Showing papers in "Socialism and Democracy in 2006"
TL;DR: In his introduction to the 1989 re-issue of Invisible Man Ralph Ellison provocatively notes, "a piece of science fiction is the last thing I expected to write".
Abstract: In his introduction to the 1989 re-issue of Invisible Man Ralph Ellison provocatively notes, “a piece of science fiction is the last thing I expected to write” (xv). Both this claim and the way Ell...
83 citations
TL;DR: While the works of Antonio Gramsci have been studied in great depth for a number of years, his central concepts and main arguments can be applied to provide both a framework and understanding for c... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: While the works of Antonio Gramsci have been studied in great depth for a number of years, his central concepts and main arguments can be applied to provide both a framework and understanding for c...
14 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Shakar introduces the concept of trans-temporal marketing, where marketers from the future have traveled back in time to "advertise their products" to the present.
Abstract: In his novel The Savage Girl (2002), Alex Shakar introduces the concept of trans-temporal marketing (15f, 277). Marketers from the future have traveled back in time to “advertise their products” to...
12 citations
TL;DR: The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned as discussed by the authors, and all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condense.
Abstract: The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condense...
10 citations
TL;DR: The impulse to create images of utopian existence, and sometimes to pursue them actively, can be found in virtually every culture as mentioned in this paper. Often, such visions are expressed within the realms of mythology a...
Abstract: The impulse to create images of utopian existence, and sometimes to pursue them actively, can be found in virtually every culture. Often, such visions are expressed within the realms of mythology a...
10 citations
7 citations
TL;DR: As I have suggested more than once in print, China Mieville is for me the most entertaining, interesting, and intellectually gifted writer of Anglophone speculative fiction to have yet emerged in literature.
Abstract: As I have suggested more than once in print, China Mieville is for me the most entertaining, interesting, and intellectually gifted writer of Anglophone speculative fiction to have yet emerged in h...
7 citations
TL;DR: The Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE) and United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors (UNMoors) are two inner city alternative religious movements that use science fiction motifs.
Abstract: Science fiction motifs are prominent in the ideology of two inner city alternative religious movements,1 the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE)2 and the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.3 Both organiz...
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, instead of belonging to "the tiny genre of feminist science fiction films" (as Dave Kehr of the New York Times so dismissively and condescendingly p...
Abstract: We live science fiction. —Marshall McLuhan Thus, instead of belonging to “the tiny genre of feminist science fiction films” (as Dave Kehr of the New York Times so dismissively and condescendingly p...
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose an association in which the free development of each class is the condition for a free development for all classes and class antagonisms, and they propose a set of rules for each class to follow.
Abstract: In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. ...
4 citations
TL;DR: The recent coauthorship of Negri and Hardt as discussed by the authors has been one of the most fruitful and rewarding co-authorship collaborations in the history of the field of history.
Abstract: Few scholarly relationships are as fruitful and rewarding as the recent co-authorship of Antonio (Toni) Negri and Michael Hardt. Indeed, since the publication of their book Empire in 2000, they hav...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe near-future worlds in which class stratification, sexual politics, and a globalized economy have become dystopically exaggregated, and describe a world in which women are treated as second class citizens.
Abstract: Rebecca Ore's Outlaw School and Nicola Griffith's Slow River both describe near-future worlds in which class stratification, sexual politics, and a globalized economy have become dystopically exagg...
TL;DR: In the past three decades much has been written about the Weather Underground, often in fiction, including Don Silver's Backward-Facing Man (2005), Russell Bank's The Darling (2004), Neil Gordon'...
Abstract: Over the past three decades much has been written about the Weather Underground, often in fiction, including Don Silver's Backward-Facing Man (2005), Russell Bank's The Darling (2004), Neil Gordon'...
TL;DR: The authors review the genesis and background of Negri and Hardt's theories in works prior to Empire and Multitude in order to assess their usefulness in building liberatory movements and make apparent problems that inhibit their efficacy: their rejection of dialectical thinking, Negri's fetishization of production, and his failure to deal with patriarchal domination.
Abstract: Collective reinterpretation of Marxism is long overdue, especially after the end of what Paul Sweezy called the first wave of socialist experimentation. History has revealed the tragic miscalculations of Lenin, and verified Marx’s belief that world-historical transformation of capitalism must occur from within its core. Antonio Negri’s experiences in the 1970s Italian autonomous movement situate him to pose theoretical insights from the point of view of practical action. As the movement against capitalist globalization has gathered momentum, Negri and co-author Michael Hardt seek to theorize the global revolt against neoliberalism. Complementing Marcella Bencivenni’s reading of their more recent work in this issue of Socialism and Democracy, the purpose of this essay is to review the genesis and background of their theories in works prior to Empire and Multitude in order to assess their usefulness in building liberatory movements. I hope to make apparent problems that inhibit these theorists’ efficacy: their rejection of dialectical thinking, Negri’s fetishization of production, and his failure to deal with patriarchal domination. Although Negri has been enormously self-critical and changed many of his views from the 1970s and 1980s, he retains ideological categories and patterns of thinking that lead him in the same directions he now acknowledges as mistaken. Accordingly, just as his mentor Louis Althusser believed “history has no subject,” Negri and Hardt maintain that “empire” has no single hegemonic country. As with Althusser, the philosophical categories of the young Marx are rejected while the economic categories of the “mature Marx” are rigidly accepted. Rather than understanding Marx’s later work as an empirical fleshing out of the philosophical categories developed from Hegel’s dialectical method, Negri now tells us that dialectical thinking is wrong. Nowhere is Negri’s revision of Marx more apparent than in his current rooting of “communist” theory in Machiavelli and Spinoza and in his disavowal of dialectical thought in all its forms.
