semiotext(e)

[ver$hy ver$h]

I have that edition. A tiny little spiky book.

Their edition of Baudrillard's Simulations is nice too. Lovely pink text. Reminds me of one of Royal Trux's album covers.

 

[luka]

Not me.

All of us long for a countercultural movement with energy

Where does this energy come from? Where do you find it? The discovery of a radical new form? Or does that part actually come after the enthusiasm

I don't think it is discovery of a new form it seems to be the expression of a breakthrough of a different order first of all which then latches onto a given cultural form and imbues it with meaning by investing in it and identifying with it

A breakthrough being the surpassing of a limit a revealing of the map an explosion of a taboo and expression of a need a dredging up some a psychic fact from the unconscious....

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

@beiser raises a good point about the landlordism, this interview is nuts:

BLVR: Finally, I want to ask you if you have real estate advice—because I think it’s ingenious to try to make money in a separate realm from your creative work, as you’ve done. Not only because it makes sense on a financial level, but because you absorb a world that you wouldn’t otherwise absorb.

CK: Yes. It’s tremendously interesting, and people are less petty there than in the art world, because it’s just about numbers. At one point, instead of getting a tenure-track job, I decided to make real estate investments and operate these properties as lower-income, affordable housing. Buying and fixing, and then renting and managing, was a way of engaging with a population completely outside the culture industry. Kind of like in gay culture, where hookups are a way of escaping your class. [Laughs]

BLVR: Do you have any advice for people who might want to go into that?

CK: Into an entrepreneurial activity that’s at worst ethically neutral, that can subsidize other activities? I think there are entrepreneurial opportunities everywhere, always. The thing is to look outside the key points on both coasts. Look at other parts of the country. If I were starting to do this again, I’d probably visit Detroit. The idea that came forward in the last couple of years, where people could buy fixers for practically nothing, then homestead—that was very intriguing. But the U.S. is full of dying cities and suburbs. I think there’s so much that can be done, so many opportunities, if you are willing to put yourself there. Take yourself off the career track for two or three years and just try something totally different.

Reminds me of Jim Gauer referring to himself as "possibly the world’s only Marxist Venture Capitalist".

 

[luka]

How do you separate the strands though

 

[beiser]

Reminds me of Jim Gauer referring to himself as "possibly the world’s only Marxist Venture Capitalist".

I assure you, there are many others. They lean towards esoteric interpretations, and some are more fairly Hegelian than truly marxist, but it's worth reading about say, Alex Karp's interpretation of the Frankfurt School: https://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Always liked the covers, but that's about as far as my engagement extends. @john eden mentioned reading a few a while back.

Got this in the post today, but it's an updated edition with a new cover.

 

[...]

Always liked the covers, but that's about as far as my engagement extends. @john eden mentioned reading a few a while back.

This book was one of the main inspirations behind my first blog.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

This book was one of the main inspirations behind my first blog.

Was that A Time for Fear?

 

[...]

Was that A Time for Fear?

Yes, also Baudrillard's Transparency of Evil and Felix Guattari's Three Ecologies

 

[Leo]

this is why I would never attend a dissensus meet up (if I were in the UK, and invited, that is). You all are far too intellectual for me, I'd have nothing to contribute, and sit at the end of the table nursing a pint while you discussed the comparative merits of fucking Baudrillard and Guattari.

 

[...]

Don't worry, I hate all that shit now Leo. I'm into football and Essex girls.

 

[martin]

this is why I would never attend a dissensus meet up (if I were in the UK, and invited, that is). You all are far too intellectual for me, I'd have nothing to contribute, and sit at the end of the table nursing a pint while you discussed the comparative merits of fucking Baudrillard and Guattari.

The one time I went it was in a shit pub in a park. I got told off for tapping a drumkit, xxx got mugged, xxx fell over, xxx hit me in the eye, xxx pissed in a hand-basin. Most of the chatter was about some crap grime DVD that had come out earlier in the week.

Oh no, there was another, where I allegedly knocked someone's pint over, but I have no memory of it at all.

I've only read "In The Shadow Of The Silent Majorities" - I know it was about Baader Meinhof but the whole thing came across like Baudrillard had been drinking since lunchtime. The only book about the RAF worth reading is "Televisionaries" by Tom Vague.

 

[john eden]

It's also worth reading this, obviously:

Astrid Proll – on the run in Hackney

Astrid Proll: under arrest in Germany In Germany Astrid Proll was a household name in the 1970s along with her comrades Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and other members of the Rote …

hackneyhistory.wordpress.com

And this is pretty cool and can be had as PDF in places where those things can be found:
Andre Moncourt & J. Smith – The Red Army Faction: A Documentary History volume 1 Projectiles For The People (Kersplebedeb & PM Press 2009)

 

[john eden]

The big fuck of Semiotext(e) German Issue is good.

The Italy:: Autonomia one is a real mixed bag - the theoretical stuff is a bit much, but there are some great accounts of mad shit that the autonomists actually did in the 1970s:

http://libcom.org/library/lama-sabachthani

"On February 17,1977, Luciano Lama, the Communist union leader entered the occupied Rome University to 'lecture' the Students. He was —none too gloriously— driven off the campus. This is an eye-witness account of the event which broke open the deep-rooted conflict between the "new left" and the Italian Communist Party."

I also enjoyed the Andrea Dworkin anthology they put out.

 

[martin]

It's also worth reading this, obviously:

Astrid Proll – on the run in Hackney

Astrid Proll: under arrest in Germany In Germany Astrid Proll was a household name in the 1970s along with her comrades Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and other members of the Rote …

hackneyhistory.wordpress.com

Yeah, that was a good article.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

I recently read a Twitter thread talking about the history of Verso and suggesting they might be controlled opposition. The poster also took a shot at Jacobin, The Grayzone, The Young Turks and The Intercept along those lines.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

their whole thing is that they took d&g and assorted others to america isn't it? basically broke them into the american academy but decided to do it as little indie books rather than as peer reviewed papers, and then added a different dimension and published fiction and other stuff.

Dunno if it's true, but I enjoyed someone pointing out the irony of the French complaining about American theory infiltrating their institutions.

 

[john eden]

I recently read a Twitter thread talking about the history of Verso and suggesting they might be controlled opposition. The poster also took a shot at Jacobin, The Grayzone, The Young Turks and The Intercept along those lines.

I’ll read that properly when sober but it’s more complicated than that.

This, by the guy who edited the anthology of Class War for Verso, is very entertaining:

CLASS WAR

The late 1980s was an arid time in Britain for anyone interested in politics on the left. Since the defeat of the miners in the brutal year-long strike of 1984-5, pretty well any organized opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s granite faced admonitions had headed for the hills. Not only was there no...

www.versobooks.com

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

I’ll read that properly when sober but it’s more complicated than that.

It's a pretty loose thread tbh. Some of it just amounts to "Why would they publish this dodgy book?" and encourages you to connect the dots to MI5 or whoever.

 

[DannyL]

I've seen criticism of lately for publishing (for free) defences of the Antisemitism stuff under Corbyn.