Art and politics
Brecht’s Communist Manifesto Today!
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBrecht closes his Manifesto replying to Marx and Engels closing line in their Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win,” by answering, “How may the workers break their own class chains? Only by breaking everybody’s chains.” Marx once said that there are historical moments when the working class must gain class-consciousness and become historical subjects. We are at just such a historical moment. Are we up to the task?
The Art of Diane Esmond
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDiane Esmond (1910-1981) left an under-appreciated legacy of paintings. Although her artistic eye ranged over many subjects, her culminating evocations of the tropical forest have taken on added importance in the decades since her death. Based for most of her life in France, she displayed her work in Paris in the 1930s and internationally from the ‘50s through the ‘70s. Forced into exile in 1940, she spent the intervening years in New York; the paintings she left behind were seized (and many destroyed) by the Nazi occupation regime
Disputing the Deluge with Darko Suvin joined by Editor Hugh O’Connell and special guests
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDarko Suvin’s writings from the early 2000s investigate the function of literary genres and reconsider the relationship between science fiction and fantasy, the essays collected here highlight the value of science fiction for grappling with the key events and transformations of recent years. Suvin’s interrogations show how speculative fiction has responded to 9/11, the global war on terror, the 2008economic collapse, and the rise of conservative populism, along with contemporary critical utopian analyses of the Capitalocene, the climate crisis,COVID19, and the decline of democracy. This collection allows new generations of students and scholars to engage directly with his work and its continuing importance and timeliness.
We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsChronicles the story of the ZAD (zone to defend), a resistant land occupation emerging out of a decades-long struggle which stopped a new airport project. Fremeaux and Jordan blend rich eyewitness accounts with theory, inspired by a diverse array of approaches, from neo-animism to revolutionary biology, insurrectionary writings and radical art history.
The Art of Activism
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYTHE ART OF ACTIVISM brings together the authors’ extensive practical knowledge—gleaned from over a decade’s experience training activists around the world—with theoretical insights from fields as far-ranging as cultural studies and cognitive science.
The European Radical Left: Movements and Parties Since the 1960s
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWith a unique 'two-level' perspective, Giorgos Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organization, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.
Never-Ending War!: Novels on Conflict, Resistance and Resilience
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NY“Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” – Neil Gaiman
The Marxist Education Project Lit reading group revisits some literary classics along with contemporary novels that are prescient and compelling –challenging us to think about our understanding of history and how we will confront the present moment.
Facebooking the Anthropocene with Bob Ostertag
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYVideo available: https://youtu.be/EG2B_Vf1KZY
Bob Ostertag's new book, Facebooking the Anthropocene in Raja Ampat: Technics and Civilization in the 21st Century, offers a deeply intimate portrait of the cataclysmic shifts between humans, technology, and the so-called natural world. Amid the breakneck pace of both technological advance and environmental collapse, he explores how we are changing as fast as the world around us—from how we make music, to how we have sex, to what we do to survive, and who we imagine ourselves to be. And though the environmental crisis terrifies and technology overwhelms, Ostertag finds enough creativity, compassion, and humor in our evolving behavior to keep us laughing and inspired as the world we are building overtakes the world we found.
Video available at https://youtu.be/EG2B_Vf1KZY
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJuxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Arise! The Mexican Revolution’s Global Impact
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Mexican Revolution catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Christina Heatherton's book Arise! reveals how activists around the world found inspiration and solidarity in revolutionary Mexico.
The Fallout of War: Metonyms of Militarism
Video available on YouTubeVideo available at https://youtu.be/h0dYxI2zDoY
In the second of two linked sessions, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture presents their collective research on a keyword of contemporary cultural studies - war - and investigates its many valences as lived reality and as metaphor. Taking account of war as constitutive of the present, the working group explores war's myriad meanings.
Iran Awakening II: More Novels by Iranian Women
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe spring 2023 series of the MEP Literature Group continues to focus on Iranian women writing since the 1978-79 Revolution whose stories are set inside Iran.
“We’re Going on an Adventure”: Summer Visionary Fiction
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe MEP's Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group will read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Ruin this summer. The catchphrase, "We're going on an adventure," signals the novel's overlapping themes of contemporary significance--desperate efforts to escape war and corporate destruction on Earth, species-level competition to make new homes elsewhere, and the varieties and the social significance ... Read more
Summertime … and the Living Ain’t Easy: Black Noir
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Marxist Education Project's Literature Group continues its summertime tradition of reading noir fiction: the popular American crime genre that explores the corruption of society - and, in our selected books by Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Attica Locke, and Bill Fletcher Jr. - corruption in the workplace, in unions, and among workers.