A mixed pile of things, mainly bought second-hand; along with two books I was sent – Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar, Deadly Biocultures: The Ethics of Life-Making, and Landscape as Territory, edited by Clara Olóriz Sanjuán. The last has a transcription of a lecture I gave at the Architectural Association. It’s a visually stunning collection and I’m looking forward to the other contributions.
http://www.worldwater.org/conflict/map/ – thanks to dmf for the link to this and the podcast in a previous post.
Interstitial – Podcast on space and consequences of our designs
Each episode features one author on a new book that offers critical ways of understanding the worlds we make. Transdisciplinary perspectives from across the arts, social sciences, and humanities every Tuesday. Produced by David Huber.
The Undercommons and Destituent Power, Indiana University, March 26-28, 2020 – full details here.
On March 26-28, 2020, Indiana University’s annual Critical Ethnic Studies symposium will bring into dialogue two fields of insurgent study: the undercommons and destituent power.
To explore social life that evades political constraints, such as citizenship, sovereignty, and governance, we turn to the groundbreaking work of Fred Moten, Stefano Harney and Giorgio Agamben.
This para-institutional forum grows up from the roots of the Black radical tradition and Italian autonomia, to collect and share what we’ve learned from the practices and forms of life that are already breaking free of politics.
Through fugitive movement, contemplation, Black study, inoperativity, resonances between the last decade’s revolts, and other grounded reimaginations, we find what it means to let go of inherited political orders and to extend beyond them, toward the indissolubly common life that can be located in destitution and in refuge.
On Geographies of Violence: Michael Watts interviewed by Stuart Elden
An interview I did with Michael Watts a few years ago has been reposted on the Society and Space magazine site. Many thanks to Natalie Oswin for making this available again.
I’ve tried to be fairly disciplined, given I’ve got to carry everything home, but a few books old and new that I’ve picked up over the past few weeks.
News of a fascinating project to make available some recordings of Raymond Williams.
On the Raymond Williams Society blog for February we have details of a new project by Phil O’Brien on a fascinating collection of recordings of lectures and readings given by Williams in the 1970s and ’80s.
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Achille Mbembe, Brutalisme, Éditions de la Découverte, February 2020
Just out, the new book from Achille Mbembe.
Toutes les sphères de l’existence sont désormais pénétrées par le capital, et la mise en ordre des sociétés humaines s’effectue dorénavant selon une seule et même directive, celle de la computation numérique. Mais alors que tout pousse vers une unification sans précédent de la planète, le vieux monde des corps et des distances, de la matière et des étendues, des espaces et des frontières, persiste en se métamorphosant. Cette transformation de l’horizon du calcul se conjugue paradoxalement avec un retour spectaculaire de l’animisme, qui s’exprime non sur le modèle du culte des ancêtres, mais du culte de soi et de nos multiples doubles que sont les objets.
Avec le devenir-artificiel de l’humanité et son pendant, le devenir-humain des machines, une sorte d’épreuve existentielle est donc engagée. L’être ne s’éprouve plus désormais qu’en tant qu’assemblage indissociablement humain et non humain. La transformation de la force en dernier mot de la vérité de l’être signe l’entrée dans le dernier âge de l’homme, celui de l’être fabricable dans un monde fabriqué. À cet âge, Achille Mbembe donne ici le nom de brutalisme, le grand fardeau de fer de notre époque, le poids des matières brutes.
La transformation de l’humanité en matière et énergie est le projet ultime du brutalisme. En détaillant la monumentalité et le gigantisme d’un tel projet, cet essai plaide en faveur d’une refondation de la communauté des humains en solidarité avec l’ensemble du vivant, qui n’adviendra cependant qu’à condition de réparer ce qui a été brisé.
Update: Terence Blake translates the French description to English here.
Update 2: Mbembe’s earlier book Sur la postcolonie has just been reissued.
Signés Foucault & cie, edited by Philippe Artières, Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020
I’d missed news of this until I saw a copy at the BnF bookshop. It’s a little and cheap €5 collection of manifestos and open letters signed by Foucault and others. Very few of these were included in Dits et écrits, since the editors didn’t include a piece which Foucault hadn’t written. But he did add his name to a lot of things, some of which I listed in ‘The Uncollected Foucault‘ a few years ago. But several of these I didn’t know about – it’s very good to have them in one place.
À partir de 1968, Michel Foucault s’essaye à un répertoire d’actions sous la forme de signature de pétitions et autres lettres ouvertes. Le présent volume en donne à lire les principales, qu’il cosigna jusqu’à sa mort prématurée en 1984. Un portrait méconnu du philosophe apparaît à travers ces textes, le dessinant à la fois attentif à ce qui survient en France mais aussi aux quatre coins du monde.
Simon Dalby’s new book on Anthropocene Geopolitics
A great looking new title from Simon Dalby from the University of Ottawa Press.
We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and species are disappearing at a rate not seen since Earth’s major extinctions. The rapid, large-scale changes caused by fossil-fuel powered globalization increasingly threaten societies in new, unforeseen ways. But most security policies continue to be built on notions that look back- ward to a time when geopolitical threats derived mainly from the rivalries of states with fixed boundaries. Instead, Anthropocene Geopolitics shows that security policy must look forward to quickly shape a sustainable world no longer dependent on fossil fuels.
A future of long-term peace and geopolitical security depends on keeping the earth in conditions roughly similar to those we have known throughout history. Minimizing disruptions that would further put civilization at risk of extinction…
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