The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004- Adrienne Rich

Title: The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004
Author: Adrienne Rich
ISBN 10: 0393327558ISBN-13: 978-0393327557
Binding: Paper
Date: 2006
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Number of Pages: 113
Price: $13.95

What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics,

Title: What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics,
Author: Adrienne Rich
ISBN 10: 0393312461ISBN-13: 978-0393312461
Binding: Paper
Date: 2003
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Number of Pages: 321
Price: $12.95

Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence

Title: Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
Author: Judith Butler
ISBN 10: 1844675440ISBN-13: 978-1844675449
Binding: paperback
Date: 2006
Publisher: Verso
Number of Pages: 192 pages
Price: £9.99

Judith Butler is one of America's most daring and vibrant thinkers. In this profound appraisal of post-September 11th America, now with a new foreword, Judith Butler considers the conditions of heightened fear and aggression that followed the attack on the Twin Towers, and the US government's decision to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. She critiques this use of violence as a response to loss and grief, and argues that the vulnerability the West now feels offers a chance to imagine a world without violence, a world where the interdependency of peoples and nations becomes the basis for a global political community.

Through five impassioned and personal essays, Butler responds to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.

Music at the limits- Edward Said

Title: Music at the limits

Author: Edward Said

ISBN: 9780747597780

Binding: Hard Back

Date: August 2008

Publisher: Bloomsburry UK

Number of Pages: 352 pages

Price: 995/-

Though best known for his political writings (Orientalism), Said was also, from 1986 until his death in 2003, the music critic for the Nation, and this collection draws together reviews from that publication and other magazines. Said had very firm opinions and lashed out against New York City's classical music scene in the 1980s and early '90s for producing safe but grimly uninteresting performances and repertories. Instead of simply blaming the intellectual cowardice of most contemporary musicians, however, he was able to provide detailed technical critiques of a conductor's handling of a Beethoven symphony or a singer's inadequacies in a Wagnerian role. Glenn Gould's intellectualized style of playing was a source of fascination to the critic, and new biographies or films about the pianist would inevitably draw his attention. Said also writes about his friendship with Daniel Barenboim (who contributes an introduction), which leads to one of the few discussions of Middle Eastern politics; a review of the controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer sparks another. For the most part, however, his attention is strictly on the music, and he proves himself to have been astute and passionately engaged. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

M/C Reviews by Tim Roberts

Fearless Speech- Michel Foucault

Title: Fearless Speech
Author: Michel Foucault
ISBN 10:1-58435-011-3 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-011-8
Binding: Paper
Date: 2001
Publisher: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Number of Pages: 183
Price: $12.95

I would like to distinguish between the 'history of ideas' and the 'history of thought.' The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas, which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and induces crisis in the previously silent behaviors, practices, and institutions. It is the history of the way people become anxious, for example, about madness, about crime, about themselves, or about truth.

Comprised of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault while teaching at Berkeley in the Fall of 1983, Fearless Speech was edited by Joseph Pearson and published in 2001. Reviewed by the author, it is the last book Foucault wrote before his death in 1984 and can be read as his last testament. Here, he positions the philosopher as the only person able to confront power with the truth, a stance that boldly sums up Foucault's project as a philosopher.

A Very nice blog on Foucault

A Grammar of the Multitude - Paolo Virno

Title: A Grammar of the Multitude
Author: Paolo Virno

Translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson
ISBN -10:1-58435-021-0 ISBN-13:978-1-58435-021-7
Binding: Paper
Date: January 2004
Publisher: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Number of Pages: 117
Price: $14.95

Description

Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital."

Multitude and Working class

The Republic of Multitude- Interview with Paolo Virno

Public Sphere, labour, multitude: Strategies of resistance in Empire with Tony Negri

Paolo Virno and Judith Revel revisit the Foucault/Chomsky debate

Archeology of Violence by Pierre Clastres

Title: Archeology of Violence
Author: Pierre Clastres
ISBN: ISBN-10:0-936756-95-0 ISBN-13:978-0-936-75695-0
Binding: Paperback
Date: December 1994
Publisher: MIT Press (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)
Number of Pages: 200
Price: $14.95

Pierre Clastres broke up with his mentor Claude Levi-Strauss to collaborate with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari on their Anti-Oedipus. He is the rare breed of political anthropologist—a Nietzschean—and his work presents us with a generalogy of power in a native state. For him, tribal societies are not Rousseauist in essence; to the contrary, they practice systematic violence in order to prevent the rise in their midst of this "cold monster": the state. Only by waging war with other tribes can they maintain the dispersion and autonomy of each group. In the same way, tribal chiefs are not all-powerful; to the contrary, they are rendered weak in order to remain dependent on the community. In a series of groundbreaking essays, Clastres turns around the analysis of power among South American Indians and rehabilitates violence as an affirmative act meant to protect the integrity of their societies. These "savages" are shrewd political minds who resist in advance any attempt at "globalization."