Towards a Conceptual Militancy

Towards a Conceptual Militancy PDF Author: Mike Watson
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1785350404
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
Towards a Conceptual Militancy is aimed at the interested art-viewing public, artists, the politically disillusioned, and readers of both European Philosophy, particularly of Speculative Realism/OOP, and Accelerationism. This book calls on the artist to mount a defence of subjective freedom in opposition to the twin objectifying factors of Science and Capital, personified by growing surveillance technology. Presenting the artistic declaration of freedom as exemplary of how the subject might circumvent its objectification, Towards a Conceptual Militancy brings art back into the social sphere following decades of cultural commodification.

Towards a Conceptual Militancy

Towards a Conceptual Militancy PDF Author: Mike Watson
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1785350404
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 109

Get Book Here

Book Description
Towards a Conceptual Militancy is aimed at the interested art-viewing public, artists, the politically disillusioned, and readers of both European Philosophy, particularly of Speculative Realism/OOP, and Accelerationism. This book calls on the artist to mount a defence of subjective freedom in opposition to the twin objectifying factors of Science and Capital, personified by growing surveillance technology. Presenting the artistic declaration of freedom as exemplary of how the subject might circumvent its objectification, Towards a Conceptual Militancy brings art back into the social sphere following decades of cultural commodification.

The Memeing of Mark Fisher

The Memeing of Mark Fisher PDF Author: Mike Watson
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1789049342
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
The Frankfurt School meets Fisher in this critique of capitalism incorporating memes, mental illness and psychedelia into a proposed counterculture. Spring 2020 to 2021 was the year that did not take place. We witnessed a depression, not economically speaking, but in the psychological sense: A clinical depression of and by society itself. This depression was brought about not just by Covid isolation, but by the digital economy, fueled by social media and the meme. In the aftermath, this book revisits the main Frankfurt School theorists, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin and Marcuse, who worked in the shadow of World War Two, during the rise of the culture industry. In examining their thoughts and drawing parallels with Fisher's Capitalist Realism, The Memeing of Mark Fisher aims to render the Frankfurt School as an incisive theoretical toolbox for the post-Covid digital age. Taking in the phenomena of QAnon, twitch streaming, and memes it argues that the dichotomy between culture and political praxis is a false one. Finally, as more people have access to the means for theoretical and cultural broadcasting, it is urged that the online left uses that access to build a real life cultural and political movement.

Joyful Militancy

Joyful Militancy PDF Author: Carla Bergman
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849352895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Absolutely what we need in these days of spreading gloom." —John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism "A guide to a fulfilling militant life." —Michael Hardt, co-author of Assembly "Rigid radicalism" is the congealed and debilitating practices that suck life and inspiration from the fight for a better world. Joyful Militancy investigates how fear, self-righteousness, and moralism infiltrate and take root within liberation movements, what to do about them, and ultimately how tenderness and vulnerability can thrive alongside fierce militant commitment. Carla Bergman co-edited Stay Solid: A Radical Handbook For Youth. Nick Montgomery is an organizer and writer currently at Queen's University.

Incurable-Image

Incurable-Image PDF Author: Elhaik Tarek Elhaik
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474411118
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
From the 1990s onwards the 'ethnographic turn in contemporary art' has generated intense dialogues between anthropologists, artists and curators. While ethnography has been both generously and problematically re-appropriated by the art world, curation has seldom caught the conceptual attention of anthropologists.Based on two years of participant-observation in Mexico City, Tarek Elhaik addresses this lacuna by examining the concept-work of curatorial platforms and media artists. Taking his cue from ongoing critiques of Mexicanist aesthetics, and what Roger Bartra calls 'the post-Mexican condition', Elhaik conceptualises curation less as an exhibition-oriented practice within a national culture, than as a figure of care and an image of thought animating a complex assemblage of inter-medial practices, from experimental cinema and installations to curatorial collaborations. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Paul Rabinow, the book introduces the concept of the 'Incurable-Image,' an antidote to our curatorial malaise and the ethical substance for a post-social anthropology of images.

