Judith Butler - Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?

Increasingly, authoritarians are likening ‘genderism’ to ‘communism’ and ‘totalitarianism’

The attacks on so-called “gender ideology” have grown in recent years throughout the world, dominating public debate stoked by electronic networks and backed by extensive rightwing Catholic and evangelical organizations. Although not always in accord, these groups concur that the traditional family is under attack, that children in the classroom are being indoctrinated to become homosexuals, and that “gender” is a dangerous, if not diabolical, ideology threatening to destroy families, local cultures, civilization, and even “man” himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash

Paolo Gerbaudo - The great recoil of neoliberal globalization

The implosion of neoliberal globalization is not just a moment of regression, but potentially a phase of re-internalization, which the left should exploit.

https://roarmag.org/essays/gerbaudo-great-recoil/

Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral

Amilcar Cabral, who was the Secretary-General of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC), was assassinated by Portuguese agents on January 20, 1973. Under his leadership, the PAIGC liberated three-quarters of the countryside of Guinea in less than ten years of revolutionary struggle. Cabral distinguished himself among modern revolutionaries by the long and careful preparation, both theoretical and practical, which he undertook before launching the revolutionary struggle, and, in the course of the preparation, became one of the world's outstanding theoreticians of anti-imperialist struggle. This volume contains some of the principal speeches Cabral delivered in his last years during visits to the United States. The first is his speech to the fourth Commission of the United Nations General Assembly on October 16, 1972, on "Questions of Territories Under Portuguese Administration." His brilliant speeches on "National Liberation and Culture" (1970) and "Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle" (1972).

McKenzie Wark - Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century

As we face the compounded crises of late capitalism, environmental catastrophe and technological transformation, who are the thinkers and the ideas who will allow us to understand the world we live in? McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: design, environment, technology and introduces us to the thinking of nineteen major writers. Each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others.

The authors include: Sianne Ngai, Kodwo Eshun, Lisa Nakamura, Hito Steyerl, Yves Citton, Randy Martin, Jackie Wang, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Achille Mbembe, Deborah Danowich and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eyal Weizman, Cory Doctorow, Benjamin Bratton, Tiziana Terranova, Keller Easterling, Jussi Parikka.

Wark argues that we are too often told that expertise is obtained by specialisation. Sensoria connects the themes and arguments across intellectual silos. They explore the edges of disciplines to show how we might know the world: through the study of culture, the different notions of how we create such things, and the impact that the machines that we devise have had upon us. The book is a vital and timely introduction to the future both as a warning but also as a road map on how we might find our way out of the current crisis.

Жан Жене - Влюбленный пленник

Жан Жене с детства понял, что значит быть изгоем: брошенный матерью в семь месяцев, он вырос в государственных учреждениях для сирот, был осужден за воровство и сутенерство. Уже в тюрьме, получив пожизненное заключение, он начал писать. Порнография и открытое прославление преступности в его работах сочетались с высоким, почти барочным литературным стилем, благодаря чему талант Жана Жене получил признание Жана-Поля Сартра, Жана Кокто и Симоны де Бовуар.

Начиная с 1970 года он провел два года в Иордании, в лагерях палестинских беженцев. Его тянуло к этим неприкаянным людям, и это влечение оказалось для него столь же сложным, сколь и долговечным. "Влюбленный пленник", написанный десятью годами позже, когда многие из людей, которых знал Жене, были убиты, а сам он умирал, представляет собой яркое и сильное описание того исторического периода и людей.

Самая откровенно политическая книга Жене стала и его самой личной - это последний шаг его нераскаянного кощунственного паломничества, полного прозрений, обмана и противоречий, его бесконечного поиска ответов на извечные вопросы о роли власти и о полном соблазнов и ошибок пути к самому себе. Последний шедевр Жене - это лирическое и философское путешествие по залитым кровью переулкам современного мира, где царят угнетение, террор и похоть.

Sandro Mezzadra - Intersectionality, Identity, and the Riddle of Class

While identity is of course a fundamental category in European philosophy at least since Aristotle, its politicization is a much more recent phenomenon. One can say that it is only in the second half of the 20th century that the development of cultural anthropology and sociology lays the theoretical ground for such a politicization, which is unconceivable without taking into account the emergence in many parts of the world of feminist movements as well as of a panoply of struggles against racial domination and for the rights of “minorities.” Such important debates as the one surrounding multiculturalism contributed to foster identity politics and more generally to nurture a coding of politics in terms of cultural identity. Claims based upon identity played an important role in denouncing the presumed “neutrality” and even universalism of political institutions and in shedding light on the continuity of past histories of conquest and domination. This was for instance the case in settler colonial countries like Australia, Canada, and the United States, with respect to the condition of indigenous peoples. More generally, identity provided a language for the articulation of claims and desires for liberation of a multiplicity of subjects whose oppression was predicated upon specific systems of oppression that were not targeted as such by established traditions of emancipatory politics. Struggles of racialized people or sexual minorities are good instances in this respect as well as claims proliferating within feminism along the lines that fracture the unitary figures of “the woman” and “universal sisterhood”.

https://www.focaalblog.com/2021/10/22/sandro-mezzadra-intersectionality-identity-and-the-riddle-of-class/

Саркис Дарбинян - Распознавание лиц – во сне и наяву

В рамках Евразийского конгресса по защите данных #EDPC Саркис Дарбинян рассказал о нашей кампании против распознавания лиц и мировом опыте регулирования этой технологии.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFU4TL1rqqg

