Hito Steyerl: The Wretched of the Screen (2012–) [EN, ES]

“In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.

Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.”

With Introduction by Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, September 2012
e-flux journal series
ISBN 9781934105825, 1934105821
200 pages

Reviews: Tony Wood (New Left Review, 2013), Maria Walsh (Art Monthly, 2013), McKenzie Wark (Public Seminar, 2015), Fracesca Da Rimini (ArtLink, 2015).
Exh. reviews: Holland Cotter (NY Times, 2012), Zoe Larkins (Art in America, 2012).

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The Wretched of the Screen (English, 2012)
Los condenados de la pantalla (Spanish, trans. Marcelo Expósito, 2014, added on 2015-12-14)

Agamben, Badiou, Bensaïd, Brown, Nancy, Rancière, Ross, Žižek: Democracy in What State? (2009/2011) [French/English]

“Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?”

In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Rancière highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it.

Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.

Démocratie, dans quel état?
By Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross, Slavoj Žižek
Originally published by La Fabrique, Paris, 2009
Canadian edition published by Les Éditions Écosociété, Montréal, 2009, ISBN 9782923165585

Translated to English by William McCuaig
Publisher Columbia University Press, 2011
New Directions in Critical Theory
ISBN 0231152981, 9780231152983
130 pages

review (Robin Celikates, Krisis)
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Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion (1922/1997)

In what is widely considered the most influential book ever written by Walter Lippmann, the late journalist and social critic provides a fundamental treatise on the nature of human information and communication. As Michael Curtis indicates in his introduction to this edition, Public Opinion qualifies as a classic by virtue of its systematic brilliance and literary grace.

The work is divided into eight parts, covering such varied issues as stereotypes, image making, and organized intelligence. The study begins with an analysis of “the world outside and the pictures hi our heads,” a leitmotif that starts with issues of censorship and privacy, speed, words, and clarity, and ends with a careful survey of the modern newspaper. The work is a showcase for Lippmann’s vast erudition. He easily integrated the historical, psychological, and philosophical literature of his day, and in every instance showed how relevant intellectual formations were to the ordinary operations of everyday life.

The field of public opinion research has produced much since this 1922 classic, but no work is more compelling in its argument or lasting in its impact. Lippmann’s conclusions are as meaningful in a world of television and computers as in the earlier period when newspapers were dominant. Public Opinion is of enduring significance for communications scholars, historians,- sociologists, and political scientists.

Originally published in 1922.
This edition originally published in 1992 by The Macmillan Company
With a New Introduction by Michael Curtis
Publisher Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey; London, 1998

Publisher Transaction Publishers, 1997
ISBN 1560009993, 9781560009993
427 pages

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