen Shukaitis
Recently, “affect” has been a key concept for research in politics, aesthetics, marketing, neuroscience, and sociology. This course seeks to draw together some of the more innovative work within this “affective turn,” focusing on the political composition of subjectivities, especially via cultural practices. After a survey of some conceptual foundations of affectivity, we explore its relation to group-formation, labor, technology, value, passions (fear, panic, trauma, joy, love), actions, and creativity. The course will feature guest speakers engaged in affective politics and involve group discussions on the affective nature of practices participants are involved in.
Readings (available here):
Readings are divided into core and supplementary readings. The core readings (noted with a star *, approximately 50 pages) will be used to form the basis of discussion of the topics for the given week. Supplementary readings are materials arguments will be drawn from and would be useful for pursuing particular topics further but are not necessary to read before discussion. Reading core materials is highly encouraged and will greatly aid in having engaging and interesting discussions.
Discussion of “Giorgio Agamben’s ‘What is an Apparatus?’
Friday, JUNE 5th 2009 at 7PM
Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, NYC 10002
The discussion will begin as a conversation with translators David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella of the recently published english translation of Giorgio Agamben’s “What is an Apparatus? The three essays collected in this book offer a succinct introduction to Agamben’s recent work through an investigation of Foucault’s notion of “apparatus” (or dispositif), a meditation on the intimate link of philosophy to friendship, and a reflection on the singular relation with one’s own time that we call contemporariness. The evening will also offer a sneak peak of “Nudity,” Agamben’s forthcoming book.
The event will take place at Bluestockings Bookstore and is free (suggested donation/purchase the book).
“French Precarity Struggles in the Crisis”
Saturday, MAY 2nd 2009 at 7PM
Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, NYC 10002
Emmanuelle Cosse, former president of Paris ACT UP, will address how French struggles against precarity have been affected by, and responded to, the global capitalist crises. Cosse will emphasize movement tactics, strategies and composition in France, and the implications for precarity struggles elsewhere in Europe. Discussion to follow presentation.
Click here to access Emmanuelle’s essay, “The Precarious Go Marching,” published May 2008 in the journal ‘In the Middle of a Whirlwind.’ Organized by Team Colors Collective (www.warmachines.info).
Capitalist Crisis, Energy and the Commons
Saturday, APRIL 18th at 10AM to 12PM
Iain Boal (Chair) – University of California, Berkeley and Santa Cruz
Peter Linebaugh – University of Toledo
George Caffentzis – Philosophy, University of Southern Maine
Silvia Federici – Hofstra University
Class Struggle and the Crisis: From Workers to Capital and Back Again
Sunday, APRIL 19th at 10AM to 12PM
George Caffentzis (Chair) – Philosophy, University of Southern Maine
Silvia Federici – Hofstra University
Peter Linebaugh – University of Toledo
Monty Neill – Deputy Director of FairTest
Eddie Yuen – San Francisco Art Institute
Both panels at the LEFT FORUM at Pace University
One Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038
‘Reading’ Struggles from Athens to Oakland
Saturday, APRIL 11th 2009 at 4:30PM to 6PM
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
Kimmel Hall, NYU Room 908
60 Washington Square Park South
Midnight Notes will engage in a discussion of the current capitalist crisis and some of its most potent responses by reading the variety of struggles that have cropped up in recent months, such as in Greece, Oakland, and the Italian anomalous wave. How does organized refusal of capitalist command provoke crisis? How are movements able to circulate across the globe, short-circuit international divisions and hierarchies, and gain power?
Through a reading of current struggles, we will revisit key concepts in relation to self-activity such as the meaning of autonomy; how struggles connect themes of refusal, exodus and revolution; what working class composition means; how circulation and cycles of struggles operate; and how one ‘reads’ struggles politically and strategically.
From Mutual Aid to Collective Reproduction in the Capitalist Crisis
ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR
Sunday April 12 from 10AM to 11:45AM
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
The COMMON ROOM of Judson Memorial Church
55 S. Washington Square Park
These divisions are continuously recreated and are our fundamental weakness. Thus we need to develop the tools to overcome them. Sivlia Federici, author, scholar, and feminist, will draw out the significance of collective reproduction in our struggles against capitalism. We will discuss how our anti-capitalist struggles can foster forms of support and develop our ability to collectively organize our own reproduction.
