Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Idris2002]

It doesnt matter what the quiddich means in this example ( or any fucking example as far as I can see )- its another way of excluding the unwwashed masses by the use of big fucking words and made up abstract concepts, so the literati can engage in a mutual tug fest in private.

He says this as if it's a bad thing.

 

[frogwoman]

<< We view re-energising popular discussion and action on the left a necessity. Our belief in the need for an event in Oxford bringing together progressive politics stems both from a conviction in the continued and critical relevancy of Marxist and leftist ideas and theory and from the sad and persistent weakness of focused or organised progressive political organisation locally and nationally, despite such pressing conditions of political and economic crisis, and despite the very many who would under more favourable circumstances participate in such interventions. Therefore we are hosting again this forum which will continue to address these issues and draw in individuals from the two universities in Oxford, the city and beyond to consider critically ideas about social progress and transformation. Ultimately ORF seeks to contribute to a critical culture of left debate, theory and action, as well as to cement political and intellectual links between individuals and groups who will have a basis upon which to work in the future. >>

 

[Belushi]

Because what the left really needs at the moment is more fucking debate.

 

[frogwoman]

fucking "anarchism and animals"?

 

[Idris2002]

fucking "anarchism and animals"?

Unfortunate choice of expletive there, frogs.

 

[sihhi]

What in the name of JSPRC is a quidditch pitch? No do google am on a tablet and lazy.

As ld pointed out it's Zer0 books who published Laurie Penny's Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism - 68 small-size pages of reheated articles (originally £9.99 now down to £7).

Also After Pornified: How Women Are Transforming Pornography & Why It Really Matters by Anne Sabo, and Richard Seymour's pompous The Meaning of David Cameron.

Zer0 Books Panel (1): Oppositional Geography Agata Pyzik (Images of the East and West in Popular Culture During the Cold War); Tom Astley (A Redefinition of Left-Wing Identity in Contemporary Cuban Music Making); Alex Niven (The North East of England as a Quidditch Pitch)

The author Alex Niven is a comment hero for the Guardian on all things North-East, he is the figure that represents you, firky,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/03/geordies-cheryl-cole-geordie-shore

"Cheryl Cole, who risks becoming a Jade Goody for the 2010s"

 

[sihhi]

if it's any help, it's a session which is part of the oppositional geography panel alongside a redefinition of left-wing identity in contemporary cuban music making, both of these are being held in the Okinaga Room

It's a sad fact that the left in the education sphere is pushed to conducting its events in the higher end universities. Although there are academics from both Oxford and Oxford Brookes, it is held in a room in Oxford named after the dean of Japan's premier private university.

 

[Favelado]

It's a CHILDREN'S BOOK. It's for CHILDREN.

WHY DO GROWN ADULTS INSIST ON READING IT?

 

[frogwoman]

As ld pointed out it's Zer0 books who published Laurie Penny's Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism - 68 small-size pages of reheated articles (originally £9.99 now down to £7).

Also After Pornified: How Women Are Transforming Pornography & Why It Really Matters by Anne Sabo, and Richard Seymour's pompous The Meaning of David Cameron.





The author Alex Niven is a comment hero for the Guardian on all things North-East, he is the figure that represents you, firky,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/03/geordies-cheryl-cole-geordie-shore

"Cheryl Cole, who risks becoming a Jade Goody for the 2010s"

they also published gilad atzmon's book iirc. Yeah nice one for the "marxist and leftist ideas".

 

[sihhi]

they also published gilad atzmon's book iirc. Yeah nice one for the "marxist and leftist ideas".

Yes.

They still published despite the protests. It came with an endorsement by US capitalist IR theory realist John Mearsheimer co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy -a/k/a everything America does bad in the Middle East is AIPAC's fault.

Anne Sabo's book is basically a pro-pornography tract dressed up as something academic.
Richard Seymour's is thin to the point of nothing.

 

[frogwoman]

Yes.

They still published despite the protests. It came with an endorsement by US capitalist IR theory realist John Mearsheimer co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy -a/k/a everything America does bad in the Middle East is AIPAC's fault.

Scum.

 

[sihhi]

Scum.

Mearsheimer or Zer0?

They tried to make amends for publishing Atzmon by proving how antiracist they were with Dave Hann's (author of No Retreat) Physical Resistance: 100 Years of Fighting Fascism.

Alex Niven on the importance of Zer0:
"Things like John Peel dying, and the NME turning into a musical supplement of Heat magazine, and the marketisation of academia, and the literary scene being reduced to a catalogue of awards ceremonies and PR spectacles really hit the counterculture hard in the last two or three decades. The blogosphere seemed to reawaken an oppositional critical tradition at a crucial moment."
suggests they take the idea of a counter-culture seriously.

This

"SS: How do you see the relationship between pop music and "criticality" these days?
OWEN HATHERLEY: The writing many of us encountered in the music press in (roughly) the 80s-mid 90s was exemplary in its combination of mass audience, unpatronising erudition, politicisation and fearless, sometimes experimental prose, and it is in lots of ways a model for what we tried to do with Zer0."

suggests they're explicitly basing themselves on the NME and Melody Maker in the early 1990s.

