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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190426T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190426T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190325T054034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190325T054034Z
UID:10006040-1556301600-1556312400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Tout Va Bien: Screening with Discussion
DESCRIPTION:Final Friday Films: an anti-bourgeois film series\n“The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically.” —Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin\nTOUT VA BIEN\nFrance\, 1972\, 125 Min\nDIRECTED BY Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin\nCAST Yves Montand\, Jane Fonda\, Vittorio Caprioli\, Elizabeth Chauvin\, Castel Casti\, Éric Chartier\, Anne Wiazemsky\, et al \nGodard and Gorin’s film\, unpopular and hardly viewed when released\, emerges nearly 50 years later as a film with increasing relevance to the days as lived during this late capitalist period. One can see many of the participants in this film wearing gilets jaunes if the film were being shot today. \nFrom the Criterion re-release: \n“As cinema\, Tout Va Bien is radically simplified and blatantly diagrammatic. After the opening sequence\, the Fonda character arrives at a sausage factory to do a story on modern management techniques. Montand tags along\, and\, as the workers have just staged a wildcat strike\, the visiting celebs soon find themselves “sequestered” with the factory’s clownish boss. The approach is self-consciously Brechtian: The characters frequently address the camera. These characters are characters and the set on which they appear is an obvious set. \nThis two-story\, open construction—evoking the cutaway girls’ school in Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies Man (1961)—is\, if not Vertov’s “factory of facts\,” then at least a factory for making meaning. The comic-book frame allows the filmmakers to analyze the strike as a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption and put a didactic emphasis on working conditions. Tout Va Bien insists on class struggle throughout but is mainly about radicalizing its stars. Their role in the factory is to look and learn. Indeed\, Godard and Gorin upped the class-resentment ante by having the striking workers played not by real workers but by unemployed actors.”              —J. Hoberman\, for Criterion\, Tout Va Bien Revisited \nDuring the coming period\, films will be presented by The Revolutions Study Group of The Marxist Education Project as a continuation of the Anti-Bourgeois Film Series that was started at the Brecht Forum. These films with discussion will take place on the last Friday of each month at 6:00 pm. \nTickets are Sliding Scale \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/tout-va-bien-screening-with-discussion/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sausage_ToutVaBienSite.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Anti-Bourgeois Film Series":MAILTO:info@marxedprojet.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190427T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190427T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190316T011827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140409Z
UID:10006010-1556362800-1556371800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:2008 Capitalist Crisis: McNally’s Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 3 Session Mini-class\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/2008-capitalist-crisis-mcnallys-global-slump/2019-04-27/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190429T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190429T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006491-1556564400-1556571600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-04-29/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T193000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006568-1556820000-1556825400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-02/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006030-1556825400-1556832600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-02/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190504T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190504T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190316T011827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140409Z
UID:10006011-1556967600-1556976600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:2008 Capitalist Crisis: McNally’s Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 3 Session Mini-class\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/2008-capitalist-crisis-mcnallys-global-slump/2019-05-04/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190506T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190506T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006492-1557169200-1557176400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-06/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T193000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006569-1557424800-1557430200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-09/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006031-1557430200-1557437400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-09/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190510T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190510T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190327T025438Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190331T051807Z
UID:10006041-1557513000-1557522000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Use: A Users’ Manual
DESCRIPTION:Following cultural critic Sara Ahmed’s insight that “use is a small word with a big history\,” we approach the various ways that “use” enters into and exercises power within our lexicon and politics. From our interaction with digital platforms as “users\,” to the Marxian notion of use-value\, to the labeling of both addicts and emotional abusers as “users” of a different kind\, the language of use pops up in far-flung and unexpected spheres. How do we delineate the useful and the useless\, the usual and the unusual? How do the boundaries of the useful and useless map onto classifications of race\, gender\, sexuality\, and population? In discussing the “proper” use of things and people\, we ask what it means to misuse\, abuse\, overuse\, and underuse\, and offer a user manual to use and abuse. \nThe Working Group on Globalization and Culture http://wggc.yale.edu/ is an interdisciplinary cultural studies laboratory that has been practicing collective research at Yale University since 2003. Over the years\, we have presented work at academic conferences as well as at the Left Forum\, Occupy Boston\, and the World Social Forum. Recent projects have been published as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text’s Periscope\, and as “Spaces and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” appeared in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. The current members—Salonee Bhaman\, Michael Denning\, Lucia Hulsether\, Peter Raccuglia\, Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez\, Simon Torracinta\, Damian Vergara Bracamontes\, Clara Wilson-Hawken\, and Yuhe Faye Wang—work in history\, American studies\, religious studies\, literary criticism\, Latinx studies\, science and technology studies\, popular music studies\, and African-American studies. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one turned away for inability to pay \nOur first MEP event at Union Docs
