The Second Coming (Theory Redux)

We have entered the gateway to the apocalypse. This theological concept is the best metaphor to describe the world in which we are already living. Chaos is all around us: political folly, economical delirium, ecological catastrophe, intellectual cynicism, technological simulation of life. This is what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi suggests in this wry, dark, disconcerting but also brilliant and invigorating journey through the main events that we have witnessed in recent years. One century after the Communist revolution, the very idea that the world could be changed for the better seems dead once and for all. Every time that a new change occurs nowadays, it seems to be a change for the worse. But the fact that nothing can save us any more shouldn’t be seen as a form of fatality or a reason for surrender. On the contrary, if our world is dead, then the space is open for another to appear – a world where apocalypse can shake us out of our zombie-like contemporary existence. The second coming of Communism will have nothing to do with 1917. Apocalypse has to be conceived of as a metaphor, and Communism is a metaphor too: the metaphor of the possible deployment of the potentials of the mind.

Politics & Social Sciences

Berardi, Franco

Philosophy

Polity

Nonfiction. Criticism and Theory. Political Science. An infinite series of bifurcations: this is how we can tell the story of our life, of our loves, but also the history of revolts, defeats and restorations of order. At any given moment different paths open up in front of us, and we are continually presented with the alternative of going here or going there. Then we decide, we cut out from a set of infinite possibilities and choose a single path. But do we really choose? Is it really a question of a choice, when we go here rather than there? Is it really a choice, when masses go to shopping centers, when revolutions are transformed into massacres, when nations enter into war? It is not we who decide but the concatenations: machines for the liberation of desires and mechanisms of control over the imaginary. The fundamental bifurcation is always this one: between machines for liberating desire and mechanisms of control over the imaginary. In our time of digital mutation, technical automatisms are taking control of the social psyche.

Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the Pathologies of Post-Alpha Generation

Autonomedia

Analyses the current wave of depression, or "desertion", that is causing more and more people to abandon hope and desire in a world where social, political and environment collapse seems inevitable. According to psychiatrists, depression is spreading among the young generation- in a recent survey published by the New York Times, 54% of people aged 16-25 show symptoms of an impending clinical depression. In Quit Everything, Franco Berardi argues that there is something wrong with these figures. What today is often called "depression", in Berardi's view, is in fact something different entirely- a conscious or unconscious withdrawal of psychological energy and a dis-investment of desire that he defines instead as "desertion". Examples of this desertion are everywhere- the deceleration of social rhythms and psycho-deflation provoked by the traumatic experience of the pandemic; the multiplication of environmental collapse which has reinforced the perception of political impotence; the explosion of war at the eastern border of Europe; and the "great resignation" from work taking place in the US. In this book, Berardi analyses why this desertion from political participation is on the rise and why more people are quitting everything in our age of political impotence, the rise of the far-right and nationalist aggression, and the brutal realiy of climate collapse.

Quit Everything: Interpreting Depression

Repeater

The Book of Books offers an overview of Documenta 13's guiding themes through a compilation of art projects and essays. Documenta 13's Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has proposed the 2012 festival as a refusal of conceptual unity, instead "choreographing many different kinds of materials, methodologies and forms of knowledge." Responding to the political and economic uncertainty of our times, Christov-Bakargiev declares that "Documenta must aspire, by contrast, to instead exercise imagination as a space of accuracy in which to practice and challenge our definition of the political." The Book of Books reproduces the entire 100 Notes-100 Thoughts series of publications (either as facsimiles or with entirely new layouts), and is supplemented by essays from Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Chus Martínez, Franco Berardi and others, plus statements by some of the festival's agents and advisors. Illustrated short biographies of all participating artists are included, along with a catalogue of the works on display.

Documenta 13: Catalog I/3, The Book of Books

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn

Martinez, Chús

Reference

Hatje Cantz

The State of Things, part of Norway’s official representation in the 2011 Venice Biennale, addresses today’s broad political and cultural climate through a series of lectures by some of today’s foremost art historians, philosophers, sociologists, activists and political theorists. Essays written for this volume include Jacques Ranciére’s “In What Time Do We Live?”; “Illegitimacy” by Leo Bersani; “Ten Lessons from Ten Peace Processes” by Jan Egeland; Fawaz A. Gerges’ meditation on “How the Arab Uprisings Beat al Qaeda”; Vandana Shiva’s “War Against the Earth”; Eyal Weizman on “Material Proportionality”; Judith Butler on “Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitions and Street Politics”; Franco Berardi on “Pasolini in Tottenham”; Saskia Sassen on “Urban Capabilities”; and T.J. Clark on “The Experience of Defeat.”

The State of Things (Verksted)

Arts & Photography

RANCIÈRE, JACQUES

BUTLER, JUDITH

Weizman, Eyal

Clark, T.J.

History & Criticism

Office for Contemporary Art Norway OCA

This reader contains previously unpublished essays on the ongoing transition from the 500-year-old notion of utopia, toward the pervasive ubiquity of its opposite: dystopia. The authors gathered here were asked to discuss this tension.

Utopia / Dystopia: A Paradigm Shift in Art and Architecture

Braidotti, Rosi

Gadanho, Pedro

Laia, João

Ventura, Susana

Architecture

Mousse Publishing

Value is an important concept in contemporary society, an immaterial force shaping the way we live together. Today, however, we seem to measure value only in terms of time and money. To reformulate value as a constitutive factor in an open and caring society requires a new way of looking that can reclaim it from the logic of capital. Facing Value anthologizes the work of philosophers, scientists, historians, architects and economists including Walter Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Michel de Certeau, Anthony Huberman, Charles Jencks, Siegfried Kracauer, Jan Ritsema, Viktor Shklovsky and Jan Verwoert, presenting alternative visions of value that will inspire readers to regain personal power, share energy and creativity, and build toward a vital and just society. Alternative values--like hesitation, care, giving and disconnection--are proposed as potential foci of new value systems.

Facing Value: Radical Perspectives from the Arts

BENJAMIN, WALTER

Certeau, Michel

Valiz/Stroom Den Haag

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