Arlen Austi - The Word Made Struggle: Notes on Steve Wright’s The Weight of the Printed Word

Wright’s new work, The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo, is less an official history than Storming Heaven which charted the history of operaismo largely through the key journals Quanderni Rossi and Classe Operaia and a handful of major thinkers – Negri, Panzieri, Tronti, Alquati, Bologna, et, al. Rather, The Weight of the Printed Word broadly contours the proliferation of cultures of resistance, all those minor histories within the Minor History proper. The media forms which serve as protagonists are not the major journal, essay and the book but rather the sundry periodicals of factions large and small through which the life-work of militants was defined and refracted.

https://viewpointmag.com/2021/10/25/the-word-made-struggle-notes-on-steve-wrights-the-weight-of-the-printed-word/

Mir Ali Hosseini - What is Left in the Neoliberal University?

The neoliberal university exploits intellectual labor under a veneer of liberal-humanist values a false consciousness which the emerging working-class academics must overcome.

https://newpol.org/what-is-left-in-the-neoliberal-university/?print=pdf

Николай Проценко - Капитализм от Вавилона до наших дней

О «Кембриджской истории капитализма»

Авторы двухтомной «Кембриджской истории капитализма» предлагают впечатляющую альтернативу привычному представлению, согласно которому капитализм появляется в Западной Европе на определенном этапе ее исторического развития. Они готовы видеть признаки капитализма везде, где типичные для него институты — частная собственность, договорные отношения, рынки и обеспечивающее их работу государство — встречаются с капиталом хотя бы на несколько поколений. Такой подход позволяет серьезно раздвинуть исторические границы капитализма в прошлое, хотя авторы не уверены, что он просуществует сколь угодно долго в будущем: главным сегодняшним риском для капитализма они называют замедление роста мировой экономики.

https://gorky.media/reviews/kapitalizm-ot-vavilona-do-nashih-dnej

Эффективность — не наша забота.

Кто и зачем заставляет нас чувствовать себя ленивыми

Во время пандемии работники, переведенные на удаленную работу, вынуждены были сохранять продуктивность своими силами. Интернет заполнился советами о том, как интенсивней работать и меньше отдыхать. В ответ поднялась волна негодования против «культуры продуктивности», постоянно требующей увеличивать производительность труда. Профессор Массачусетского технологического института и исследователь взаимодействия культуры и технологий Кэл Ньюпорт в статье для журнала The New Yorker утверждает, что протестовать против повышения выработки бессмысленно, но можно переосмыслить термин «продуктивность» и изменить систему организации труда.

https://knife.media/productivity-culture/

Обман, чтобы набрать класс

Отрывок из книги «Мы никогда не были средним классом»

Среднего класса не существует, уверен антрополог Хадас Вайс и приводит массу доводов в пользу своей позиции. Публикуем фрагмент, из которого становится ясно, почему автор считает концепт среднего класса идеологией и причем тут Бруно Латур.

https://gorky.media/fragments/obman-chtoby-nabrat-klass/

Gabriel Zucman, Emmanuel Saez - The Triumph of Injustice

Even as they became fabulously wealthy, the ultra-rich have seen their taxes collapse to levels last seen in the 1920s. Meanwhile, working-class Americans have been asked to pay more.The Triumph of Injusticepresents a forensic investigation into this dramatic transformation, written by two economists who revolutionized the study of inequality. Eschewing anecdotes and case studies, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman offer a comprehensive view of America’s tax system, based on new statistics covering all taxes paid at all levels of government. Their conclusion? For the first time in more than a century, billionaires now pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.

Blending history and cutting-edge economic analysis, and writing in lively and jargon-free prose, Saez and Zucman dissect the deliberate choices (and sins of indecision) that have brought us to today: the gradual exemption of capital owners; the surge of a new tax avoidance industry; and the spiral of tax competition among nations. With clarity and concision, they explain how America turned away from the most progressive tax system in history to embrace policies that only serve to compound the wealth of a few. But The Triumph of Injusticeis much more than a laser-sharp analysis of one of the great political and intellectual failures of our time. Saez and Zucman propose a visionary, democratic, and practical reinvention of taxes, outlining reforms that can allow tax justice to triumph in today’s globalized world and democracy to prevail over concentrated wealth. A pioneering companion website allows anyone to evaluate proposals made by the authors, and to develop their own alternative tax reform at taxjusticenow.org.

Soederberg S. Urban Displacements: Governing Surplus and Survival in Global Capitalism

With an eye to further our understanding of everyday life in global capitalism, Urban Displacements provides the first systemic critical political economy analysis of low-income rental housing and social dislocations, combining both theoretical advancements and detailed empirical studies, centering on Berlin, Dublin and Vienna.
Soederberg pushes beyond dominant debates by treating low-rent housing as a unique commodity that provides a necessary place for the societal reproduction of labour power whilst being integrated into the global dynamics of capitalism. She argues that historical and geographical configurations of monetized governance, including landlords, employers and inter-scalar state practices, have served to reproduce urban displacements and obfuscate their gendered, class and racialized underpinnings. The outcome is the everyday facilitation and normalization of urban poverty and social marginalization on one side, and capital accumulation on the other. Building on Soederberg’s previous book Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry, this accessible and interdisciplinary text will be useful to academics and students in political science, sociology, geography, urban studies, labour studies, European studies and gender studies.