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/use-a-users-manual/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy,Science and Method
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Use4_FB3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190513T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190513T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006493-1557774000-1557781200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-13/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T193000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006570-1558029600-1558035000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-16/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006032-1558035000-1558042200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-16/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190518T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190518T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006017-1558177200-1558186200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-05-18/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190520T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190520T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006494-1558378800-1558386000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-20/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190523T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190523T193000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006571-1558634400-1558639800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-23/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190523T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190523T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006033-1558639800-1558647000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-23/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190525T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190525T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006018-1558782000-1558791000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-05-25/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190530T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190530T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006034-1559244600-1559251800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-30/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190531T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190531T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190429T042215Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190429T042348Z
UID:10006046-1559327400-1559336400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Final Friday Film: American Dream by Barbara Kopple
DESCRIPTION:Directed by Barbara Kopple\nUSA\, 1990\, 100 min \n In 1984 the Hormel meat-packing company offered the union workers in Austin\, Minnesota a new contract\, cutting their wages from $10.69 per hour to $8.25 per hour—benefits would be cut by 30 percent. The workers were not filled with joy. The company had just declared an annual profit of $29 million\, the cuts were inspired by owners wanting to maximize profits beyond that on the backs and cuts in health and life spans of the workers and their families. \nAmerican Dream chronicles the six-month strike that followed during 1985 and 1986 at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin\, Minnesota. The local union\, P-9 of the Food and Commercial Workers\, overwhelmingly rejected a contract offer with a $2/hour wage cut. Following this the meat workers strike and hire a New York consultant to manage a national media campaign against Hormel. Despite support from P-9’s rank and file\, FCWU’s international disagrees with the strategy. In addition to union-company tension\, there’s union-union in-fighting. Hormel holds firm; scabs\, replacement workers\, brothers on opposite sides\, a union coup d’état\, and a new contract materialize. The film asks\, was it worth it\, or was the strike a long-term disaster for organized labor? \nIn many ways\, the Hormel plant in bucolic Minnesota seemed like the least likely site for a labor-management inferno. The company’s founders had been of a paternalistic bent\, and Austin’s hourly wage of $10.69 was the industry standard. But in 1984\, despite profits of $29 million\, Hormel announced plans to cut that wage by 23%. “What are we going to have to give up\,” one worker worried\, “when they show a loss for the quarter?”—Kenneth Turan\, Los Angeles Times\, March 1992 \nBarbara Kopple\, who had previously covered an extended miner’s strike in the acclaimed 1976 documentary Harlan County\, USA\, focuses on the personalities and emotions behind the strike\, creating a highly charged portrait of labor that is sympathetic to the workers’ distress without ignoring the strike’s greater ambiguities. \n  \nTicket prices are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/final-friday-film-american-dream-by-barbara-kopple/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AmericanDreamSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190601T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190601T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006019-1559386800-1559395800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-06-01/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190603T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190603T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190423T040443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190610T142846Z
UID:10006042-1559588400-1559595600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Racial Boundaries: The Origin and Consequences of the Color Line in the USA
