This evening we are reading an unpublished article by Uri Gordon that was presented at the 2015 NAASN conference. One of the study group was so excited by the piece that they stomped and cried until we begged Uri for the text. He dutifully responded.

We will be reading “Prefigurative Politics and Anarchism” by Uri Gordon which will be available in hard copy on Tuesday.

this week we have a 2002 interview by PLW of Michael Taussig, who wrote Mimesis and Alterity, and The Devil and Commodity Fetishism, among other titles.

from wikipedia: The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America is both a polemic about anthropology and an analysis of a set of seemingly magical beliefs held by rural and urban workers in Colombia and Bolivia. His polemic is that the principal concern of anthropology should be to critique Western (specifically, capitalist) culture. He further argues that people living in the periphery of the world capitalist economy have a critical vantage point on capitalism, and articulate their critiques of capitalism in terms of their own cultural idioms. He thus concludes that anthropologists should study peoples living on the periphery of the world capitalist economy as a way of gaining critical insight into the anthropologists’ own culture. In short, this polemic shifts the anthropologists’ object of study from that of other cultures to that of their own, and repositions the former objects of anthropological study (e.g. indigenous peoples) as valued critical thinkers.

the reading: michael-taussig-ayahuasca-and-shamanism

first reading(s) for our month on Kobane (both of these are probably out of date in information, but not in  analysis):

first week:   the experiment of kurdistan

second week:   the seemingly quixotic journey (tom nomad)

Accelerationist manifesto:http://syntheticedifice.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/accelerate.pdf

on Object Oriented philosophy: http://www.urbanomic.com/Publications/Object-Oriented-Philosophy/preface.pdf

After Finitude: http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog/files/2011/02/After%20Finitude%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20Meillassoux.pdf

read any two. come with three questions!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1478738712379399/?ref=br_tf

preparty for ebab – fights and fun!

sorry this is so late!

we are taking the concept and practice of talking to people we don’t agree with, in particular leftists.

how to do it, why to do it, and when to do it.  and what the various formats that we operate within (ie communicating online, etc) allow for and discourage.

these are in chronological order, and refer to each other, so best to read them this way.

post-left-anarchy-leaving-the-left-behind

anarchists-in-wonderland-the-topsy-turvy-world

the-incredible-lameness-of-left-anarchism

on-the-radical-virtues-of-being-left-alone-deconstructing-staudenmaier

Here are three readings by Enrico Malatesta

• Debate on Organization
• Democracy
• Individualism

Here are some questions that relate to Malatesta

• Other than jargon what is actually different about the problems faced and considered by anarchists of his generation?
• What mistakes do we share with our forebearers that seems more obvious in reading their material than our own?
• What can we learn about how we think about race from what anarchists in the 19th century thought?

my favorite chick! i was assigned to choose 2, but 3 is better. 🙂

they-who-marry-do-ill

why-i-am-an-anarchist

anarchism-and-american-traditions

just off the top of my head – the first article is a fantastic example of a kind of argument that people rarely choose – in which the argument takes as its subject the strongest example of problematic behavior (in this case, a happy loving marriage is what voltairine takes on, when we all know there is a preponderance of Other examples). oh, that’s not a question: um, how do we do our arguments a disservice by picking easy(er) targets? what are arguments we have (with ourselves and others) where we could choose stronger targets?

the second article raises (among other things) the question of emotion among anarchists, and what role that has. this is something that the reading group might be more comfortable with talking about (especially if the feeling is anger), but that isn’t commonly accepted behavior. why do we think emotion continues to be so challenging?

the second article points out how the u.s. already has tendencies that support anarchist thought (i think voltairine does a better job than crimethinc, but i don’t recall her being much more critical of it than CI is). debate!

while many of us have a tendency towards philosophy, this week we are going back to basics (well, a type of basics, anyway) and reading berkman’s ABC of anarchism.
to understand best how we got here, it is helpful to remember/learn the steps in the genealogy.
what do we still agree with? what do we emphatically disagree with (and why)? what has been borne out, what has not, and what remains to be seen?

in memory of audrey — this was the text that decided her that she was an anarchist.

two chapters from revolt and crisis in greece
full pdf is here
revolt and crisis in greece.pdf

chapters to read are 2 (urban planning and revolt); and 3 (the polis-jungle)

1. the main question here is–how does this translate to the u.s., specifically to the areas we know and live in?
the cities we are in are certainly structured differently, and of course our cultural expectations and assumptions are also different.
2. is it possible for us to recreate our environs (in the ways that specifically chapter 3 talks about)? what would that take? where would it be most likely to last/succeed? or is this something that we should even be trying for?
3. critical mass makes a brief and surprising appearance in their analysis… what about *that*?!