Please distribute widely?apologies for cross posting.
Dear All,
After a successful online reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri?s
Empire, the Generation group is launching a further enhanced reading programme.
Even in the context of the growing anti-capitalist movement in the West,
the popularity of Empire came as a surprise. Its confident, positive and
controversial thesis provoked numerous debates within and outside the left.
Despite this, the antecedent revolutionary and theoretical work supporting
Empire has been little considered. In our coming discussions we hope to
make up some of this deficit.
We hope to critically consider the political and theoretical work of Negri
and other Marxists (whether postmodern or orthodox) under some of the
prominent themes suggested by Empire (outlined below). We hope to continue
to use the latter as a core text in this discourse, whilst including any
number of different sources within the debates that pertain to similar issues.
Generation-online is a multitude of workers, activists, intellectuals,
artists and many others who share the desire to subject ideas to a rigorous
and open discussion of their merits as analyses of the contemporary world.
In our minor way, we share the desire to move beyond the
anti-intellectualist traits within radicalism and doctrinaire leftist
standpoint politics and to mutually educate, inform and build suitable
responses to the complex forms of social power that infuse our world.
We are a collaborative, autonomous and non-affiliated e-mail based list.
(We stress that we do not in anyway speak for the various authors that we
study). Contributions are invited from any individuals that seek to engage
in a serious and constructive discourse that relates to the political
realities that confront social change. Although we try to take collective
decisions concerning the course and nature of our discussions, we aim to
suture our discussions to a close consideration of texts. Some suggested
reading for the first theme is found below. This is not intended to be
exhaustive, but to point to various available material relevant to the
themes. There is no hidden pedagogic agenda to our collective.
Themes:
1.Living labour, social ontology, Capital
2.Political ontology and metaphysics of Marx and Spinoza
3.Conception of the state and constituted power
4.Postmodernity as societal state
5.Postmodern epistemologies and method
6.The multitude
Suggested material for first theme ( commencing 26th November)
Concepts:
Bio-power, Domestic Labour debate, labour theory of value/ beyond measure,
material/ immaterial labour, formal/ real subsumption,
productive/unproductive labour.
Texts:
Empire parts 3 & 4
Marx beyond Marx,
Grundrisse ('Fragment on Machines')
Negri?s 20 Theses on Marx (in Marxism Beyond Marxism)
'Results of the Immediate Process of Production' printed as appendix to
Capital Volume 1 (penguin ed.)[On formal and real subsumption]
Theories of Surplus Value Volume 1 Chapter 4 [On productive & unproductive
labour]
You can view the archives of the previous discussions here:
July to September
2001: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/generation_online/messages
October 2001 onwards:
http://coyote.kein.org/pipermail/generation_online
To join the reading list visit :
http://coyote.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/generation_online
The full reading list is available at
http://www.generation-online.org/grschedule.htm
Dear All,
After a successful online reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri?s
Empire, the Generation group is launching a further enhanced reading programme.
Even in the context of the growing anti-capitalist movement in the West,
the popularity of Empire came as a surprise. Its confident, positive and
controversial thesis provoked numerous debates within and outside the left.
Despite this, the antecedent revolutionary and theoretical work supporting
Empire has been little considered. In our coming discussions we hope to
make up some of this deficit.
We hope to critically consider the political and theoretical work of Negri
and other Marxists (whether postmodern or orthodox) under some of the
prominent themes suggested by Empire (outlined below). We hope to continue
to use the latter as a core text in this discourse, whilst including any
number of different sources within the debates that pertain to similar issues.
Generation-online is a multitude of workers, activists, intellectuals,
artists and many others who share the desire to subject ideas to a rigorous
and open discussion of their merits as analyses of the contemporary world.
In our minor way, we share the desire to move beyond the
anti-intellectualist traits within radicalism and doctrinaire leftist
standpoint politics and to mutually educate, inform and build suitable
responses to the complex forms of social power that infuse our world.
We are a collaborative, autonomous and non-affiliated e-mail based list.
(We stress that we do not in anyway speak for the various authors that we
study). Contributions are invited from any individuals that seek to engage
in a serious and constructive discourse that relates to the political
realities that confront social change. Although we try to take collective
decisions concerning the course and nature of our discussions, we aim to
suture our discussions to a close consideration of texts. Some suggested
reading for the first theme is found below. This is not intended to be
exhaustive, but to point to various available material relevant to the
themes. There is no hidden pedagogic agenda to our collective.
Themes:
1.Living labour, social ontology, Capital
2.Political ontology and metaphysics of Marx and Spinoza
3.Conception of the state and constituted power
4.Postmodernity as societal state
5.Postmodern epistemologies and method
6.The multitude
Suggested material for first theme ( commencing 26th November)
Concepts:
Bio-power, Domestic Labour debate, labour theory of value/ beyond measure,
material/ immaterial labour, formal/ real subsumption,
productive/unproductive labour.
Texts:
Empire parts 3 & 4
Marx beyond Marx,
Grundrisse ('Fragment on Machines')
Negri?s 20 Theses on Marx (in Marxism Beyond Marxism)
'Results of the Immediate Process of Production' printed as appendix to
Capital Volume 1 (penguin ed.)[On formal and real subsumption]
Theories of Surplus Value Volume 1 Chapter 4 [On productive & unproductive
labour]
You can view the archives of the previous discussions here:
July to September
2001: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/generation_online/messages
October 2001 onwards:
http://coyote.kein.org/pipermail/generation_online
To join the reading list visit :
http://coyote.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/generation_online
The full reading list is available at
http://www.generation-online.org/grschedule.htm