THE
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TELIC ARTS EXCHANGE

For those interested, an account of a sham book signing for "The Coming Insurrection" yesterday in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/books/16situation.html?_r=1&ref=arts

Hi Everyone,

We are trying to schedule and I wanted to run a couple of dates/times with those who are interested thus far:

6/27 (sat) - 11:00am - 2:00pm
6/27(sat)- 5:00pm - 8:00pm
6/28 (sun)- 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Show of hands if these will work?

Also, Jason Smith who translated one of the chapters and worked on the text will be facilitating the class.

Please let me know your schedules and we'll get this on the calendar ASAP.

thanks,
c

saturday 11-2 sounds healthy.

Yes, I will be to these ones. If there are more to follow, then please make them weekends, please.
Thanks, Robert

Ugh, I cannot order via Paypal. I am in a class-action lawsuit against them. Can I give someone money to buy it? Maybe Skylight Bookstore has it?
As ever, Robert

saturday 11-2 works for me...and skylight is usually good at ordering books they dont have in stock

I am out of town for these proposed dates, but please plan to go ahead with what the majority can do.

What pray tell, is the class action lawsuit against paypal about.
very curious to hear more.
m

Hi There,
I think I get a handful of free copies from semiotexte. If we need more, there's a zine version of the pdf at zinelibrary. I believe the second downloadable file on this page is the proper text: http://zinelibrary.info/coming-insurrection
JS

i can do 11-2 on the 27th.

sat 11-2 works for me too

- sarah

Hi everyone,

Enough folks will be available on 6/27 at 11am so that is when we'll hold the class (sorry gwynne!) . Jason via semiotexte has generously offered five free copies of the book for us. The first five people to register by clicking on the button above will get a free copy! The one drawback is that we won't have the copies until next Wednesday so if you'd like to read the text before then, please visit one of the following links:

On a blog:
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/texts/the-coming-insurrection/

As a booklet (the pages are meant to be printed and folded so beware of the strange page order).
http://zinelibrary.info/node/20257/3055#comment-3055

To purchase:

From semiotexte:
http://www.semiotexte.com/merchandise.html

Skylight says its "Coming Soon" so give them a ring and see if they have it available:
http://www.skylightbooks.com/NASApp/store/Search?s=results&initiate=yes&...

Stay tuned for more information about the class.

-Caleb

p.s. I'll be in touch with those who "win" the book to arrange pickup :)

Hi:

Thanks, Caleb, for those links to the PDFs and more generally for setting this up. Note that the tarnac9 site has posted the complete semiotexte translation--there was another circulating for a while that was less refined--but it is missing the opening "Point of Clarification," which is an introduction to the text written in December 2008/January 2009 -- after most of the Tarnac 9 were release from jail, though under very strict conditions, and in the midst of the Greek events of December. The links supplied, however, include PDFs that integrate this introduction. It's worth reading, I think.

Sorry not to have the semiotexte copies available right away--another shipment is coming from MIT early next week I am told.

Thanks,
Jason

is it ok to attend without having read the book? I doubt I will finish on time...

Of course psisto.

Jason, are there any particular sections of the text that are more "important" than others for people to read?

-c

Just a reminder that we'll discuss our plans for the coming insurrection and create our commune tmr @ 11am!

Thanks to Jason & everyone who came to class today. I hope you found it as fantastic as I did. There was talk of holding a followup session where we could spend a little bit more time discussing specific passages from the text that we (the class participants) would select beforehand. Next Saturday is the 4th of July and while I think it completely appropriate to hold this class on Independence Day, it may not work with everyone's schedules. Stay tuned for a date sometime in July and further "instructions" from Jason.

-Caleb

Hi everyone,

We will be holding our followup session this Saturday, July 4th, at 11am. Before Saturday please post to the comments here a passage that you'd like to explore. Since we all are using different copies maybe format your post like:

Edition (web/print/etc.)
Chapter
Page #(s)
Passage

Also, those of you who weren't able to make it last Saturday, please don't hesitate to come this week.

-Caleb

From Fox News, newest readers of The Coming Insurrection:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=6459186&...

(Thanks for sending Jason!)

Glenn Beck and fox...
Weird, that was an endorsement (not because fox says it was bad, but because wow, that guy is on edge).

