Architecture and abstraction
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In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from(...)
Architecture and abstraction
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In this theoretical study of abstraction in architecture—the first of its kind—Pier Vittorio Aureli argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials—Aureli shows that abstraction instead arises from the material conditions of building production. In a lively study informed by Walter Benjamin, Karl Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and other social theorists, Architecture and Abstraction presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries. These divisions were anticipated by the architecture of antiquity, which established a distinction between manual and intellectual labor, and placed the former in service to the latter. Further abstractions arose as geometry, used for measuring territories, became the intermediary between land and money and eventually produced the logic of the grid. In our own time, architectural abstraction serves the logic of capitalism and embraces the premise that all things can be exchanged—even experience itself is a commodity. To resist this turn, Aureli seeks a critique of architecture that begins not by scaling philosophical heights, but by standing at the ground level of material practice.
Architectural Theory
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In "The effluent eye," Rosemary J. Jolly argues for the decolonization of human rights, attributing their failure not simply to state and institutional malfeasance but to the very concept of human rights as anthropocentric-and, therefore, fatally shortsighted. In an engaging mix of literary and cultural criticism, Indigenous and Black critique, and substantive forays into(...)
The effluent eye: Narratives for decolonial right-making
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In "The effluent eye," Rosemary J. Jolly argues for the decolonization of human rights, attributing their failure not simply to state and institutional malfeasance but to the very concept of human rights as anthropocentric-and, therefore, fatally shortsighted. In an engaging mix of literary and cultural criticism, Indigenous and Black critique, and substantive forays into the medical humanities, Jolly proposes right-making in the demise of human rights. Using what she calls an "effluent eye," Jolly draws on "Fifth Wave" structural public health to confront the concept of human rights-one of the most powerful and widely entrenched liberal ideas. She builds on Indigenous sovereignty work from authors such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Mark Rifkin as well as the littoral development in Black studies from Christine Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, and Tiffany Lethabo King to engage decolonial thinking on a range of urgent topics such as pandemic history and grief; gender-based violence and sexual assault; and the connections between colonial capitalism and substance abuse, the Anthropocene, and climate change. Combining witnessed experience with an array of decolonial texts, Jolly argues for an effluent form of reading that begins with the understanding that the granting of "rights" to individuals is meaningless in a world compromised by pollution, poverty, and successive pandemics.
Critical Theory
Radical intimacy
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Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. 'Making connections' means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and heterosexual, we must have babies and buy a house. But the kicker is most(...)
Radical intimacy
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Capitalist ideology wants us to believe that there is an optimal way to live. 'Making connections' means networking for work. Our emotional needs are to be fulfilled by a single romantic partner, and self-care equates to taking personal responsibility for our suffering. We must be productive and heterosexual, we must have babies and buy a house. But the kicker is most people cannot and do not want to achieve all, or any of these life goals. Instead we are left feeling atomised, exhausted and disempowered. ''Radical intimacy'' shows that it doesn't need to be this way. A punchy and impassioned account of inspiring ideas about alternative ways to live, Sophie K Rosa demands we use our radical imagination to discover a new form of intimacy and to transform our personal lives and in turn society as a whole. Including critiques of the 'wellness' industry that ignores rising poverty rates, the mental health crisis and racist and misogynist state violence; transcending love and sex under capitalism to move towards feminist, decolonial and queer thinking; asking whether we should abolish the family; interrogating the framing of ageing and death and much more, ''Radical intimacy'' is the compassionate antidote to a callous society.
Social
Decolonize self-care
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"Decolonize self-care" mounts a sharply critical investigation into contemporary "self-care" practices—particularly those that embrace using mindfulness and other techniques such as tantra and yoga, as well as gluten-free and low-carbohydrate diets. The authors argue that "self-care" has become an industry, and one that is often marketed to and by wealthy, cisgender,(...)
