reading room guide: truth is concrete
DESCRIPTION
A guide for the reading room assembled for Truth Is Concrete.TRANSCRIPT
For each salon that we establish, we present a collection texts.
Here we introduce our biggest reading list to date with a pinch
of salt.5 Looking at the book shelves in this salon we begin with
some questions, who are all these authors and philosophers
who understand the world as it was, or as it is now, a world both
you and I inhabit?
they are waved high so that we might keep moving?45,65,67
Take for instance Rousseau; we turn to him to mark the ideals
of the French Revolution61
. Here is a text written on stone. Yet
around it lies the unmarked graves and fertile soils of bodies, the
almost or completely forgotten words, gestures or friendships
that stitch the fabric of such and such an event.14,26,35,55,57
Perhaps, as liberal theory would idealise, in this salon we can be
rational, social beings who, gifted with content and the space
31,33 Democracy.
2
According to this logic, today we need only to glance at an RSS
feed and re-Tweet to take part. Radical Democracy?
Almost a hundred years ago Dada appeared in Europe.10,11
In the context of the First World War, this avant guard raged
against the rational, bourgeoisie man (this civilised French
the wholesale destruction of the earth and the polarisation of
wealth and power.18,27,32,40,47,51,67,74
to hope that it will become one?1,25,68
Perhaps we choose not to be rational or reasonable. Instead we
could choose to cry, or laugh or simply to chat shit together.
The word aesthetics, from the Greek meaning to feel.
to?23,38,41,59,60
Yet even with Marx in mind, in the Global
North it would not be the factories, now converted into
9 When what
is left of a European work force has been transformed to a
other”34,43,44,66,70
History isn’t purely intervals of events, with nothing happening
between one queen’s beheading and the next, between a
revolution and a counter revolution. In the clamorous coming
we hear is movement.20,29,58,62
“In the days when such a thing as a white barber was unknown in the South, every barbershop had its quartet […] Someone would start a tune, maybe even the barber himself, and two or three customers might join in, not singing the melody, but vocalizing tones that harmonized. When a new particularly rich chord was discovered there would be demands for
-James Weldon Johnson “Book of American Negro Spirituals”
For us, what takes place in this hair salon, between your words
and our scissors, between trust and friendship, are ideas and
relationships that form the very grains of the shifting sands of
worlds.
“It may be argued that place-takers and thesis-makers are the movers of history but this begs the question: what is the movement they make? To be sure, space may be traversed but the movement here comes down to a series
42
The books assembled in this salon have primarily been donated by the
three radical publishers mentioned below, to whom we are grateful.
Some books found here, or not mentioned in this guide, come from
our own collections, other donations or have found their way here as
liberated commodities.
Verso: Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing
house in the English-speaking world, publishing eighty books a year.
Semiotext(e): Best known for its introduction of French theory to
American readers, Semiotext(e) has been one of America’s most
PM Press: PM Press was founded at the end of 2007 by a small
collection of folks with decades of publishing, media, and organizing
experience. PM Press co-conspirators have published and distributed
hundreds of books, pamphlets, CDs, and DVDs.
Truth Is Concrete, Graz, 2012
Who authors this space? 3.6.8.13.17.18.24.28,32,37.48.52.63.64.67,70
THBTP GUIDE TO READINGS
Giorgio Agamben Means Without End
2000 University of Minnesota
Amy Allen ed. Democracy In What State? 2009 Columbia University Press
Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities 2006 Verso
Giovanni Arrighi Terence K. Hopkins
and Immanuel Wallerstein Anti-‐Systemic Movements 1989 Verso
Escalate Collective SALT 2012
Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein Race, Nation, Class Ambiguous Identities 1991 Verso
Etienne Balibar Politics and the Other Scene 2002 Verso
Jean Baudrillard Utopia Deferred 2006
Semiotext(e)
JaapJan Berg ed. Houses of Transformation 2009 NAi Publishers
Elsa & Peter Bethanis Dada & Surrealism 2006 For Beginners
Claire Bishop Artificial Hells 2012 Verso
Ryann Bosetti Regarding Head Shape: Acknowledgment Of The Haircut As Form
Publication Studio
Craig Buckley and Jean-‐Louis Violeau ed. Utopie: Texts and Projects 1967�–1978 2011 Semiotext(e)
Paul Buhle Robin Hood: People�’s Outlaw and Forest Hero, A Graphic Guide 2011
PM Press
Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book 2009 PM
Press / Reach and Teach
Jacinta Bunnell and Nathaniel Kusinitz
Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book 2010 PM
Press
Franco La Cecla Against Architecture 2008 PM Press
Noam Chomsky Occupy 2012 Penguin
Press
Christina Christoforou Whose Hair?