Silvia Federici is a scholar, teacher and activist with roots in the Italian women’s liberation movement. Federici the co-founder (with George Caffentzis) of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, a member of the Midnight Notes Collective, a radical group that studies global political economy, and author of author of “Caliban and the Witch,” a groundbreaking study of the role of women’s oppression in the creation of capitalism.
George Caffentzis is a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He has edited with the Collective numerous journals, pamphlets and two books published by Autonomedia: “Midnight Oil: Work, Energy War, 1973-1992″ and “Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles of the Fourth World War.”
Urban Struggle and the Crisis
This is Forever is sponsoring two panels at the upcoming City From Below conference in Baltimore from MARCH 27th to 29th, 2009.
Saturday, MARCH 28th 2009 at 5pm
City From Below, 2640 St. Paul St., Baltimore
By connecting the theme of urban struggle in-and-against the crisis, Midnight Notes editors and friends will discuss the strategic areas in which the economic crisis is impacting forms of life in the city as well as the struggles that exist in relation to it.
What is at stake in this conversation is the possibility of a massive restructuring and re-spatialization of social relations in the metropolis; however, there are many potential outcomes that will be determined by the composition of current movements. Thus we ask: How are the effects of this crisis (and its many retaliations) experienced and organized across the many divisions and hierarchies within the working class? What might these new realities mean for struggles in key urban problematics such as: spatial de-concentration, transportation, communication, housing, food, work, health, services, the relationship of the city to its ‘outside’; immigration, and the intensification of separation.
We frame these questions in relation to other important questions at the heart of our “strategies of resistance”: What is the relationship between long-term organization, spontaneous forms of resistance and self-activity cropping up in many US urban contexts? What are the new qualities of struggle emerging in this period and what potential is there (though in some cases not immediately available) to shape a new terrain of struggle? At the level of both capitalist planning and our collective organizing, is what is happening in our contexts consistent with what is happening in cities outside Europe, US, and Japan?
Through discussion, we will be developing strategic insights into how we may approach the crisis politically and also begin to evaluate the composition of effective resistances.
Urban Self-Reproducing Movements and Everyday life
Sunday, MARCH 29th 2009 at 2PM
City From Below, 2640 St. Paul St., Baltimore
We are becoming increasingly aware to what extent this economic crisis is meant to also become a crisis of the working class itself. This crisis will be first and foremost experienced at the level of social reproduction, in our ability to reproduce our lives. Will increased hierarchies further individuate us and fragment our power? Will we develop ways of living in common that refuse this capitalist crisis? Does organizing refusal help us determine where we go from here, how we might find an ‘exit’ to capitalist command? How do ’self-reproducing movements’ relate to organizing revolution in this context? Whatever the scenario, one thing seems clear: it will either be the capitalists reconstituting everyday life or it will be us.
In the turbulent moments to come, the structures of everyday life may continue to crumble and in many ways it seems that the dominos are already falling: relations are breaking down; there is a generalized collapse of the wage; and issues of housing, work, and reproduction are intensifying.
It is with this urgency that we ask about forms of support and collectively produced forms of reproduction that exist in our movements. By focusing on collective reproduction we aim to raise questions about the current conditions affecting people’s power to reproduce their lives in ways that resist market discipline. How can our movements refuse the coda of entrenching working people in their own series of crises?
We develop the theoretical frame of ’self-reproducing movements’ in order to identify the myriad ways our organizing exposes and develops the (re)production of life that is not productive for capitalism, that is not an expansion of capitalist accumulation. In order to situate these concerns in the context of everyday life, we will investigate the composition and history of recent struggles to ask what lessons can be drawn from current organizing. By inquiring about the ramifications of these movements and the kinds of political solidarity and power they have generated, we also raise tensions between how things could be by drawing on historical experiences of previous movements. Thus, the panel aims to raise a discussion of our internal movement relations and the ability to grow and utilize political organization and power.
‘New York City, Class Struggle & Fiscal Crises: Lessons from the Past.’
A Discussion with Eric Lichten.
Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, NYC 10002
In 1974 New York City went full force into a fiscal crisis that culminated in a drastically different set of power relations than had existed just prior. The crisis saw many thousands of city jobs cut and the end of free education at CUNY, amongst other important attacks on the city’s working class and poor. The city’s declaration of austerity was an important step in the development of the neoliberal system that became generalized over ensuing decades.
