Richard Gilman-Opalsky: Spectacular Capitalism: Guy Debord and the Practice of Radical Philosophy (2011)

Despite recent crises in the financial system, uprisings in Greece, France, Tunisia, and Bolivia, worldwide decline of faith in neoliberal trade policies, deepening ecological catastrophes, and global deficits of realized democracy, we still live in an era of “spectacular capitalism.” But what is “spectacular capitalism”? Spectacular capitalism is the dominant mythology of capitalism that disguises its internal logic and denies the macroeconomic reality of the actually existing capitalist world. Taking on this elusive mythology, and those who too easily accept it, Richard Gilman-Opalsky exposes the manipulative and self-serving narrative of spectacular capitalism.

Drawing on the work of Guy Debord, Gilman-Opalsky argues that the theory of practice and practice of theory are superseded by upheavals that do the work of philosophy. One could ask: Who better raises questions about public and private spheres of influence and control, Jürgen Habermas or the water war activists who made a rebellion in Cochabamba, Bolivia in the spring of 2000? Or, has any sociological theorist done better than the Zapatistas to reframe and raise questions about indigenous identity? Spectacular Capitalism makes the case not only for a new philosophy of praxis, but for praxis itself as the delivery mechanism for philosophy – for the field of human action, of contestation and conflict, to raise directly the most irresistible questions about the truth and morality of the existing state of affairs.

Published by Minor Compositions, June 2011
ISBN 157027228X, 978-1570272288
136 pages
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Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel (eds.): Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005)

“In this editorial and curatorial project, more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers rethink what politics is about. In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of things. Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a republic, a res publica, a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things—scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of Making Things Public—and the ZKM show that the book accompanies—ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions—technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation—in politics, science, and art—of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part.”

The authors include Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an “object-oriented democracy.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262122790, 9780262122795
1072 pages

Review: Anthony Iles (Mute).

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Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text (2009)

Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text focuses on the intersection between Deleuzian philosophy and the arts. Deleuze combined exceptionally rigorous insight into important Western philosophers with an extraordinary sensitivity to literature, music, painting and film. He was intensely interested in the medium of thought, which is by no means limited to philosophy alone: it also takes place in science, mathematics, literature, painting and cinema, to name just some of the genres of thought to which Deleuze most often refers. His own thinking emerged almost as often in conversation with artists and literary writers as in engagement with other philosophers, and his philosophy cannot be fully grasped without an understanding of his engagement with the arts.

This significant and timely collection of essays from an international team of leading Deleuze scholars brings together interpretations and commentaries from Deleuzian perspectives on subjects such as literature, painting, music and film.

The book represents diverse modes of engagement with Deleuze’s philosophical concepts and problems and demonstrates the central role the arts play in any understanding of his philosophical ideas.

Editors Eugene W. Holland, Daniel Warren Smith, Charles J. Stivale
Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009
ISBN 0826439233, 9780826439239
276 pages

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