Vanguardia chronicles and theorises changing forms of socially engaged art and radical politics since the rise of the anti-globalisation movement. From Occupy Wall Street to Black Live Matter and MeToo, Vanguardia detects signs of avant-garde praxis in the new social movements and activist collectives that challenge global capitalism. -- .
Brave New Avant Garde is a collection of essays that ask the questions: what is an adequate model of contemporary avant garde practice and what are its theoretical premises? With this it asks the related question, echoing Alain Badiou: must the avant garde hypothesis be abandoned? Brave New Avant Garde stands in opposition to postmodern post-politics and the view that radical practice has no other future than its reduction to the workings of the free market in the form of the "simple process of cultural production" or to variations on the cultural politics of representation. Today's avant garde, formed in the wake of the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of the anti-globalization movement, represents a counter-power that rejects the inevitability of capitalist integration. The way out for artists in today's world of creative industries is defined in these pages as a psychoanalytically informed sinthomeopathic practice, a critical identification with prevailing conditions of production that avoids the surplus enjoyment of the ideology of postmodern pluralism.
Focusing on the interplay between class struggle and identity politics, this book delves into historical, cultural, political, and economic developments since the postwar era. It offers a comprehensive examination of the campus wars, addressing complex issues that have shaped contemporary discourse. Readers will gain insights into the dynamics of these conflicts and their broader implications in society.
Charting new directions for cultural theory and practice and offering alternatives to the project of neoliberal class restoration.
There is something rotten about network society. Although the information economy promises to create new forms of wealth and social cooperation, the real subsumption of labour under post-Fordism has instead produced a social factory of precarious labour and cybernetic surveillance. In this context people have turned to networks as an ersatz solution to social problems. Networks become the agent of history, a technological determinism that in the best-case scenario leads to post-capitalism but at worst leads to new forms of exploitation and inequality. Don't Network proposes a third option to technocratic biocapitalism and social movement horizontalism, an analysis of the ways in which vanguard politics and avant-garde aesthetics can today challenge the ideologies of the network society.
Bernie Bros Gone Woke offers a provocative analysis of the Sanders campaigns and argues for the continuing importance of emancipatoryuniversality. In 2016 and 2020, the Bernie Sanders campaign gave American leftists a path towards social change through electoral politics. In order to combat neoliberal and reactionary uses of identity, the 2020 Sanders campaign combined a working-class agenda of universalist policies with various forms of social movement activism. In doing so it compromised on universalist principles and socialist radicalism in order to appeal to distinct demographic groups and win the election. Bernie Bros Gone Woke reveals how intersectional politics contributed to the failure of the Sanders campaign - a lesson that the organized left must learn if it is to challenge progressive neoliberalism and move beyond postmodern post-politics.