Armand Mattelart, Seth Siegelaub (eds.): Communication and Class Struggle, 1: Capitalism, Imperialism (1979)

“Communication and Class Struggle, a two-volume work, is the first general marxist anthology of writings on communication, information and culture. Its purpose is to analyse the relationship between the practice and theory of communication and their development with the context of class struggle. Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub, the editors, have selected more 128 essential marxist and progressive texts originating in over 50 countries and written since the mid-nineteenth century to explain three interrelated phenomena: (1) how basic social, economic and cultural processes condition communication; (2) how bourgeois communication practice and theory have developed as part of the capitalistic mode of production; and (3) how in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, the popular and working classes have developed their own communication practice and theory, liberated mode of communication, culture and daily life.

This first volume deals with the basic Marxist theory underlying the analysis of the communication process, as well as studies centered on the formation of the capitalist communication apparatus, ideology and ‘mass’ culture. It contains 64 texts. More than one-third are published for the first time in English, and some texts appear for the first time in any language. In addition, it includes an extensive bibliography with over 500 books on the subject.”

Publisher International General, New York, and International Mass Media Research Center (IMMRC), Bagnolet, 1979
ISBN 0884770117, 9780884770114
445 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (37 MB, updated to OCR’d version on 2017-10-30 via Memory of the World)
See also Volume 2.

Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net (2009)

“In late 1994, back in the days of dial-up modems and Netscape Navigator 1.0, Mute magazine announced its timely arrival. Dedicated to an analysis of culture and politics ‘after the net’, Mute has consistently challenged the grandiose claims of the communications revolution, debunking its utopian rhetoric and offering more critical perspectives.

Fifteen years on, this anthology selects representative articles from the magazine’s hugely diverse content to reprise some of its recurring themes. This expansive collection charts the perilous journey from Web 1.0 to 2.0, contesting the democratisation this transition implied and laying bare our incorporeal expectations; it exposes the ways in which the logic of technology intersects with that of art and music and, in turn and inevitably, with the logic of business; it heralds the rise of neoliberalism and condemns the human cost; it amplifies the murmurs of dissent and revels in the first signs of collapse. The result situates key – but often little understood – concepts associated with the digital (e.g. the knowledge commons, immaterial labour and open source) in their proper context, producing an impressive overview of contemporary, networked culture in its broadest sense.

Proud to be Flesh features a mix of essays, interviews, satirical fiction, email polemics and reportage from an array of international contributors working in art, philosophy, technology, politics, cultural theory, radical geography and more.”

Edited by Josephine Berry Slater and Pauline van Mourik Broekman, with Michael Corris, Anthony Iles, Benedict Seymour and Simon Worthington
Publisher Mute Publishing, London, with Autonomedia, New York, 2009
ISBN 9781906496289, 1906496285
572+48 pages

Reviews: Nicholas Thoburn (New Formations), Charlotte Frost (Rhizome), Julian Stallabrass (New Left Review).

Magazine
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (15 MB, updated on 2019-6-12)

Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980 (2011)

“Abandoning the usual Cold War–oriented narrative of postwar European protest and opposition movements, this volume offers an innovative, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive perspective on two decades of protest and social upheaval in postwar Europe. It examines the mutual influences and interactions among dissenters in Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and the non-aligned European countries, and shows how ideological and political developments in the East and West were interconnected through official state or party channels as well as a variety of private and clandestine contacts. Focusing on issues arising from the cross-cultural transfer of ideas, the adjustments to institutional and political frameworks, and the role of the media in staging protest, the volume examines the romanticized attitude of Western activists to violent liberation movements in the Third World and the idolization of imprisoned RAF members as martyrs among left-wing circles across Western Europe.”

Edited by Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder and Joachim Scharloth
Publisher Berghahn Books, New York, 2011
Protest, Culture, and Society series, 7
ISBN 9780857451064, 0857451065
vi+347 pages
via publisher

Reviews: Caroline Hoefferle (J Study of Radicalism, 2012), Benoît Challand (Memory Studies, 2013), Rosemary H.T. O’Kane (Political Studies Rev, 2013), Sarah Žabić (Peace&Change, 2013), Matthias Dapprich (J Cold War Studies, 2014), Francis D. Raška (European Legacy, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF