Rethinking Marxism 22-3: Special Issue on the Common and the Forms of the Commune (2010)

“Operating within and beyond each of the offerings contained in the pages [of this special issue] is a profound play on precisely the question posed: What is the operative notion of the common today? Even the singularity of that question’s basic assumption is challenged by the scope of these inquiries for, indeed, a paradox begins to emerge when we consider them as a collection, one might even say as a common production of knowledge: recognition that the very foundation of a concept of the common—its particularity—may well be articulated in a multiplicity of ways. That is to say, can postmodernity—or whatever we wish to designate our present condition—tolerate a single “operative notion” of the common, or does it rather demand a constellation of understandings that contribute simultaneously to our experience of the common and to its neoliberal other, the promotion of individuation?” (from Introduction)

Contributions by Anna Curcio & Ceren Özselçuk, Jack Amariglio, Michael Hardt, Gigi Roggero, Aras Özgün, 16beaver group, Antonio Callari & David F. Ruccio, Deborah Jenson, Federico Luisetti, S. Charusheela, Kenneth Surin, Kathi Weeks, Anna Curcio, Yahya M. Madra & Ceren Özselçuk, Alvaro Reyes.

With Introduction by Joseph Childers
Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society Volume 22 Issue 3
ISSN: 0893-5696

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Julian Stallabrass: Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (2006)

“Bloody toy soldiers, gilded shopping carts, and embroidered tents. Contemporary art is supposed to be a realm of freedom where artists shock, break taboos, flout generally received ideas, and switch between confronting viewers with works of great emotional profundity and jaw-dropping triviality. But away from shock tactics in the gallery, there are many unanswered questions. Who is really running the art world? What effect has America’s growing political and cultural dominance had on art?

Julian Stallabrass takes us inside the international art world to answer these questions, and to argue that behind contemporary art’s variety and apparent unpredictability lies a grim uniformity. Its mysteries are all too easily explained, its depths much shallower than they seem. Contemporary art seeks to bamboozle its viewers while being the willing slave of business and government.”

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2006
Volume 146 of Very short introductions
ISBN 0192806467, 9780192806468
154 pages

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Benjamin Noys (ed.): Communization and its Discontents: Contestation, Critique, and Contemporary Struggles (2011)

“Can we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present?

‘Communization’ is the spectre of the immediate struggle to abolish capitalism and the state, which haunts Europe, Northern California and wherever the real abstractions of value that shape our lives are contested. Evolving on the terrain of capitalism new practices of the ‘human strike’, autonomous communes, occupation and insurrection have attacked the alienations of our times. These signs of resistance are scattered and have yet to coalesce, and their future is deliberately precarious and insecure.

Bringing together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontents treats communization as a problem to be explored rather than a solution. Taking in the new theorizations of communization proposed by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Théorie Communiste, post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies, and tactics of struggle.”

Contributors: Jasper Bernes, John Cunningham, Endnotes, Alexander R. Galloway, Maya Andrea Gonzalez, Anthony Iles, Leon de Mattis, Nicole Pepperell, Théorie Communiste, Alberto Toscano, Marina Vishmidt, and Evan Calder Williams.

Publisher Minor Compositions, 30 November 2011
ISBN 9781570272318
280 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)
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