Hi:

Since the proposals for passages aren't pouring in and we are about 48 hours away from meeting again, I am going to propose the following set of passages as a possible itinerary through the book--to be replaced when and if others have different passages to look at. All page numbers refer to the book version.

1. From "Point of Clarification," pp. 13-14, the entire paragraph beginning with "it is now publicly understood that crisis situations...."

2. From the first, untitled chapter, pp. 24-25, the entire paragraph beginning "The flames of November 2005...." and the first sentence of the next paragraph, insisting there will be no "social" solution to the problem.

3. From First Circle, p. 31, the entire paragraph beginning with "I AM WHAT I AM" and ending with "larval state."

4. From Third Circle, pp. 49-51, beginning with "The order of work was the order of the world" and ending with "...contemporary production apparatus."

5. The entire chapter of "Get Organized," with particular emphasis on the last half, beginning with the section "Remove All Obstacles."

6. From "Insurrection," p. 125, the paragraph in the section "Block the Economy" that begins "Jam everything...."

7. The last two sections of "Insurrection," especially the short paragraph on the "militarization of civil war."

That's more than three hours.

Also, we should set aside twenty minutes for a film.

Looking forward to this,
JS

Hi all,

All of these page numbers refer to the semiotext(e) edition.

I'd like to discuss #4 as well. pp.49-51 in the Third Circle that begins with "The order of work was the order of the world," but add on the final paragraph that goes through the rest of the chapter.

I'd also like to discuss pp.58-62 in the Fourth Circle that begins with "The metropolis is not just this urban pile-up, this final collision between city and country" and goes through the rest of the chapter.

I'm particularly interested in these two passages' discussion mobility and how their ideas related to (and/or deviate from) Deleuze's concept of nomadism.

See you all tmr...

-c

In the text (semiotext[e]; trade-paper), on page 57-58, starting at the middle of the last paragraph on page 57:

"... since the battle at Nablus, Israeli soldiers have become interior designers. Forced by Palestinian guerrillas to abandon the streets, which had become too dangerous, they learned to advance vertically and horizontally into the heart of the urban architecture, poking holes in walls and ceilings in order to move through them." The text goes on to state, citing a military official, "I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win [...] This is why we opted for the for the methodology of moving through walls [...] Like a worm that eats its way forward. (58)"

This echos the DeleuzoGuattarian war machine and the nomad in their text _A Thousand Plateaus_

It is also interesting that Blanqui is used (by the State apparatus - - be it conscious or unconscious), and his call for insurrection against the State apparatus for revolutionary/emancipoartory ends.

Also, it seems that the State is using radical and progressive texts for its own ends; it is usurping the styles, techniques, and vocabulary of those who were writing against the State - - e.g., Bush's use of the term "coalition" (a classic progressive term) in "his war on terror" rhetoric.

It has been often remarked that the Israeli Army is using _A Thousand Plateaus_ (true or not, it is interesting that the State is using radically "new" modes of movement/s, language, and ways of thinking) in order to rethink how to engage in war -- otherwise. So, how to "re-re-deploy" radical and progressive texts and styles, techniques, and vocabulary against the State again? Must new(er) weapons, as Deleuze has called for, and languages be invented?

So what to do? Evacuate the texts and philosophies for other ones? Is anything not consumable by the State for the State? Does everything eventually end up a commodity with no edge? Will _The Coming Insurrection_ be one?

Jumping back, I would like to discuss the logic, tactic, strategy of immobility, demobilization, detachment, and how this is also played out, theorized in Hardt and Negri's _Empire_, and the "sorting machine" that discards certain subjects (subjectivities?) _The Coming Insurrection_, page 48-51:

A particularly interesting sentence to me, "... a _sorting_ machine that allocates survival to compliant subjectivities and rejects all 'problem individuals,' all those who embody another use of life and, in this way, resist the machine." (51). This resonates with the "against man" in _Empire_ and the roue in _Rouges_ (Derrida).

I would also like to discus the section "Finding Each Other" (Semiotext[e], trade-paper), which starts on page 97, and I would like to see if an "ethics" can be articulated from this section ...

-robert

Hi,

A quick note about the passage on p. 58 concerning the worm eating its way forward--the passage is drawn from a widely-circulated article by Eyal Weizman, which can be found here:

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0507/weizman/en

JS

If there is time, then I am interested in discussing, learning what people think of The Invisible Committee's conception of "power" -- specifically at the end: in the text (semiotext[e]; trade-paper), on approx. pages 130-132.