Decolonize self-care
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"Decolonize self-care" mounts a sharply critical investigation into contemporary "self-care" practices—particularly those that embrace using mindfulness and other techniques such as tantra and yoga, as well as gluten-free and low-carbohydrate diets. The authors argue that "self-care" has become an industry, and one that is often marketed to and by wealthy, cisgender, white women in the global north. Spurgas and Meleo-Erwin contend that the rhetoric of "feminism" is regularly co-opted in selling self-care, with wealthy white women being the primary consumer target and also those who profit from self-care entrepreneurship. Through careful research and sharp analysis, the authors offer a vision of more radical, communal, collective, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist forms of care for chronic pain, burnout, depression, anxiety, and other conditions, which are often the result of gendered, sexualized, racialized, ableist, and colonialist traumas under late capitalism. Utilizing critical feminist disability studies, madness studies, Black feminist scholarship, decolonial theory, and other intersectional and Marxist feminist critique, the authors re-theorize care outside of and beyond what current self-care rhetorics generally allow. A smart and often laugh-out-loud read, "Decolonize self-care" speaks to academic and lay audiences alike.
Social
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Many societies have imagined going to live in space. What they want to do once they get up there—whether conquering the unknown, establishing space ''colonies,'' privatising the moon’s resources—reveals more than expected. In this fascinating radical history of space exploration, Fred Scharmen shows that often science and fiction have combined in the imagined dreams of(...)
Space forces: a critical history of life in outer space
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Many societies have imagined going to live in space. What they want to do once they get up there—whether conquering the unknown, establishing space ''colonies,'' privatising the moon’s resources—reveals more than expected. In this fascinating radical history of space exploration, Fred Scharmen shows that often science and fiction have combined in the imagined dreams of life in outer space, but these visions have real implications for life back on earth. For the Russian Cosmists of the 1890s space was a place to pursue human perfection away from the Earth. For others, such as Wernher Von Braun, it was an engineering task that combined, in the Space Race, the Cold War, and during World War II, with destructive geopolitics. Arthur C. Clarke, in his speculative books, offered an alternative vision of wonder that is indifferent to human interaction. Meanwhile NASA planned and managed the space station like an earthbound corporation. Today, the market has arrived into outer space and exploration is the plaything of superrich technology billionaires, who plan to privatise the mineral wealth for themselves. Are other worlds really possible? Bringing these figures and ideas together reveals a completely different story of our relationship with outer space, as well as the dangers of our current direction of extractive capitalism and colonisation.
Architectural Theory
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In the mid-nineteenth century, Napoleon III and his prefect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, adapted Paris to the requirements of industrial capitalism, endowing the old city with elegant boulevards, an enhanced water supply, modern sewers, and public greenery. Esther da Costa Meyer provides a major reassessment of this ambitious project, which resulted in widespread(...)
Dividing Paris: Urban renewal and social inequality 1852-1870
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In the mid-nineteenth century, Napoleon III and his prefect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, adapted Paris to the requirements of industrial capitalism, endowing the old city with elegant boulevards, an enhanced water supply, modern sewers, and public greenery. Esther da Costa Meyer provides a major reassessment of this ambitious project, which resulted in widespread destruction in the historic center, displacing thousands of poor residents and polarizing the urban fabric. Drawing on newspapers, memoirs, and other archival materials, da Costa Meyer explores how people from different social strata?both women and men?experienced the urban reforms implemented by the Second Empire. As hundreds of tenements were destroyed to make way for upscale apartment buildings, thousands of impoverished residents were forced to the periphery, which lacked the services enjoyed by wealthier parts of the city. Challenging the idea of Paris as the capital of modernity, da Costa Meyer shows how the city was the hub of a sprawling colonial empire extending from the Caribbean to Asia, and exposes the underlying violence that enriched it at the expense of overseas territories. This book brings to light the contributions of those who actually built and maintained the impressive infrastructure of Paris, and reveals the consequences of colonial practices for the city's cultural, economic, and political life.
