The Administration of Fear - Paul Virilio, Ames Hodges and Bertrand Richard

 

We are living under the administration of fear: fear has become an environment, an everyday landscape. There was a time when wars, famines, and epidemics were localized and limited by a certain timeframe.

The administration of fear also means that states are tempted to create policies for the orchestration and management of fear. Globalization has progressively eaten away at the traditional prerogatives of states (most notably of the welfare state), and states have to convince citizens that they can ensure their physical safety.

In this new and lengthy interview, Paul Virilio shows us how the "propaganda of progress," the illuminism of new technologies, provide unexpected vectors for fear in the way that they manufacture frenzy and stupor. For Virilio, the economic catastrophe of 2007 was not the death knell of capitalism, as some have claimed, but just further evidence that capitalism has accelerated into turbo-capitalism, and is accelerating still. With every natural disaster, health scare, and malicious rumor now comes the inevitable "information bomb"--live feeds take over real space, and technology connects life to the immediacy of terror, the ultimate expression of speed. With the nuclear dissuasion of the Cold War behind us, we are faced with a new form of civil dissuasion: a state of fear that allows for the suspension of controversial social situations.

Labor of Dionysus. A Critique of the State-Form - Michael Hardt & Toni Negri

This book is the beginning of a colossal critique on late capitalism, its logic and the dismay of the state form. It announces what would later become the theory and book of Empire, one of the most relevant perspectives to understand the world today, in terms of postmodernism, inmaterial production, globalisation, war, democracy and the new sovereignty. It is highly recomended for anyone looking for thought stimulation and provocation, as well as a penetrating account of actuality inside our philosophical and political traditions. 

Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies - John Hutnyk

Bad Marxism is a critical political analysis of Cultural Studies. It assesses the radical credentials of a discipline that commonly claims to be radical, but is often disengaged from political movements and political struggles as they are actually found in the world today. In particular, Hutnyk looks at how Cultural Studies has used and abused Marxism - that while cultural theorists engage with Marx, their interpretations of Marx ensure that much of his radical political potential is lost. The book focuses on a number of key theorists who are all in some way influenced by, or comment, on Marx: Jacques Derrida, James Clifford, Georges Bataille, and Michael Hardt and Toni Negri in Empire. Coming from diverse intellectual and disciplinary positions (from anthropology to very rarefied philosophy), these theorists have from different directions been highly influential on contemporary cultural studies. Hutnyk attempts to be attentive to the diversity of their positions, but also shows how within that diversity certain common problems emerge, centering on their treatment of Marx and their use of Marxist categories, which leads them and Cultural Studies to an ineffective politics.

Radical Thought in Italy - Paolo Virno & Michael Hardt

Over the past several decades, Italian revolutionary politics has offered a model for new forms of political thinking. Radical Thought in Italy continues that tradition by providing an original view of the potential for a radical democratic politics today that speaks not only to the Italian situation but also to a broadly international context. First, the essays settle accounts with the culture of cynicism, opportunism, and fear that has come to permeate the Left. They then proceed to analyze the new difficulties and possibilities opened by current economic conditions and the crisis of the welfare state. Finally, the authors propose a series of new concepts that are helpful in rethinking revolution for our times. Contributors: Giorgio Agamben, U of Verona and Collège Internationale de Philosophie, Paris; Massimo De Carolis, U of Salerno; Alisa Del Re, U of Padua; Augusto Illuminati, U of Urbino; Maurizio Lazzarato; Antonio Negri, U of Paris VIII; Franco Piperno, U of Calabria; Marco Revelli, U of Turin; Rossana Rossanda; Carlo Vercellone; Adelino Zanini. Paolo Virno is the author of several books, including the recently translated A Grammar of the Multitude. Michael Hardt is professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University.

Commonwealth - Toni Negri & Michael Hardt

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.” 

Declaration - Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri

"This is not a manifesto. Manifestos provide a glimpse of a world to come and also call into being the subject, who although now only a specter must materialize to become the agent of change. Manifestos work like the ancient prophets, who by the power of their vision create their own people. Today’s social movements have reversed the order, making manifestos and prophets obsolete. Agents of change have already descended into the streets and occupied city squares, not only threatening and toppling rulers but also conjuring visions of a new world. More important, perhaps, the multitudes, through their logics and practices, their slogans and desires, have declared a new set of principles and truths. How can their declaration become the basis for constituting a new and sustainable society? How can those principles and truths guide us in reinventing how we relate to each other and our world? In their rebellion, the multitudes must discover the passage from declaration to constitution. [...]"

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution - David Harvey

Manifesto on the urban commons from the acclaimed theorist.

Long before the Occupy movement, modern cities had already become the central sites of revolutionary politics, where the deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. Consequently, cities have been the subject of much utopian thinking. But at the same time they are also the centers of capital accumulation and the frontline for struggles over who controls access to urban resources and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the financiers and developers, or the people?

Rebel Cities places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles, looking at locations ranging from Johannesburg to Mumbai, and from New York City to São Paulo. Drawing on the Paris Commune as well as Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots, Harvey asks how cities might be reorganized in more socially just and ecologically sane ways—and how they can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance.

How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism - Eric Hobsbawm

 

In the 144 years since Karl Marx's Das Kapital was published, the doctrine that bears his name has been embraced by millions in the name of equality, and just as dramatically has fallen from grace with the retreat of communism from the western world. But as the free market reaches its extreme limits in the economic and environmental fallout, a reassessment of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy has never been more timely. Eric Hobsbawm provides a fascinating and insightful overview of Marxism. He investigates its influences and analyses the spectacular reversal of Marxism's fortunes over the past thirty years.

About the Author

Eric Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in 1917 and educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge. A distinguished historian, he is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, with honorary degrees from universities in several countries. 

 

 

Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group

Chronicling the history of two New York City provocateur groups—Black Mask and Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker—this account complies the complete 10 issues of the newspaper Black Mask; numerous leaflets, articles, and flyers generated by Black Mask; the Up Against the Wall Motherfucker Magazine; and Free Press and Rolling Stone reports on Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker. Founded in the mid-1960s, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada with the anarchism of the Spanish Revolution, and this volume demonstrates how they heavily influenced the art, politics, and culture of the decade as they briefly shut down the Museum of Modern Art, protested Wall Street, battled at Students for a Democratic Society conferences, and defended the shooting of Andy Warhol. This history then details how in 1968 Black Mask reorganized as Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker, which combined the confrontational theater and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressive approach in dealing with the police and authorities. A lengthy interview with founder Ben Morea provides context and color to this fascinating documentary legacy.