Finally, I read the last page (italicized in the text) as a dream to-come, and as what happened, and is happening, and will happen, and _all_ at the same time (time is out of joint, indeed). Maybe a waking dream: the ones between eve and dawn; one between eyes half open and half closed; one seen while half awake or half asleep: both/and. Perhaps, the entire text can be read as a dream, a vision, a revelation a re-vision, a revolution, an evolution, a "devolution," a devotion ...

Last post from me: I think I am posting too much ...

I would like to make a circle around The Invisible Committee's (TIC) circles. I would like to make this circle that circles around an ethics (or a stronger articulation of one), which can be culled, if you will, from Circle One ("I AM WHAT I AM") and the commercialization of an "aesthetics of existence" (Foucault) in the "I Am What I Am" slogan (or cK's slogan "U B U") and the way TIC articulates (at times -- if ever outright?) an ethics (of being with and for another), and the ethics involved in a Foucauldian "care of the self," from which an "aesthetics of existence" emerges. I think, and would like to know what others think, if an aesthetics, ethics, and politics that all seem to be at play in _The Coming Insurrection_ is just my own projection ...

So, indeed, I think an nascent ethical philosophy is also found through out the text -- again, I think an ethics can be culled from the section, in the text, "Finding Each Other" -- pp. 97-102 -- and the sub-section on friendship -- which seems to resonate with Foucault's "Freindship as a way of life."
I do not know if we can call TIC's theorization-as-polemics as a relationality of sorts and is (necessarily?) tied to an ethics.

This is what I am thinking about, and I think it would be interesting to tie, or at least discuss, "the coming insurrection" to the (simultaneous) "coming of an ethics of an insurrection" ...

Thanks, Robert

Hi,

Here is the quote by Sue, actually an interview with her, which I mentioned in the brilliant class today, in which she discusses friendship, love, and revolution ...

THERE IS ALWAYS ONE MORE TECHNOLOGY OF OTHERNESS …
Sue Golding
7. Love

JZ: I would like to talk a little about your discussion with Jeffrey Weeks on the categories of love and friendship. It surprised me to a certain extent to find you more ‘on the side’ of friendship rather than love, given that love has been defined in what we could term the masculine tradition of phallic logic as ‘an excess of friendship’ (cf. Aristotle, Bacon, Montaigne), constituting the realm of the expelled and repressed that this very tradition could not house for one reason or another. Could you expand on your reading of friendship and its relation to excess?

SG: I absolutely believe that love is the highest form of friendship, or you could say that friendship is the highest form of love, but I don’t mean by that non-sexual relation. I am more interested in the Socratic view which is opposed to the Platonic view. I’m working on a show now, which is a rethinking of Plato’s Symposium, and it deals with the question: what does it really mean to be friends with somebody? And on some level it does mean to have a sexual side, to be there in difficult times, sometimes it just means you have to be there on Tuesday afternoons at 2 o’clock to work at the gym, and that’s your level of friendship, there is nothing else going on. Or there are other things that create this bigger body called love or friendship - I actually see them as interchangeable in a certain sense. Che Guevara used to say that a true revolutionary is always guided by feelings of love, and I am totally into that, and believe that it becomes the basis of friendship. All these things just allow one to survive in the world, where you are not just reflecting each other, but you are just there, in the dwelling, as it were, and the friend only gets in your way when it is required. In the interview with Jeffrey what we were trying to talk about was how the gay community, by which I mean male, female, transgender, etc., sets a community when it’s such a hated object. To me it does it on the basis of love and friendship, and the fact that it’s a gay community just emphasises the sexual side of it. Because of the way in which AIDS and HIV-related tragedies have hit, for me there is a real anger involved, which I wanted Jeffrey to talk about more, and which he refused to do. My feeling was that there are times when rage and violence are appropriate. That isn’t necessarily counterposed to love; it is often precisely rooted in love. That is what creates the ferocity of it.

JZ: In that interview I was surprised by Jeffrey Weeks’ perception of cyberspace as an ultimately bodiless realm, one which excludes the possibility of different, but nonetheless pleasurable, encounters - for Weeks what happens in the Net will never live up to the ‘original’ experience. Would you agree that cyberspace allows for a ‘different kind of physicality’ instead of merely erasing all traces of the body? What is your opinion about this issue?