Cairo's Ultras

Cairo's Ultras PDF Author: Ronnie Close
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617979589
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
A fascinating account of football culture in Egypt through its ultras groups The history of Cairo’s football fans is one of the most poignant narratives of the 25 January 2011 Egyptian uprising. The Ultras Al-Ahly and the Ultras White Knights fans, belonging to the two main teams, Al-Ahly F.C. and Zamalek F.C respectively, became embroiled in the street protests that brought down the Mubarak regime. In the violent turmoil since, the Ultras have been locked in a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. Tracing these social movements to explore their role in the uprising and the political dimension of soccer in Egypt, Ronnie Close provides a vivid, intimate sense of the Ultras’ unique subculture. Cairo’s Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt’s Football Culture explores how football communities offer ways of belonging and instill meaning in everyday life. Close asks us to rethink the labels ‘fans’ or ‘hooligans’ and what such terms might really mean. He argues that the role of the body is essential to understanding the cultural practices of the Cairo Ultras, and that the physicality of the stadium rituals and acerbic chants were key expressions that resonated with many Egyptians. Along the way, the book skewers media clichés and retraces revolutionary politics and social networks to consider the capacity of sport to emancipate through performances on the football terraces.

Can the Left Learn to Meme?

Can the Left Learn to Meme? PDF Author: Mike Watson
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1785357247
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
Taking in an array of cultural references from the contemporary art world, to cat memes, Stranger Things, the Kardashian-Jenners, Mad Men, Run the Jewels, and video gaming, Can the Left Learn to Meme? argues that there is positivity in millennial-era cultural production. Utilising Adorno’s unswerving yet understated hope in spite of the odds, Mike Watson embraces the abstraction of the new media landscape as millennials refuse to surrender to cynicism, by out-weirding even the world at large. They pose a radical alternative to the right wing approach of Steve Bannon and the conservative psychology of Jordan Peterson. Here, the cultural elitism of the art world is contrasted with the anything-goes approach of millennial culture. The left avant-garde dream of an art-for-all is with us, though you won't find it in museums. It is time the left learned to meme, challenging conventions along the way.

Revolution and Disenchantment

Revolution and Disenchantment PDF Author: Fadi A. Bardawil
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478007583
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.

Constituent Imagination

Constituent Imagination PDF Author: Stevphen Shukaitis
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 9781904859352
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
From the ivory tower to the barricades! Radical intellectuals explore the relationship between research and resistance.

Gender, Emancipation, and Political Violence

Gender, Emancipation, and Political Violence PDF Author: Sarah Colvin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351203770
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This volume presents and interrogates both theoretical and artistic expressions of the revolutionary, militant spirit associated with "1968" and the aftermath, in the specific context of gender. The contributors explore political-philosophical discussions of the legitimacy of violence, the gender of aggression and peaceability, and the contradictions of counter violence; but also women’s artistic and creative interventions, which have rarely been considered. Together the chapters provide and provoke a wide-ranging rethink of how we read not only "1968" but more generally the relationship between gender, political violence, art and emancipation. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of protest and violence in the fields of history, politics and international relations, sociology, cultural studies, and women’s studies.

Photography After Capitalism

Photography After Capitalism PDF Author: Ben Burbridge
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 191268599X
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A polemical analysis of the politics and economics of today's vernacular photographic cultures. In Photography After Capitalism, Benedict Burbridge makes the case for a radically expanded conception of photography, encompassing the types of labor too often obscured by black-boxed technologies, slick platform interfaces, and the compulsion to display lives to others. His lively and polemical analysis of today's vernacular photographic cultures shines new light on the hidden work of smartphone assembly teams, digital content moderators, Street View car drivers, Google “Scan-Ops,”low-paid gallery interns, homeless participant photographers, and the photo-sharing masses. Bringing together cultural criticism, social history, and political philosophy, Burbridge examines how representations of our photographic lives—in advertising, journalism, scholarship and, particularly, contemporary art—shape a sense of what photography is and the social relations that comprise it. More precisely, he focuses on how different critical and creative strategies—from the appropriation of social media imagery to performative traversals of the network, from documentaries about secretive manual labor to science fiction fantasies of future sabotage—affect our understanding of photography's interactions with political and economic systems. Drawing insight and inspiration from recent analyses of digital labour, community economies and post-capitalism, Burbridge harnesses the ubiquity of photography to cognitively map contemporary capitalism in search of its weak spots and levers, sites of resistance, and opportunities to build better worlds.