Theory. Utopia. Empathy. Ephemeral arts – EST. 1990 – ATHENS LONDON NEW YORK

Category archive

Theory - page 5

Theory

“Anarchism” from Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, by John Clark

        The anarchist tradition has been sharply divided in its relationship to religion, spirituality and nature. On the one hand, the mainstream of Western anarchism has in general been atheist, anti-religious and anti-clerical, and has looked upon religion as a supernaturalist negation of the natural world. On the other hand, there is a long history of anarchistic thought and practice having strong spiritual or religious dimensions, and…

Theory

Creating Common Wealth and Cracking Capitalism: A cross-reading by John Holloway’s, Michael Hardt / Tony Negri’s books

In the first of a two part correspondence, John Holloway and Michael Hardt discuss some common themes that have emerged from their most recent books “Crack Capitalism” and “CommonWealth” and touch of the topics of organisation, democracy and institutionalism. The second part of the exchange will be published in Issue 15 of Shift magazine. July 2010 Dear John, One of the things I love about ‘Crack Capitalism’, which it shares…

Theory

“War is here, if you want it. (On the 1st anniversary of Occupy)” by Eskl8trs

                              WAR IS HERE, IF YOU WANT IT / War is war War then, if that’s what you want Introduction Next time, when you’re still standing around commemorating something that you’ve lost, and all you see around you are the walking wounded and a fading brand struggling to stay relevant, hopefully there will come a point…

Theory

“Modernity and Biospheric Meltdown: Rethinking Exits, Austerities and Biopolitics by Gene Ray

  In setting out the agenda for this conference, Yannis Stavrakakis calls for a critical and postcolonial reflection on the Greek crisis. He asks us to think about the current politics of debt and austerity within the historical force-fields of “Heterodox Modernity”: “A global crisis provides the opportunity for the enforcement of one more project of ‘modernizing’ Greek culture under circumstances of a quasi-state of emergency.” The terms constellated in…

Theory

“Invisible Politics – An Introduction to Contemporary Communisation” by John Cunningham

In the wake of the organised left and the demise of working class self-identity, communisation offers a paradoxical means of superseding capitalism in the here and now whilst abandoning orthodox theories of revolution. John Cunningham reports from the picket line of the ‘human strike’. As we apprehend it, the process of instituting communism can only take the form of a collection of acts of communisation, of making common such-and-such space,…

Events/Theory/Void Network News

Limits of Terror: On Culture Industry, Enforcement and Revolution by Gene Ray

                                    Excerpt: These reflections suggest that a break with the master logic of accumulation entails disarming the technocratic national security-surveillance state, and above all the US war machine that is the main enforcer of the global imperialist process. To put it more pointedly: without disarmament, the prospect of emancipating system change is nill.…

Theory

“Power, Propaganda, and Purpose in American Democracy” by Andrew Gavin Marshall

One central facet to the development of the modern institutional society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20th century. This immensely important discussion took place among the educated, elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the consequences of which were profound for the development of not only American society and democracy,…

Theory

“Digital Culture and Sustainability” by Michel Bauwens

        The Rio+20 mandate recognizes three pillars of sustainable development – the economic, the social and the environmental. However, the process does not challenge the fundamental toxicity of the current operating system, and ignores that such a ‘faulty’ DNA has strong culture roots. What do we mean? The following is not based on the stated ideals of Rio+20 but rather on the actual practice of the really…

Theory

An Open Letter to Everyone who Thinks I’m a Worthless Lazy Bastard

First of all, don’t be so harsh.  There’s a lot of terrible things in this world and someone not working isn’t one of them.  Actually, you’ve got to be a hard worker to accomplish anything really bad.  The Nazis were hard workers.  And hardcore criminals doing all that running around, I don’t have the nerve for it.  I’m simpler than a bump on a stump but I took a test…

Events/Theory/Void Network News

Adorno, Brecht and Debord: Three Models for Resisting the Capitalist Art System by Gene Ray

