For this week's podcast we're joined by Swiss writer Hans Widmer, author of the 1983 anarchist classic bolo'bolo, to discuss his new book Cities for a Single Planet: A Model for the Ecological Transformation of the Earth, which was recently published in English by Autonomedia. /posts/36-utopian-with-145466789
Andreas, Eric, and Matt speak with Hans about the utopian tradition, social reproduction, and revolutionary planning. We cover many of his hot takes on family abolition and individualism, what Disneyland and Las Vegas get right, and whether we will really need bikes and green space.
LINKS:
--Cities For a Single Planet: /product/cities-for-a-single-planet-a-model-for-the-ecological-transformation-of-the-earth-by-hans-widmer-with-p-antoniadis-m-baumgartner-and-d-spuhler/
--New Alliance: https://newalliance.earth/
--o500: /
--New Start Switzerland: https://www.neustartschweiz.ch/
Hans Widmer is a philologist, novelist, and urban activist, and author of bolo'bolo (pseudonym P.M.), and "The Power of Neighborhood" and the Commons (2014).
For this week's podcast we're joined by Jim Fleming and Stevphen Shukaitis, publishers of Autonomedia, as well as its Minor Compositions imprint. /posts/28-autonomedia-140377351
We discuss the publisher's origins more than 40 years ago, inspired by Italy's Autonomia movement, and emerging out of a partnership with the Semiotext(e) journal. We talk through the legacies of some of Autonomedia's most popular books, including Stefano Harney & Fred Moten's The Undercommons (2013), Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch (2004), and Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991). We reflect on the project's longevity, as well as their business plan of being "too small to fail".
READINGS:
--Jim Fleming in conversation with Taylor Lewandowski - 2024: /content/jim-fleming/
--What can an open, insurgent publishing body do? - Stevphen Shukaitis, 2013: /2013/12/02/what-can-an-open-insurgent-publishing-body-do-an-interview-with-stevphen-shukaitis/
--Straitjackets, Machetes and, Oh Yes, Some Books - Colin Moynihan, 2003: /2003/08/25/nyregion/straitjackets-machetes-and-oh-yes-some-books.html
--The Good Life on South 11th Street - Colin Moynihan, 2006: https://archive.is/ud8lB#selection-437.0-437.14
Founding Editor and Publisher Jim Fleming has been at Autonomedia since 1983. Autonomedia is an autonomous zone for arts radicals in both old and new media that publishes books on politics and the arts that seek to transcend party lines, bottom lines and straight lines. From 1980-2015, Fleming was an Adjunct Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, CUNY.
Stevphen Shukaitis is Reader in Culture & Organization at the University of Essex and is co-director of the Centre for Commons Organizing, Values, Equalities and Resilience. Since 2005 he has worked with Autonomedia and is the founder and editor of the Minor Compositions imprint. His own books include The Wages of Dreamwork: Class Composition, Social Reproduction, and Cultural Labor (2024, with Joanna Figiel); Combination Acts: Notes on Collective Practice in the Undercommons (2019)...
Now available, our 2024 Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium!
Artwork by James Koehnline and Text by the Sacred Congregation for Universal Jubilation /product/2024-autonomedia-calendar-of-jubilee-saints-radical-heroes-for-the-new-millennium/
Our 32nd annual wall calendar, now in full color. Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project a reprieve from the 500-year-long sentence to life-at-hard-labor that the European colonization of the New World and the ensuing devastations of the rest of the world has represented. It is increasingly clear at the dawn of this new millennium that the Planetary Work Machine will not rule forever! Celebrate with this calendar on which every day is a holiday!
Saddlestitched, full color, 16″x11.75″, 32 pages, $10
But two, get one free!
RIP Antonio Negri (1933-2023)
In 1991 we published the paperback edition of Negri's Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, translated and introduced by Michael Ryan, Mauricio Viano, and Harry Cleaver, and edited by Jim Fleming
"In 1978, at the invitation of Louis Althusser, Negri presented a series of seminars on Marx's Grundrisse in Paris. This is the book of those seminars. Negri, a leading figure of the Italian Autonomy, was in France as a consequence of charges relating to revolutionary action brought against him by the Italian state.... Marx Beyond Marx aims toward a reconstruction of Marxist theory, a reconstruction that goes beyond Marx by going back to Marx, an angry Marxism summoned by the real possibility of communism... In setting the agenda for such a reconstruction, and in clarifying its priorities, Marx Beyond Marx is a pathbreaking and indispensable work." Capital and Class
"The publication of the English translation of Marx Beyond Marx is the first chance for an anglophone audience to study in depth the work of the most controversial political activist and intellectual in post-war Italy." C. George Caffentzis, New German Critique
A key figure in the Italian “Autonomia” Movement reads Marx’s Gründrisse, developing the critical and controversial theoretical apparatus that informs the “zero-work” strategy and other elements so crucial to this new and “heretical” tendency in Marxist theory. A challenge to both capitalist and socialist apologists for waged slavery.
On the Films of the Victor Jara Collective, Lewanne Jones, editor
This volume collects documents related to the two documentary films about Guyana and Walter Rodney produced by members of the Victor Jara Collective: “The Terror and the Time” and “In the Sky’s Wild Noise.” It includes the poems of Martin Carter from the films, interviews, reviews, images, personal statements from Collective members, and more.
8.5 x 11 inches, 42 pages, paperbound, $10
/product/on-the-films-of-the-victor-jara-collective-lewanne-jones-editor/
