Kollektiv Hispano-Suiza: Arbeiter und Apparate. Bericht französischer Arbeiter über ihre Praxis 1945-70 (original french title Ouvriers face aux appareils: Une Experience de militantisme chez Hispano- Suiza) ... the experieces of a rank & file group in the Hispano-Suiza plant at Bois-Colombes ... don't know if it was ever translated into english
Dec 18 2010 13:26
Dec 18 2010 18:22
Juan Conatz wrote:
Last week I went through parts of The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Mainly through the Italian stuff, and little on the Autonomen. I found the author's writing style really annoying. Negri influenced post-autonomist writers I don't think can be trusted when it comes to writing history. Since their revolutionary subject is so vague and broad, they see the seeds of revolution in everything. Because of this, I always feel like they are exaggerating stuff, so I become suspicious of the validity of any history they write.
To be fair, I really don't think Katsiaficas is a Negri-influenced guy at all. His theoretical references seem quite orthodox New Left, like Herbert Marcuse, and at the end of the book he engages in sustained criticism of Negri for trying to shoehorn the "new social movements" into a workerist schema. He leans for theoretical support on Left-Habermasians like Seyla Benhabib.
If anything, the perspective of that book is the antithesis of guys like Cleaver, Negri, etc. who see all social movements as manifestations of "workers" revolt.
Dec 19 2010 10:52
David in Atlanta wrote:
The Clearing sounds interesting. I've started reading Faulkner, got my toes wet with an anthology of short stories and novel excerpts, then plowed straight into Absalom, Absalom about the rise and fall of a Mississippi plantation family. I've been told it's considered his most difficult work, I can see why. It's not a nice neat straight story line with a single narrator. Well worth the effort though. It's no "Happy slaves singing on the levee until the damn yankees came" picture of the south, Faulkner shows the south as a culture that placed itself under a curse due to the cheating and theft of land from the Indians and slavery.
I saw another Gautreaux (The Clearing) book in the shop yesterday, it seemed a bit like more of the same so I wasn't going to spend £7 on it.
Faulkner looks good, I'll keep an eye out for one of his.
Dec 20 2010 02:27
Just started Labour Wars. The first chapter seems to be a good start. I\m also trying to get through Worker's Councils but I don't find it an engaging read at all. Its written in a very wonky fashion. It could be the translation.
Dec 20 2010 23:28
smg wrote:
I\m also trying to get through Worker's Councils but I don't find it an engaging read at all. Its written in a very wonky fashion. It could be the translation.
I have the AK press edition translated by I believe Robert Barsky and it reads fine to me. Which one do you have?
Dec 21 2010 01:40
The same one. I might just dislike the way Pannekoek writes which is too bad because I like the way he thinks.
Dec 27 2010 18:27
Reg Groves: Sharpen the Sickle!: The History of the Farm Workers' Union (1948)
Dec 27 2010 20:04
the lost revolution, about the officials and workers' party. i'm 200 pp into this 600 pp book, 1970-1972 period, pretty depressing stuff
Dec 27 2010 20:46
Fighters Against Fascism by Max Arthur, fairly shite oral history collection of International Brigades but was only 1.99 in Bargain Books, meh
Dec 30 2010 18:37
I very enjoyed Chevengur by Andrej Platonov. Its a bizzarre dystopian novel about sovjet enthusiasm and mass death in the 20ies. In my opinion it also contains an good critique and mockery of the role of the revolutionary activist. Some consider it one of the most important 20st-century dystopias, but quite nobody, exept of russians, even know about it.
Dec 31 2010 20:49
An Unnatural Order by Jim Mason
I bought it primarily because of my interest in animal rights, but I'm getting some primitivist vibes.
Dec 31 2010 23:48
P.S. Has anyone read George Bush's new autobiography? I'm tempted to pick it up if only because he was a fixture of my adolescence.
Jan 12 2011 10:23
Bernd Gehrke / Gerd-Rainer Horn (ed): 1968 und die Arbeiter - Studien zum proletarischen Mai in Europa (1968 and the workers - studies on the proletarian May in Europe) ... plenty of interesting stuff e.g. on Poland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Western and Eastern Germany ... all in German
Jan 12 2011 17:21
I'm reading bell hooks' "Outlaw Culture." It's the third book of hers I've read.
Does anyone know why she speaks of "feminist movement" as opposed to "the feminist movement"? It's a strange formulation I've never heard outside her work. Is there a significance?
Jan 12 2011 23:21
has anyone read 'The London Hanged'?
It looked like it could be good, but I didn't get it, I'll go back and buy it, if it's worth a read.
Jan 13 2011 14:17
I wasnt sure where else to post this so -
Ive got a copy of Jonathan Sperber's 'The European Revolutions,1848-1851', second edition.
It has a few pages of text underlined in red but that is all. Would anyone be interested in purchasing it? PM if you are. If i dont get much response soon ill give it to the charity shop anyway.
Jan 13 2011 14:24
How to live. Simon Munnery. In the end all that matters is what you pass on. Pass it on.
Feb 12 2011 00:05
Emile Zola's - Germinal at the moment.
I just finished Alone in Berlin which I picked out after recommendations on here. Definitely would suggest people hunt a copy down.
Feb 12 2011 11:55
David Shenk - the genius in all of us
Cordelia Fine - delusions of gender
Feb 12 2011 13:13
Ladies Man - A decent book, Richard Price really doesn't do narrative. Book could have ended twenty pages earlier without really changing much.
Some sharpe book off freecycle which was a bit shit
The Da Vinci code - Not too bad in a shit way.
La Banquise - not as immediately gripping as Un homme de trop, need to give it another go.
Feb 12 2011 17:51
We just started a Grundrisse reading group with Paul Mattick Jr. which should be great.
Also reading Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity and Marshall Berman's All That's Solid...
Feb 12 2011 19:04
Optical Media by Friedrich Kittler.
Feb 12 2011 23:30
Quote:
Cordelia Fine - delusions of gender
Nearly bought this yesterday - is it any good? I don't know anything about science really, is it technical or readable?
Feb 12 2011 23:32
"tropic of Capricorn" by Henry Miller.
recommended for anybody who is not afraid of hard language.
Feb 13 2011 20:29
Just read Fred Hoyle's The Black Could. A complete surprise, it is a science fiction novel, which is actually pretty good.
Reading Paz's Durruti and the Spanish revolution. A good read indeed.
Feb 15 2011 05:23
gypsytimetraveller wrote:
Still reading war and peace...
I just started it. Is it worth the 1500 pgs?Did you ever finish it?
Feb 15 2011 05:32
-Storming Heaven (mostly because I'm reformatting it into text from PDF...)
-Marx-Engels Reader
-Capital
-various things in libcom library
Feb 15 2011 08:58
Common ground in a liquid city by Matt Hern. New book from AK discussing city planning, public spaces, communities and ecology. Good read so far.
Feb 21 2011 14:37
Well...
I've started Sigmund Freud's complete works, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and World Without Visa...
I'm getting quite sloppy with my reading, I feel like I have a pile of books which I never finish.
I've read and re-read Q many times. I love it.
Oh! And Jean-Paul Sartre's play The Devil and the Good Lord. "When the rich wage war it's the poor who die"!
And The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by a great Dominican author, Junot Diaz.
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The God Instinct - Jesse Bering