DESCRIPTION:4-week reading and discussion group\nThe Revolutions Study Group\nThis group is for for anyone who wants to better understand why White and Black retain their significance in U.S. society for so many years after the abolition of slavery. W.E.B. DuBois’ groundbreaking Black Reconstruction\, and the recent PBS documentary on the same subject are both useful for these discussions. However\, we are now taking on two readings which are keys to unlocking the power of the color line in shaping the political economy our world and in shaping the lives of African Americans. Theodore Allen’s pamphlet “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” from 1975\, explores why and how skin color became the basis of a rigid caste system in the U.S. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk is his first important book\, takes readers into the world of racial caste as uniquely experienced by African Americans. \nOur four week reading sources will be: Theodore W. Allen\, “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” first published 1975\, 34 pages\, available as printed pamphlet and a downloadable PDF (http://readsettlers.org/settlers-data/ii/02_THEODOREWALLEN_ClassStruggleAndTheOriginsOfSlavery_Somerville1976_p34.pdf)\, and W.E.B Du Bois\, The Souls of Black Folk\, 1903\, available in all formats including free e-book\, 189 pages\, in the 1989 Bantam paperback\, available in libraries \nAdmission is sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/racial-boundaries-the-origin-and-consequences-of-the-color-line-in-the-usa/2019-06-03/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rex_theatre.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190606T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190606T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006035-1559849400-1559856600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-06-06/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190608T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190608T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006020-1559991600-1560000600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-06-08/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190610T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190610T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190423T040443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190610T142846Z
UID:10006043-1560193200-1560200400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Racial Boundaries: The Origin and Consequences of the Color Line in the USA
DESCRIPTION:4-week reading and discussion group\nThe Revolutions Study Group\nThis group is for for anyone who wants to better understand why White and Black retain their significance in U.S. society for so many years after the abolition of slavery. W.E.B. DuBois’ groundbreaking Black Reconstruction\, and the recent PBS documentary on the same subject are both useful for these discussions. However\, we are now taking on two readings which are keys to unlocking the power of the color line in shaping the political economy our world and in shaping the lives of African Americans. Theodore Allen’s pamphlet “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” from 1975\, explores why and how skin color became the basis of a rigid caste system in the U.S. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk is his first important book\, takes readers into the world of racial caste as uniquely experienced by African Americans. \nOur four week reading sources will be: Theodore W. Allen\, “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” first published 1975\, 34 pages\, available as printed pamphlet and a downloadable PDF (http://readsettlers.org/settlers-data/ii/02_THEODOREWALLEN_ClassStruggleAndTheOriginsOfSlavery_Somerville1976_p34.pdf)\, and W.E.B Du Bois\, The Souls of Black Folk\, 1903\, available in all formats including free e-book\, 189 pages\, in the 1989 Bantam paperback\, available in libraries \nAdmission is sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/racial-boundaries-the-origin-and-consequences-of-the-color-line-in-the-usa/2019-06-10/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rex_theatre.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190613T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190613T193000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190520T013726Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190623T044549Z
UID:10006615-1560448800-1560454200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital Crisis: 2008 Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 7 Session Class\nJointly led by Ecosocialism Study Group and the Capital Studies Group\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \n \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nTHE ECOSOCIALISM STUDY GROUP with FRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT who have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \nParticipants outside the New York City area or those with mobility challenges are welcome to join using Zoom teleconferencing for a $7 per session teleconference fee. Send a request to AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.org. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/5578/2019-06-13/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190613T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190613T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006036-1560454200-1560461400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-06-13/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190615T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190615T133000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006021-1560596400-1560605400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-06-15/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190617T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190617T210000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190423T040443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190610T142846Z
UID:10006044-1560798000-1560805200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Racial Boundaries: The Origin and Consequences of the Color Line in the USA
DESCRIPTION:4-week reading and discussion group\nThe Revolutions Study Group\nThis group is for for anyone who wants to better understand why White and Black retain their significance in U.S. society for so many years after the abolition of slavery. W.E.B. DuBois’ groundbreaking Black Reconstruction\, and the recent PBS documentary on the same subject are both useful for these discussions. However\, we are now taking on two readings which are keys to unlocking the power of the color line in shaping the political economy our world and in shaping the lives of African Americans. Theodore Allen’s pamphlet “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” from 1975\, explores why and how skin color became the basis of a rigid caste system in the U.S. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk is his first important book\, takes readers into the world of racial caste as uniquely experienced by African Americans. \nOur four week reading sources will be: Theodore W. Allen\, “Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race\,” first published 1975\, 34 pages\, available as printed pamphlet and a downloadable PDF (http://readsettlers.org/settlers-data/ii/02_THEODOREWALLEN_ClassStruggleAndTheOriginsOfSlavery_Somerville1976_p34.pdf)\, and W.E.B Du Bois\, The Souls of Black Folk\, 1903\, available in all formats including free e-book\, 189 pages\, in the 1989 Bantam paperback\, available in libraries \nAdmission is sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/racial-boundaries-the-origin-and-consequences-of-the-color-line-in-the-usa/2019-06-17/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Rex_theatre.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190620T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190620T213000
DTSTAMP:20260412T045744
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006037-1561059000-1561066200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-06-20/
LOCATION:NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR