Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri: Empire (2001–) [EN, DE, CR]

“Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today’s Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society–to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.

More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today’s world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm–the basis for a truly democratic global society.”

Key words and phrases: biopolitical, labor power, Antonio Negri, postmodern, Michael Hardt, proletariat, postmodernist, Gilles Deleuze, capitalist, deterritorialized, plane of immanence, nation-states, biopower, U.S. Constitution, Fordist, Felix Guattari, Fredric Jameson, ontological, surplus value, cold war

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2001
ISBN 0674006712, 9780674006713
478 pages

Reviews: Ernesto Laclau (Diacritics, 2001), more.

Wikipedia
Publisher

Empire (English, 2001, updated on 2012-7-27)
Empire. Die neue Weltordnung (German, trans. Thomas Atzert and Andreas Wirthensohn, 2002, added on 2012-7-27)
Imperij (Croatian, trans. Živan Filippi, 2003, updated on 2017-7-27)

W. Ross Ashby: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1957–) [EN, PT]

“W. Ross Ashby is one of the founding fathers of both cybernetics and systems theory. He developed such fundamental ideas as the homeostat, the law of requisite variety, the principle of self-organization, and the principle of regulatory models. Many of these insights were already proposed in the 1940’s and 1950’s, long before the presently propular “complex adaptive systems” approach arrived at very similar conclusions. Whereas the concepts surrounding the complexity movement are often complicated and confuse, Ashby’s ideas are surprisingly clear and simple, yet deep and universal.

This elegance of thought is illustrated in particular by the present book, which is still the only real textbook on cybernetics (and, one might add, system theory). It explains the basic principles with concrete examples, elementary mathematics and exercises for the reader. It does not require any mathematics beyond the basic high school level. Although simple, the book formulates principles at a high level of abstraction. For more concrete and extensive illustrations of systems principles, you may refer to other books, The Macroscope and The Phenomenon of Science. For a similar abstract, high-level, but technically simple approach, this time to physics, you can check Representation and Change.” (source)

Key words and phrases: entropy, transducer, Markov chain, cybernetics, isomorphic, dynamic system, Black Box theory, equilibrium, cerebral cortex, channel capacity, homomorphism, homeostat, machine of desired, degrees of freedom, ovum, diagram of immediate, logarithmically, Markovian machine, Shannon’s theorem, servo-mechanism

Publisher John Wiley and Sons, 1957
250 pages

An Introduction to Cybernetics (English, 1957)
Introdução à cibernetica (Portuguese, trans. Gita K. Ghinzberg, 1970, added on 2013-8-10)

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936-) [FR, DE, CZ, RU, SK, ES, PT, EN]

“Benjamin‘s famous ‘Work of Art’ essay sets out his boldest thoughts–on media and on culture in general–in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the ‘Work of Art’ essay–the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin’s best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays–some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin’s media theory can be fully appreciated.”

Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin
Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and others
Publisher The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA and London, 2008
ISBN 0674024451, 9780674024458
448 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (English, 2008, updated on 2019-12-9)

Versions and translations of the essay “Work of Art..”:
L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction méchanisée (French, trans. Pierre Klossowski, 1936, updated on 2013-1-12)
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (German, 1963, added on 2014-3-10)
Umělecké dílo v době své technické reprodukovatelnosti (Czech, trans. Věra Saudková, 1979, added on 2014-3-10)
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Dritte Fassung (German, 1980, added on 2014-3-10)
Proizvedenie iskusstva v epokhu ego tekhnicheskoy vosproizvodimosti. Izbrannye esse (Russian, trans. S.A. Romashko, 1996, added on 2013-1-12)
Umelecké dielo v epoche svojej technickej reprodukovateľnosti (Slovak, trans. Adam Bžoch, 1999, added on 2014-3-10)
La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica. Urtext (Spanish, trans. Andrés E. Weikert, 2003, added on 2014-3-10)
A obra de arte na época da sua possibilidade de reprodução técnica. 3ª versão (Portuguese, trans. João Barrento, 2006, added on 2014-3-10)

For more versions of the essay see Benjamin’s bibliography on Monoskop wiki.