Philippe Pignarre, Isabelle Stengers: Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell (2005–) [FR, EN]

“If denunciation were effective, capitalism would have disappeared a long time ago. But denunciation is never enough. Capitalism is a system that reinvents itself permanently, through the creation of infernal alternatives, alternatives which take us all hostage: ‘if we don’t cut the deficit, we’ll never regain our competitiveness’.

In other traditions than that of the moderns, this sort of paralysis would be described as sorcery. Capitalist Sorcery takes this idea seriously – literally – and explores the consequences of our vulnerability to a system which daily recruits the minions that it needs to cast its spells.

Proposing a pragmatic reading of Marx, a reading which seeks to ward off the thoughtlessness encouraged by the theme of progress and the resignation that arises from accepting that capitalism is the ‘only game in town’, the authors look at how we can protect ourselves from the logic which – from financial collapse through GM foods to oil spills and climate catastrophe – runs scared of the cry ‘another world is possible’.”

La sorcellerie capitaliste: Pratiques de désenvoûtement
Afterword by Anne Vièle
Publisher La Découverte, Paris, 2005
ISBN 2707143979
228 pages

English edition
Translated and edited by Andrew Goffey
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
ISBN 0230237622, 9780230237629
224 pages

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

La sorcellerie capitaliste (French, 2005)
Capitalist Sorcery (English, 2011)