Franco “Bifo” Berardi: Precarious Rhapsody: Semocapitalism and the Pathologies of the Post-Alpha Generation (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · autonomy, capitalism, critique, desire, labour, philosophy, politics, post-futurism, precariat, schizophrenia, semiocapitalism, social movements, theory

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
PDF (updated on 2012-8-1)
View online (Scribd.com)
Tiqqun: Premiers matériaux pour une Théorie de la Jeune-Fille (1999/2001) [French]
Filed under book | Tags: · biopolitics, biopower, body, capitalism, consumerism, desire, feminism, labour, metaphysics, philosophy, reification, seduction, sexuality, theory
Ceux qui ont réussi à s’aveugler sur le fait pourtant massif de la Jeune-Fille n’en sont pas à une cécité près : ouvrez n’importe quel magazine féminin, vous le verrez bien, la Jeune-Fille n’est pas toujours jeune, n’est pas toujours fille. Elle n’est que la figure de l’intégration totale à une totalité en désintégration. Elle « n’est bonne qu’à consommer ; du loisir ou du travail, qu’importe ».On ne la côtoie pas que sur papier glacé ; elle est le vecteur le plus abouti de la nouvelle organisation sociale et la forme la plus sophistiquée de la mutation anthropotechnique, car elle est la nouvelle physionomie du Capital. Le formatage jeune-filliste se généralise. Ainsi, quand d’aucuns protestent contre l’évidence que le monde n’est pas une marchandise, et d’ailleurs, eux non plus, ils feignent une virginité qui ne justifie que leur impuissance. Tiqqun ne veut ni de cette virginité ni de cette impuissance. Il ouvre dans ces Premiers matériaux la voie à une autre éducation sentimentale.
Originally published in Tiqqun 1, 1999
Revised edition
Publisher Éditions Mille et une nuits, September 2001
La Petite Collection series
ISBN 9782842055905
144 pages
PDF (no OCR)
English edition (2010)
German edition (2009)
Luciana Parisi: Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstract machine, biotechnology, cybersex, cyborg, desire, deterritorialization, philosophy, sex

“Astract Sex investigates the impact of advances in contemporary science and information technology on conceptions of sex. Evolutionary theory and the technologies of viral information transfer, cloning and genetic engineering are changing the way we think about human sex, reproduction and the communication of genetic information. Abstract Sex presents a philosophical exploration of this new world of sexual, informatic and capitalist multiplicity, of the accelerated mutation of nature and culture.”
Publisher Continuum, 2004
ISBN 0826469906, 9780826469908
227 pages
Interview with author (Matthew Fuller, 2004).
Reviews: Andrew Goffey (Mute 2003), Stella Sandford (Radical Phil 2004), Paul Hegarty (n.d.).
PDF, PDF (updated on 2016-9-3)
Comment (0)