Post structuralist anarchism

don't know fotopoulous.

am currently working on levinas and derrida, the former is usually seen as suggesting an-archic ethic and in his work can be seen the founding moments of deconstruction. I think the slogan postmodernism is not useful, it just makes me think of wankers like baudrillard as well as interesting thinkers. Postmodernist writers sometimes come across as relativist and nihilist and this is a usual insult that tars derrida with the same brush, missing the ethical drive that is at the heart of deconstruction.

any suggestions on either levinas or derrida would be appreciated, got to write an essay soon!

i recommend derrida's differance as the most super duper essay out there. but reading levinas before that is best so that you can understand where he's coming from. 'ethics and the face' which is the 3rd part of levinas' totality and infinity is particularly useful with regard to derrida.

also, judith butler's Gender Trouble is amazing, really good critique of various feminist theorists (Beauvoir, Kristeva, Wittig & Irigaray), Levi-Strauss and Lacan as well as Foucault.It's frequently considered the founding text of queer theory. She's an out and out derridean, so they relate to each other very well.

Haven't read much barthes, but what i have read is good.. deleuze is interesting but a fucker to read. I cower in terror from Lacan though...

really? i've made more headway into Lacan than Deleuze...although that's probably because i know basically what Lacan's on about from reading Zizek and the like.

Fotopolos seems to be some kind of self-appointed demagogue - that journal you quoted from is basically a journal for him to publish his own ideas in - as far as i can tell he gets an article in each edition, and they all say the same thing - we need to be nice to each other and nice to nature - in a non-hierarchical way; and the problems with the world all originate from the fact that we're not.

hehehe... was at a talk on derrida, where the fella giving it said that zizek had an amazing knack of always being wrong. honestly, i have no idea about zizek, i've read a couple of extracts, but that's it. Although to say (as zizek did) that derrida 'turned' towards levinas in his later writings is completely wrong i think, deconstruction and differance are levinasian from the get-go. In general, psychoanalysis gives me the heebie-jeebies, not my thing at all. maybe i'll try to understand it when i'm finished my undergrad.

as for deleuze, i read a few bits of a thousand plateaus and some of it is coherent, some of it is illegible. there's a prof in my dept who says that there's a strong relationship between deleuze and the autonomia writers. I haven't read enough autonomia or deleuze stuff to agree or disagree though. Obviously Negri is influenced (although I hear that he misinterprets Deleuze) but beyond that I don't know.

the autonomists are the ones who've really thrown themselves at this stuff. foucault is a big thing for them too. they're just about the only people who took on board the french theory stuff without selling out on Marx (cough cough LACLAU).

zizek's worth a look, cos he's fun to read and illuminates lacan like some sort of a great big torch.

Deleuze and the political by Paul Patton does a good job of explaining Deleuze.

Well in his book Rebel Alliances Benjamin Franks` says the best introduction to May is this talk he gave.
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=272
Hope its of some help it is quite an interesting talk not too wanky.A good book too.

There's some strange stuff coming out on this thread

I think people are muddling the relation to class, I don't think PS anarchism says as much as people says it does.

So basically we can't only look at formal or structural features to explain society. We need to see how the macro-level is constituted and formed by the micro level (us). That also means we can't just smash infrastructure of hierarchy we must remake our society as well. It also means that hierarchy can emerge from anti-hierarchical structures.

For class: marx made the distinction between the class in itself (what exists) and the class for itself (what ought to exist and sometimes does). Basically May's book is talking about what exists. Its pretty common sense there. The working class is complex and dynamic, and has a plurality of interests, actions, divisions, etc. We fight to build the Working Class, that is a unity amongst proles to overthrow capital.

hey - I'm anonymous on this thread - why did I get deleted when no-one else seems to have been?

academic social theory + copious amounts of LSD = poststructuralism

...not a denunciation, just something to keep in mind (anybody remember those crazy drawings in A Thousand Plateaus? What the fuck!)