This essay outlines three modes or models of radical cultural practice. Each begins with a critical appropriation of the traditions of art and aims at resisting the social power that passes through art, as an institutionalized field of production and activity. Each of the three modes establishes a set of productive strategies. Together, they are the three historically demonstrated and available models for resisting the political neutralization of art and…

Theory

The State, Capital and Representation* by kpbsfs

Occasionally, the liberal-democratic system nobly affords us the chance to select our representatives from a shallow gene-pool of political management professionals. Save for this transient moment in the ballot booth, we’re separated from the exclusive franchise of governance altogether – voting is our only momentary and tenuous connection to the establishment. Best to leave power and responsibility up to the professionals; the experts, the think-tanks, policy-wonks, lobbyists and journalists. Just…

Theory

“The Privatisation of Stress”, by Mark Fisher from Soundings magazine

                      Ivor Southwood tells the story of how, at a time when he was living in a condition of underemployment – relying on short-term contracts given to him at the last minute by employment agencies – he one morning made the mistake of going to the supermarket.1 When he returned home he found that an agency had left him a…

Theory

“Elsewhere”, by H.T. from Diavolo in Corpo (Italian anarchist mag)

“Real life is absent. We are not in the world.”—A. Rimbaud Existence is elsewhere. By now, we know this much too well. We cannot find the fullness capable of giving any meaning to our time on this earth either in a job that sends us traveling along through the crossroads of the career or in a daily life from that no longer holds any wonder for us. We may be…

Theory

To Everyone Feeling Screwed Over by the Economy! Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Population, Society, Village Development — by Kyle Chamberlain

To everyone feeling screwed over by the economy,   We are told that our problem is that there aren’t enough jobs. This message is everywhere. The media gauges our plight with regularly updated unemployment statistics. Politicians debate theatrically over who can create more work. People everywhere clamor for scarce positions at factories and corporations. I’d like to point out the great irony of this situation — people hate their jobs.…

Events/Theory/Void Network News

THE SOCIAL HORIZON OF POST-ANARCHISM a conversation of Saul Newman with Tasos Sagris-Void Network // Ο ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΟΣ ΟΡΙΖΟΝΤΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΜΕΤΑ-ΑΝΑΡΧΙΣΜΟΥ- μια συνομιλία του Saul Newman με τον Τάσο Σαγρή /Κενό Δίκτυο

               Some days after the international conference “Post- Anarchism and the Insurrections” organized by antiauthoritarian magazine Babylonia and the theoretical platform Post Anarchist Forum in Nosotros Free Social Space (Exarchia, Athens Greece) the writer Tasos Sagris meets Saul Newman, one of the most influential writers and academics from the Post Anarchist theoretical current   THE SOCIAL HORIZON OF POST ANARCHISM ( a conversation of  Tasos…

Theory

The Minimum Definition of Intelligence (Theses on the Construction of One’s Own Self-theory) by For Ourselves

      This booklet is for people who are dissatisfied with their lives. If you are happy with your present existence, we have no argument with you. However, if you are tired of waiting for your life to change… Tired of waiting for authentic community, love and adventure… Tired of waiting for the end of money and forced work… Tired of looking for new pastimes to pass the time……

Theory

99 Excuses for Skipping Out of Work

Most of us we HATE WORK and we are searching all possible ways to survive with or without it, to build sustainable social relations of mutual aid and to use all possible excuses and tricks for skipping out from work… Here you can find 99 smart and good excuses for many many free days.  Try to use these days as best as you can for yourself and the people around…

Theory/Void Network News

ΑΠΕΡΓΙΑ ΕΠ’ΑΟΡΙΣΤΟΝ / “Ιnfinite Strike” Greek translation

Το Κενό Δίκτυο [ http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com ] , σε συνεργασία με την κολεκτίβα “The Institute for Experimental Freedom” από τις Η.Π.Α. και τους Γάλλους συγγραφείς αυτής της μπροσούρας παρουσιάζουν την μετάφραση και την έκδοση στα Ελληνικά του κειμένου: “La Grève Infinie” (“Απεργία Επ’Αόριστον”).                                            Το κείμενο αυτό γράφτηκε στις 27 Οκτωβρίου 2010 εν μέσω γεγονότων απεργιών και αποκλεισμών στην Γαλλία. Μοιράστηκε σε όλη την Γαλλία και είναι διαθέσιμο στα Γαλλικά :…