Urban Theory
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Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies. "#Accelerate" presents a genealogy of accelerationism, tracking the impulse through 90s UK(...)
#Accelerate: the accelerationist reader
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Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies. "#Accelerate" presents a genealogy of accelerationism, tracking the impulse through 90s UK darkside cyberculture and the theory-fictions of Nick Land, Sadie Plant, Iain Grant, and CCRU, across the cultural underground of the 80s (rave, acid house, SF cinema) and back to its sources in delirious post-68 ferment, in texts whose searing nihilistic jouissance would later be disavowed by their authors and the marxist and academic establishment alike. On either side of this central sequence, the book includes texts by Marx that call attention to his own ‘Prometheanism’, and key works from recent years document the recent extraordinary emergence of new accelerationisms steeled against the onslaughts of neoliberal capitalist realism, and retooled for the twenty-first century. At the forefront of the energetic contemporary debate around this disputed, problematic term, "#Accelerate" activates a historical conversation about futurality, technology, politics, enjoyment and capital. This is a legacy shot through with contradictions, yet urgently galvanized today by the poverty of ‘reasonable’ contemporary political alternatives.
Critical Theory
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Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into(...)
September 2017
The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possiblity of life in capitalist ruins
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Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, "The mushroom at the end of the world" follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.
Architecture and dystopia
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As a response to the profound crisis of Western culture the emerged in the 1960s, radical artists from Italy, Austria, England and Japan called into question the foundations of modernist utopias. They transmuted the difficulties of capitalism into a repertory of startling images that revealed the disturbing realities of consumer society, even in those places still(...)
Architecture and dystopia
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As a response to the profound crisis of Western culture the emerged in the 1960s, radical artists from Italy, Austria, England and Japan called into question the foundations of modernist utopias. They transmuted the difficulties of capitalism into a repertory of startling images that revealed the disturbing realities of consumer society, even in those places still resistant to the penetration of modern architecture, such as Superstudio and Archizoom’s Florence. Their model, though exhausted in the space of experimentation, went on to inspire a generation of architects, from the High Tech movement to Rem Koolhaas.. In the light of these examples, how to define a unified 'dystopian' method of design, i.e. a common ground for an architecture that, by its very nature, seems to resist systematization? Are the most recognizable architectural expressions of this theoretical framework — characterized by brazen displays of technology and structures of overwhelming scale — merely isolated cases, albeit of particular iconic power? Or do they belong to a wider landscape of antirational architectural projects? And to what extent are these disturbing expressions premised on the utopian tradition or, better yet, the conceptual model of 'negative thought'? The goal of this book is to respond to such questions, thus initiating an open dialogue about the legitimacy of this critical category.
Architectural Theory
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This book will be a resource for all who believe in the importance of art in the wider educational realm. Framing the recent "educational turn" in the arts within a broad historical and social context, this anthology raises fundamental questions about how and what should be taught in an era of distributive rather than media-based practices. Among the many sources and(...)
Education
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This book will be a resource for all who believe in the importance of art in the wider educational realm. Framing the recent "educational turn" in the arts within a broad historical and social context, this anthology raises fundamental questions about how and what should be taught in an era of distributive rather than media-based practices. Among the many sources and arguments traced here is second-wave feminism, which questioned dominant notions of personal and institutional freedom as enacted through art teaching and practice. Similarly, education-based responses by the art community to the catastrophes of World War II and postcolonial conflict critically inform contemporary art confronting the interrelationships of education, power, market capitalism, and--as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe it--the global condition of war. These writings by artists, philosophers, educators, poets, and activists center on three recurring and interrelated themes: the notion of "indiscipline" in theories and practices that challenge boundaries of all kinds; the present and future role of the art school; and the turn to pedagogy as medium in a diverse range of recent projects. Other writings address such issues as instrumentalism and control, liberation and equality, the production and the politics of culture, and the roots of research-based practice and experimental participatory works.
Art Theory