SG: I agree with you on this. Jeffrey unabashedly calls himself a humanist, and focuses on the human in a way that my work certainly doesn’t. I’m more interested in the inhuman, but even that is problematic. This is why I use the term ‘cyborg’, which is not just a negation of the human but something else altogether. I do think that the Net offers a different kind of physicality, one which is in the process of being looked at more seriously by people like Sandie Stone, Donna Haraway or Sadie Plant. All that work is taking some of the things Deleuze and Virilio put forward, and sending them up. The problem with Deleuze’s famous concept of the body without organs was that it was very poetic, but the notion of the body itself got somehow shunted aside in a way that was problematic, whereas I think that the body is crucial. The body is mutated by the Web, and by virtual reality in particular. It does matter when you put your little glasses on and the gloves on your hand, and you have this different kind of physical scenario that’s going on precisely because the hearing or the sighting of things creates different kinds of founding relationships, and that is just now being brought forward. In the 1930s Turing posed a question whether the machine was able to like strawberries and cream and whether it could be intuitive, and the answer was yes. It does matter whether you have something that is just repetitive or something that actually thinks and acts.

Hi Everyone,

Here's a link to the article by Alberto Toscano on the case of the Tarnac 9 and The Coming Insurrection. It's a very strong, thoughtful response:
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2009/01/11/the-war-against-preterrorism/

Thanks,
JS

I create a library on AAAARG to collect texts. I also uploaded a recent essay by Agamben called "The Friend" that might be of interest. If you click above on the "AAAARG" tab to the right of the "INFO" tab you can find the texts. Or visit: http://a.aaaarg.org

Thanks again Jason for a fantastic class!

-c

also, here is a link to the video we watched today:
http://bloom0101.org/etlaguerre.html

Next Sunday will be the first session of "Neoliberalism and Human Capital" http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1897 and it may be of interest for you all.

Here is a note from Ken about the class:

Dear All:

Really looking forward to getting started on this material. Feels like the timing for this class is just right.  After the Continental Drift last weekend, which contained a number of related conversations on precarity, finance capital, speculative economy, neoliberalism, and the excesses of privatization; February’s TPS seminar on Immaterial Labor, where Jason Smith led a very rigorous discussion about Autonomia, as well as outside events like Brian Holmes’ presentation on neoliberal subjectivity at UC, Riverside on March 3, there seems to be a number of ongoing threads that can be extended through this class to give it richness and complexity.

The idea for the class is this: the current financial crisis has broadened and intensified an analysis of neoliberal economics as it has been and continues to be critiqued from the left.  But these analyses are usually founded upon the refrain of positions taken up in secondary sources without any direct reference to the primary source material that helped establish and legitimize the economic logic itself.  Many of us on the left--I include myself here--are quick to engage in a critique of neoliberalism without a deeper understanding of what that word actually means in its own native sense. Thus “Neoliberalism” often vaguely stands for anything that generally seems bad about our contemporary political, economic, and cultural situation; this tends to dilute the force of the critiques behind it. With this in mind, one might say that the objective of this class is to know your enemy, to work through some of the key primary texts and discuss the generative historical context of the development of neoliberalism by carefully attending to the writings of the Chicago School, a group that was instrumental in shaping the implementation of the economic doctrine in global economic and social policy ca. 1980.

I still think we should continue to read some secondary sources to fill in the critical analysis side of things, and this brings me to the other piece of fortuitous timing of the class.  It so happens that the scheduling for this class falls on the exact same dates as Foucault’s weekly lectures on American neoliberlaism 31 years ago and which can now be read in English with the recent translation of The Birth of Biopolitics.  Whether written in the stars or simply a serendipitous accident, it seems a perfect time to revisit Foucault’s lectures over the next three weeks, getting his read on neoliberalism in its incipient form.

So the reading for this first class on March 14 will be the following:

Michel Foucalut, The Birth of Biopolitics, pp. 215-237. (March 14th lecture)
Gary Becker, Human Capital,  pp. 1-11.
Gary Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, Part 1, pp. 3-14

Next week we will read more Foucault along Hayek, Friedman, and possibly some more Becker and/or Andre Gunder Frank and perhaps something about the fascinating cultural history of the Chicago School in Chile. But this is all up for discussion.

All readings are on aaaarg of course.

Best,

Ken