agamben’s the coming community…
we will be ending our month of readings of the sits by watching an hour of the debord film, can dialectics break bricks, an example of the kind of situation that the sits thought might have a chance of giving people room to think differently.
there will probably be more discussion after the film about art, other kinds of situations and interventions, perhaps some about the non-french situationists, and so on.
Week 1 – Cities: January 26th
Unitary Urbanism
Formulary for a New Urbanism
Another City for Another Life
some preparatory questions:
these readings are pro-urban, with a lot of passionate thinking about how cities constrain and also liberate people (or at least have a lot of power to liberate people, if some major things changed). here on the west coast, that is a fairly unusual take these days. mostly people talk about cities being bad places, to raise children, to get away from capitalism and/or the state (ha), to have better kinds of relationships, etc.
what does it look like to take a modern positive view of urban life? how do we think cities could change to be liberatory spaces? what impact would flexible and mobile housing have on cityscapes and our imaginations?
Week 2 – activism: February 2nd
Scandal
On the Poverty
Critique of the new left
Week 3 – spectacular reality: February 9th
Bad Days
Basic Banalities
All the Kings Men
Week 4 – desire: February 16th
New Forms
Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life
Instructions for an Insurrection
Response to a Questionnaire from the Center for Socio-Experimental Art
All readings are from the SI anthology
this week’s reading is brought to us by theanarchistlibrary.org, the best archive evar!
two readings on why more people don’t resist (at least not in ways we commonly understand as resisting).
one is by saul newman
and the other is by frere dupont (this is in species being, for those of you who have that book).
based on recommendations by two folks, we’re reading de la boetie’s politics of obedience, available here
the reading starts on page 41.
try not to be freaked out by the murray rothbard introduction… (eek).
the soul of man under socialism, by wilde.
i hear tell squee and paul z will be leading the conversation… 😉
we were supposed to read very bad nihilist, but somone forgot to bring them for people to buy… (d’oh).
so we’ll read that for the 15th, and this week we’re reading the thread on anews on death and heroism.
http://anarchistnews.org/content/topic-week-death-and-heroism
reading from baedan 2
against the gendered nightmare
if people are into it, then we might read something from baedan 3 for the following week.
through chapter 1 of anti-oedipus (link is in last week’s post).
we’re starting one of our most ambitious readings ever, namely the influential anti-oedipus, by deleuze and guattari.
full text is here.
we will start with the introduction and first chapter (so linear!), so through page 8 (the chapters are short).
and we hope to have a few of the interesting people who have been intrigued and influenced by this text come and talk to us about it, over the course of reading the book. so, stay tuned.