TL;DR: There is a new, persistent, and perhaps even growing sense that a major question of this century for Black Americans, individually and variably collected, will be: how can technoscience be made to underwrite more meaningful and humane life spaces for Black people? What follows is an exploratory gathering of three distinct methodological approaches to generating if not answers to this looming question, then, at minimum, lines of purchase for those concerned to grapple with, prod, dismantle or perhaps even dismiss it.
Abstract: There is a new, persistent, and perhaps even growing sense that a major question of this century for Black Americans, individually and variably collected, will be: how can technoscience be made to underwrite more meaningful and humane life spaces for Black people? What follows is an exploratory gathering of three distinct methodological approaches to generating if not answers to this looming question, then, at minimum, lines of purchase for those concerned to grapple with, prod, dismantle, or perhaps even dismiss it. The reader is invited to figure as she sees fit, but, in any case, implored to figure. At the same time that variously situated Black communities are being presented with dizzying arrays of technoscientific promises about purportedly inevitable futures – space colonization, novel energy sources, neuroscience, advanced robotics, sense-enhancing surveillance technologies, genomics, performance-enhancing pharmacology, nanotechnology and nanoscience, to list only the merest sampling of oft noted specimens – there is an absence of strategic placement of those Black communities into those futures in any meaningful fashion. The established organizations that once provided leadership on matters of consequence to Blacks are more or less silent on the significance of scientific knowledge and novel technical artifacts to Black communities, apparently stuck with a rearview mirror perspective of the future. In an attempt to help incubate a solution for this lacuna, this essay explores three promising yet partial answers: technoeconocentrism, Afrofuturism, and technological substantivism. Although individually no one of this trio is broad enough
TL;DR: In 1947, a fire-control-equipment salesman, Kenneth Arnold, flying his private plane, claimed to sight nine mysterious objects flying in the area of Mt. Rainier.
Abstract: In 1947, a fire-control-equipment salesman, Kenneth Arnold, flying his private plane, claimed to sight nine mysterious objects flying in the area of Mt. Rainier. He told his story to aircrews when ...
TL;DR: In the last few years, coinciding with the Bush regime's permanent “War on Terror,” there has been an increasing tendency for military iconography to appear in the artifacts of children and youth consumer culture.
Abstract: In the last few years, coinciding with the Bush regime’s permanent “War on Terror,” there has been an increasing tendency for military iconography to appear in the artifacts of children and youth consumer culture. Take, for instance, this recruitment advertisement for the National Guard, featured in a recent issue of Teen Vogue (Figure 1). Designed in the style of “before and after” commercials for beauty products, it shows a young woman transform herself from a consumer into a soldier. In the “before” picture she is overloaded by the artifacts of consumer culture – two sunglasses, a pink undershirt and cover, a yellow scarf, and a red bag – to the point of distraction. In the “after” picture, the clothes are pared down to a brown uniform decorated with medals, and the accessories disappear, leaving behind a purposeful, directed soldier in clean-cut, streamlined hair tucked under a cap. Of course, she still wears make-up so as not to completely undermine the main message of the magazine, which is, after all, to sell beauty products. Channel One, the television program children are compelled to watch in schools, has recently started to market the Marines and the National Guard along with deodorants and cell phones. Not to be left behind, high-fashion designers too have turned to the military for inspiration although their designs show greater “research” so as to add to their cultural capital – Ann Lui’s recent collection was inspired by the American wars of the 18th and 19th century. In Carbondale, the small town in
TL;DR: Wallerstein, one of the pioneers of world-systems theory, has been arguing since the 1970s that the capitalist system, after some five centuries, is for the first time in a systemic crisis as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the pioneers of world-systems theory, has been arguing since the 1970s that the capitalist system, after some five centuries, is for the first time in a systemic crisis...
TL;DR: In this paper, Alex Day, Mobo Gao, Matt Hale, Tom Lutze, Matt Rothwell, Dan Vukovich and Yan Hairong provide comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and for helping to provide some of the materials and reviews referred to in it.
Abstract: ∗I would like to thank Alex Day, Mobo Gao, Matt Hale, Tom Lutze, Matt Rothwell, Dan Vukovich and Yan Hairong for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and for helping to provide some of the materials and reviews referred to in it. As always, any remaining errors or misinterpretations are my own.
TL;DR: The first article for Socialism and Democracy, "Marxism in the Age of Gorbachev" (S&D #11, Fall 1990), written with the encouragement of Patrick Peppe in what turned out to be the last year of his life, was based on a presentation I had made less than a year before and less than one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: My first article for Socialism and Democracy, “Marxism in the Age of Gorbachev” (S&D #11, Fall 1990), written with the encouragement of Patrick Peppe in what turned out to be the last year of his life, was based on a presentation I had made less than a year before – and less than a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Weighing the prospects for socialism at that moment, I found good news along with the bad. The bad news was obvious. Popular opposition to the regimes of the Soviet bloc appeared to have crystallized as opposition to the very idea of socialism. Along with the collapse of those regimes, liberation movements elsewhere in the world seemed to have lost an essential source of support. Even then, though, there appeared to be good news as well. On the one hand, the socialist project could in the future be more readily envisaged without being tied to the failures of its first epoch. On the other hand, the continuing depredations of capitalism – especially visible in the Third World and in the environmental crisis – showed the potential for generating popular outrage that could not be soothed by official nostrums about the supposed impossibility of any alternative. In my article, I tried to view the intricacies of this bad news/good news dynamic through the prism of Marxist dialectics, of which I presented a brief synopsis informed especially by the work of Bertell