They also had a series of lectures in Oxford University's Taylor Institute.

"Zer0 Books has injected wit, wisdom, and energy into an otherwise moribund intellectual scene. Putting a stamp on the early 2010s, a series of provocative, ebullient texts (by writers such as Mark Fisher, Owen Hatherley, Nina Power, and Carl Neville) have bypassed a staid publishing industry to bring fresh, radical ideas to a popular readership.
While liberal Britain has become increasingly inured, lifestyle-obsessed, and forgiving of the excesses of neoliberalism, Zer0 has helped to reinstate an empowered critical avant-garde. The Zer0 model has provided a new blueprint for cultural and theoretical writing, one that exposes the hermeticism, careerism, and sheer sterility of much modern academic discourse.
The 2011-12 Zer0 Lecture Series at Oxford aims to provide a forum for the dissemination and debate of forthcoming or recently published Zer0 texts. Taken together, the six sessions represent a summary of the full range of cultural writing in the UK at the start of the new decade: from the philosophy of video games, to the failures of 19th century architecture; from the class politics of the band Pulp, to future possibilities in avant-garde music making; from the ethics of sexual exhibitionism to the shortcomings of the BBC and the Guardian newspaper."
http://zerobookslectures.wordpress.com/
Basically they are attacking people for the "hermeticism, careerism, and sheer sterility of much modern academic discourse" by producing stuff that will get into the reviews pages of the broadsheets because there's titles about superhero movies, TV cop/crime shows and the band Pulp.
Some of it is probably OK, some excusable but this is where it leads:
Superactually: Micro-Essays on Post-Ironic Life: "A bunch of tiny essays on life after irony, this is a book to help smart people feel hip and hip people feel smart."
"This is a book of short, provocative essays. Some are on fun topics in pop culture (hackers, dubstep, cat memes, thinking green, parkour, and the girl next door). Others are takes on technical topics in social theory (sensation, hype, discrimination, imagination, and the typical). This is a book to help smart people feel hip and hip people feel smart."
http://www.zero-books.net/books/superactually
We await to be told what the typical is by Zer0.

 

[frogwoman]

Both.

 

[emanymton]

I like how non-anglo people don't get names.




Are there words for this?

I think it is probably just that they don't have a specific individual named yet. Which does lead to the amusing idea of them running around trying to find an Ecuadorian student, any Ecuadorian student.
As I random aside Jamie Woodcock is on the SWP NC, and is one on the ones in the new faction. I have no idea about his background but he sounds bloody posh.

 

[love detective]

....even if you don't have an Ecuadorian student, please send an Ecuadorian student....

 

[Belushi]

I know a Peruvian window cleaner if thats any good.

 

[love detective]

i've got an Indian software developer on stand by

 

[DotCommunist]

we must have vibrancy

 

[The39thStep]

Ecuadorian = oppressed, student= at forefront

 

[sihhi]

I wouldn't mind if the vibrancy was achieved by actually having ordinary people.

So the Polish representative at Oxford Radical Forum is Agata Pyzik - here pictured alongside Owen Hatherley (friend and key figure in Zer0) - at a lecture about Polish politics.

(audience of an event hosted by 'Critical Practice Chelsea' - the left-wing set within Chelsea College of Art & Design. http://criticalpracticechelsea.org/...ublic:_insights_into_the_Polish_public_sphere )

Her blog is called 'Poor Sexy East' http://poorsexyeast.tumblr.com
The book being written is called Poor but Sexy. It's obviously using irony based on the right-wing media soundbite from a speech by the mayor of Berlin talking about East Berlin, but it just sort of clashes.

Often, not always, the non-British are not really representative due to class reasons of their linguistic communities.

 

[Idris2002]

I wouldn't mind if the vibrancy was achieved by actually having ordinary people.

So the Polish representative at Oxford Radical Forum is Agata Pyzik - here pictured alongside Owen Hatherley (friend and key figure in Zer0) - at a lecture about Polish politics.

"Women workers in my country have balls of steel this size."

 

[sihhi]

"Women workers in my country have balls of steel this size."

That's unnecessary Idris, unless I'm reading you wrong.

It could equally well have been Owen Hatherley talking about the importance of Sheffield via Jarvis Cockers proletarian imagery etc.

Owen Hatherley on holiday in Naples.

 

[cesare]

The audience look a bit bored.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Must have my pic taken with my hands in the air like a proper intellectual, like.

 

[DotCommunist]

you aren't an intellectual till you've been snapped mid-jazhanding

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Folded legs, clasped chins.

 

[Idris2002]

That's unnecessary Idris, unless I'm reading you wrong.

Did I go too far?

 

[Pickman's model]

Must have my pic taken with my hands in the air like a proper intellectual, like.

yeh, i'll make sure there's a picture of you with your hands in the air.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

You talkin' to me?

 

[Pickman's model]

You talkin' to me?

i don't see anybody else here