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 surprised many of us. It?s confident, positive and controversial thesis provoked numerous debates within the left and aggravated condemnations from all manner of reactionary political forces. Despite this, the antecedent revolutionary and theoretical work supporting Empire has been little considered. The new generation reading programme aims to address this deficit. We hope to critically consider the political and theoretical work of Negri and other relevant thinkers under the themes outlined below. In this way we seek to involve both people who are new to Empire and those more familiar with its arguments, in an open discussion of its merits as a contribution to understanding the contemporary world and, correspondingly, the validity of its position regarding possible methods of its subversion.
Generation-online is a collaborative, autonomous and non-affiliated list. We invite contributions from any individuals that seek to engage in a serious, constructive and generative 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 discourse, 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.
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 ( reading to commence Monday 26th November)
Concepts:
Bio-power, Domestic Labour debate, labour theory of value/ beyond measure, material/ immaterial 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 For queries please send mail to: generation-online at wanadoo.fr
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1