With the set of current international,national and state crises, NYC is again facing a crisis. What can we learn from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s for struggles that benefit the city’s working class and poor today? Eric Lichten will discuss class struggle and the development of NYC’s 1970s fiscal crisis. His presentation will address lessons we can learn from the past crisis for organizing today. Discussion to follow presentation.
Eric Lichten is chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus. In 1986 he published an analysis of crisis and class struggle entitled Class, Power & Austerity: The New York City Fiscal Crisis. In articles, on television and radio, he has discussed diverse issues relating to the human cost of economic and social injustice and personal and structural crises. He has spoken or written on the bombing of African-American churches, bias crime, orphans and parental death, and power, class and crisis. His community work has impacted the care of chronically ill children. For years he has been active in union struggles and faculty rights at Long Island University. Currently, he serves on The Nassau County Police Commissioner’s Anti-Bias Crime Task Force.
Team Colors is a collective engaged in ‘militant research’ to provide ’strategic analysis for the intervention in everyday life.’ Our purpose is to explore questions of everyday resistance, mutual aid, the imposition of work, social reproduction, class composition, community participation and the commons – by creating engaging workshops and the producing provocative written documents and articles. Currently Team Colors is based Brooklyn; Portland, OR; Tucson, AZ; and the Twin Cities. During the summer of 2008 Team Colors published, with the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements www.inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info
This is Forever: “Creating Radical Communities of Care” & Movements of Self-Reproduction
Tuesday, MARCH 3rd, 2009 at 7pm
Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, NYC 10002
Join the Bluestockings and the Team Colors Collective for a discussion and presentation on the current crisis of care, “creating communities of care and movements of self-reproduction.”
How do radical movements respond to personal crises, trauma, care as well as issues that flow through our everyday lives? Beyond seeing politics as a simply a set of issues and positions, how do we begin to construct new relationships, activities and projects that address issues such as mental health, care, trauma and grief, sexual assault, and interpersonal violence? This discussion seeks to address some of these questions in a series of short presentations and a facilitated workshop session.
The event will begin with substantive presentations from Kevin Van Meter, of the research collective Team Colors & Portland, OR based Dicentra Collective, and Silvia Federici of the Midnight Notes Collective, who has for the past three decades been involved in radical struggles against capital and research into the working class, women and reproductive labor. A discussion will follow the presentations, with the intent of intertwining projects and narratives for the audiences’ own lives into the event.
Some of the questions to be discussed are:
How does the current economic crisis and the crisis of care (care giving, care work, the care industry) disproportionately affect women, both in the United States and in the global south? What does the crisis and the crisis of care mean for the movement against capital and the state. What struggles are taking place during this crisis around care – as well as before it erupted – that we can “read”, draw from, amplify and connect with toward a new world?
Can radical movements respond to personal crises and can they provide personal care? Moving beyond politics as a set of issues and positions, let’s consider what radical projects can do to address physical illness and chronic pain, mental illness, intimate violence, trauma and grief, and other experiences and realities.
Speakers Biographies:
Silvia Federici is a scholar, teacher and activist with roots in the Italian women’s liberation movement. Federici the co-founder (with George Caffentzis) of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, a member of the Midnight Notes Collective, a radical group that studies global political economy, and author of author of Caliban and the Witch, a groundbreaking study of the role of women’s oppression in the creation of capitalism. Federici is currently
focusing inward, examining the role of caretakers within contemporary capitalism. Silvia’s current undertaking focuses on personal stories and individual struggles – exploring what it is means for women to act as caretakers. She discusses the intersection of personal experiences and global structures of power. In this way, Federici is an important and holistic theorist – synthesizing the personal with the political. Midnight Notes Collective: www.midnightnotes.org
Kevin Van Meter is a community organizer and researcher (focusing on everyday resistance) originally from Long Island and a member of the militant research collective Team Colors. Van Meter appears, along with Benjamin Holtzman and Craig Hughes, in the AK Press collection Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigation // Collective Theorization, with an article titled “DIY and the Movement Beyond Capitalism”; an excerpt from his article “The Moment I Cannot Escape: Care, Death, Mourning and the Struggle Against It All” is published in the recent zine collection “The Worst. Currently based in Portland, OR Van Meter works with the Dicentra Collective toward their goal of “creating radical communities of care”. Team Colors: www.warmachines.info; Dicentra Collective: www.dicentracollective.org