2011 Laurence King
Pierre Clastres Archeology of Violence
New Edition 2010 Semiotext(e)
Guy Debord Correspondence 2008
Semiotext(e)
Gilles Deleuze Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-‐1974) 2003 Semiotext(e)
Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek ed. The Idea of Communism 2010 Verso
Karrie Fransman The House That Groaned 2012 Square Peg
Isabelle Fremeaux and John Jordan Les Sentiers de L�’Utopie 2011 Zones
Lindsey German and John Rees A People�’s History of London 2012 Verso
André Gorz Critique of Economic Reason
2011 Verso
Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege
2010 Verso
Félix Guattari and Suely Rolnik Molecular Revolution in Brazil 2008 Semiotext(e)
Gilda Haas, Tomas Benitez and Carol Wells ed. We Shall Not Be Moved: Posters and the Fight Against Displacement in L.A.�’s Figueroa Corridor 2008 PM Press/SAJE
Jurgan Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society 1991 MIT Press
David Harvey Rebel Cities 2012 Verso
Dan Hind The Return Of The Public 2012
Verso
The Invisible Committee The Coming Insurrection 2009 Semiotext(e)
Norman M. Klein The History of Forgetting 2008 Verso
Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer ed. Hatred of Capitalism A Semiotext(e) Reader 2001 Semiotext(e)
Chris Kraus Where Art Belongs 2011
Semiotext(e)
Pierre Kropotkine La Commune 2008
L’Altiplano
Henri Lefebvre Introduction to Modernity
2011 Verso
Peter Linebaugh Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: Machine-‐Breaking, Romanticism, and the Several Commons of 1811-‐12
2012 PM Press / Retort
Prosper-‐Olivier Lissagaray History of the Paris Commune of 1871 2012 Verso
Yve Lomax Sounding the Event 2005 I.B
Tauris
Sylvere Lotringer and Christian Marazzi ed. Autonomia. 2007 Semiotext(e)
Sylvère Lotringer ed. The German Issue
2009 Semiotext(e)
Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic
Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History 2008 PM Press
Giacomo Marramao The Passage West 2012 Verso
James Marriot and Mika Minio-‐Paluello
The Oil Road 2012 Verso
Tom McDonough The Situationists and the City 2009 Verso
Farquhar McHarg Pistoleros!: The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg -‐ I: 1918
2011 PM Press / Christie Books
Cindy Milstein and Erik Ruin Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism 2012 PM Press
thehaircutbeforetheparty.net
Ben Morea and Ron Hahne Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherf**ker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group 2011
PM Press
Laura Oldfield Ford Savage Messiah
2011 Verso
Prole.info The Housing Monster 2012 PM
Press
Queen of the Neighbourhood
Revolutionary Women: A Book of Stencils
2010 PM Press
Jacques Rancière Proletarian Nights: The Workers�’ Dream in Nineteenth-‐Century France 2012 Verso
Jacques Rancière The Emancipated Spectator 2009 Verso
David Rattray How I Became One of the Invisible 1992 Semiotext(e)
Gerald Raunig Art and Revolution 2007
Semiotext(e)
Lukasz Rondula Alex Farquharson and Barbara Piwowarska ed. Star City 2010
MAMMAL Foundation
Kristin Ross The Emergence of Social Space 2008 Verso
Jean-‐Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract 1968 Penguin Books
Peter Sloterdijk Bubbles Spheres Volume I: Microspherology 2011 Semiotext(e)
Michael Sorkin All Over The Map 2011
Verso
Jeannie Sowers and Chris Toensing The Journey to Tahrir 2012 Verso
Charles J. Stivale Gilles Deleuze, Key Concepts 2011 ACUMEN
Erik Swyngedouw Civic City Cahier 5: Designing the Post-‐Political City and the Insurgent Polis 2011 Bedford Press
Astra Taylor, Keith Cessen and n+1
Occupy! 2011 Verso
Dianna Taylor ed. Foucault, Key Concepts
2011 ACUMEN
Tiqqun Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-‐Girl 2012 Semiotext(e)
Tiqqun This Is Not A Program 2011
Semiotext(e)
Paul Virilio Lost Dimension 1991
Semiotext(e)
Teun Voeten Tunnel People 2010 PM
Press
McKenzie Wark The Beach Beneath the Street 2011 Verso
Eyal Weizman The Least Of All Possible Evils 2011 Verso
Ellen Meilsins Wood Liberty and Property
2012 Verso
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