Theory

Raw Materials for a Theory of the “YoungGirl.” by Tiqqun

  Raw Materials for a Theory of the “YoungGirl.” by Tiqqun I did love you once.-Hamlet iUnder the hypnotic grimaces of official pacification, a war is being waged.  A war that can no longer be called simply economic, social, or humanitarian, because it is total.  And though each of us senses that our existence has become a battlefield where neuroses, phobias, somatizations, depression, and anguish are but a kind of defeated…

Theory

THE TWILIGHT OF VANGUARDISM by David Graeber

THE TWILIGHT OF VANGUARDISM by David Graeber (from NYC indymedia, www.nyc.indymedia.org) 2003 Revolutionary thinkers have been saying that the age of vanguardism is over for most of a century now. Outside of a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it’s almost impossible to find a radical intellectuals seriously believe that their role should be to determine the correct historical analysis of the world situation, so as to lead the masses along…

Global movement/Theory

Eros Effect: People Power and The People’s Uprisisngs / an introductive video and an essay by George Katsiaficas

Eros Effect: People Power and People’s Uprisings an introductive video by George Katsiaficas* From 1968 to the East Asian Uprisings of the 1980s and 1990s (Gwangju, South Korea in particular) a new type of popular uprising has appeared. Often dubbed “people power” these protests reveal how thousands of ordinary people, acting together in the streets, exhibit an intelligence far greater than elites which today rule over nation-states and international economic…

Theory

Up Against the Wall Motherfucker!: A Memoir of Anarchism in the ’60s By Osha Neumann

They called themselves the Motherfuckers; others called them a “street gang with an analysis.” Osha Neumann’s thoughtful, funny, and honest account of his part in ’60s counterculture is also an unflinching look at what all that rebellion of the past means today. The fast moving story follows the establishment of the Motherfuckers, who influenced the Yippies and members of SDS; makes vivid the art, music, and politics of the era;…

Theory

Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization by Douglas Haddow

We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality. (Cover story of Adbusters Issue #79.) Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization by Douglas Haddow I‘m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in…

Theory

“The reproduction of Everyday Life” by Fredy Perlman

These are some fragments from the analysis “The reproduction of Everyday Life” written by Fredy Perlman in 1969. Reprinted in ‘Anything Can Happen’, October 1992, Phoenix Press, PO Box 824 London N1 9DL, which also contains Perlman’s ‘The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism’ Also printed as a book by Black and Red publications http://www.blackandred.org/pages/catalog.html Fredy Perlman was a printer, musician, organizer, scholar, theorist, traveller, publisher, & anti-authoritarian activist. Born August 20,…

Theory/Void Network News

VOID THEORY>> Notes about Corpses by Tasos Sagris (a dialogue with Vinqo Denken)

vinqo denken from http://destroyathens.blogspot.com/ wrote: To be done with the judgement of DOG Part one SCRATCH N SNIFF The history of performance/performance art and all other possible mutations of this word (structure) are actually non-existent as far as the reality/history of our own KULTUR is concerned. And this is because there is no history that has had it’s own autonomous development. There have been no diversions. There have been no…

Theory/Void Network News

Void Network- An interview with anarchist writer Peter Geldeloos from U.S.A

Peter Gelderloos is at the right side and left is the Void Network translator during the event “Anarchy in the USA”- March 2007 Peter Gelderloos is an influential young American anarchist writer. He traveled during 2007 for six months in all Europe and he made many efforts (through publications of pamphlets, lectures and organizing) to help the antifascist and anti-homophobic movement in Eastern Europe and Balkans. His ability to build…

1 … 3 4 5
Go to Top