Franco “Bifo” Berardi: Precarious Rhapsody: Semocapitalism and the Pathologies of the Post-Alpha Generation (2009)

An infinite series of bifurcations: this is how we can tell the story of our life, of our loves, but also the history of revolts, defeats and restorations of order. At any given moment different paths open up in front of us, and we are continually presented with the alternative of going here or going there. Then we decide, we cut out from a set of infinite possibilities and choose a single path. But do we really choose? Is it really a question of a choice, when we go here rather than there? Is it really a choice, when masses go to shopping centers, when revolutions are transformed into massacres, when nations enter into war? It is not we who decide but the concatenations: machines for the liberation of desires and mechanisms of control over the imaginary. The fundamental bifurcation is always this one: between machines for liberating desire and mechanisms of control over the imaginary. In our time of digital mutation, technical automatisms are taking control of the social psyche.

Edited by Erik Empson & Stevphen Shukaitis
Translated by Arianna Bove, Erik Empson, Michael Goddard, Giuseppina Mecchia, Antonella Schintu, and Steve Wright
Publisher Minor Compositions, London, 2009
ISBN 1570272077, 9781570272073
153 pages

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Félix Guattari, Antonio Negri: New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty (1985/2010)

“The project: to rescue ‘communism’ from its own disrepute. Once invoked as the liberation of work through mankind’s collective creation, communism has instead stifled humanity. We who see in communism the liberation of both collective and individual possibilities must reverse that regimentation of thought and desire which terminates the individual….”

Thus begins the extraordinary collaboration between Félix Guattari and Antonio Negri, written at dawn of the 1980s, in the wake of the crushing of the autonomous movements of the previous decade. Setting out Guattari and Negri diagnose with incisive prescience transformations of the global economy and theorize new forms of alliance and organization: mutant machines of subjectivation and social movement.

Prefiguring his collaboration with Michael Hardt, Negri and Guattari enact a singular hybridization of political and philosophical traditions, brining together psychiatry, political analysis, semiotics, aesthetics, and philosophy. Against the workings of an increasingly integrated world capitalism, they raise the banners of singularity, autonomy, and freedom to search out new routes for subversion.

This newly expanded edition includes previously untranslated materials and a new introduction by Matteo Mandarini.

Main text originally published in French in 1985 as Les nouveaux espaces de liberté. First English edition, 1990, published under the title Communists Like Us.
Translated by Michael Ryan, Jared Becker, Arianna Bove, and Noe Le Blanc
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis
Publisher: Minor Compositions, London / New York in conjunction with Autonomedia and MayFlyBooks
ISBN 978-1-57027-224-0
144 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-27)

Notes from Nowhere (eds.): We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (2003)

“In 1994, indigenous Zapatista rebels emerged from the rainforest shouting “Ya Basta” in defiance of the birth of the North American Free Trade Agreement. This band of women and men rekindled a radical resistance movement that was to inspire a whole new generation. From urban street reclaimers in London and land squatters in Brazil, to Indian farmers protesting GM crops and the Italian White Overall Movement, spontaneous uprisings found a shared enemy—global capital.

As events swept from Chiapas to Seattle, Genoa to Bangalore, and summits have been wreathed in tear gas, the new movement has matured into a massive political force—flexible, strategic, and able to resist and adapt to increasingly brutal responses by various states. The editors of this celebratory publishing project have been on the frontline of the movement, working as activists and writers, story chasers and documentarians. A mixture of critical analysis and art book, agitprop, inspirational document, and DIY manual, We Are Everywhere combines innovative graphic design and photographs with texts and interviews with activists, creating a lively, polyphonic insight into the ideas and activities of the movements against capitalism.

Notes from Nowhere is an editorial collective: Katharine Ainger, Graeme Chesters, Tony Credland, John Jordan, Andrew Stern, and Jennifer Whitney are activists and writers, designers, and photographers who were variously involved in the actions in Seattle, documenting movements of the Global South, Reclaim the Streets in the UK, and the Indymedia network.”

Publisher Verso, London, 2003
ISBN 1859844472, 9781859844472
521 pages

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PDF (updated on 2021-1-24)