Instead of An Introduction

The following texts were compiled for the amusement of all those participating in the First Annual East Bay Anarchist Book Fair.  Each set of texts corresponds to a facilitated conversation. Those conversations will be held at the Book Fair, on Saturday, December 1st.  It should be noted that all of the following texts are excerpts or abridgments, unfortunately the manner in which the texts has been excerpted is not always clearly marked. We tried to pull from texts that are already available, for free, online. Download your copy of the EBAB-ReaderPDF

Some of these texts nuzzle and lean in to us, and we weep with the joy of recognizing ourselves and our desires. In other texts, we find much to critique and question. The hope is that these booklets will pop off, like little sparks from a fire, or perhaps float about town, like the parasol of a dandelion seed. If you catch one, mark it up with your number 2 pencil.

Prepare Questions! Let’s unravel all the critical issues.

See you at the fairgrounds!

Schedule of Conversations

11:00 am – The Event

How does change happen? Through an accumulation of victories? Or in a sudden rush of activity? In nature as much as in culture, discontinuous change is the rule, rather than the exception. Historically, we have referred to the eruptive social transformations that  we desire as the revolution, the insurrection, the collapse. We orient ourselves towards their occurrence, in the future, even as we try to navigate through the storms of the present. This tiger’s leap out of history is what we are calling THE EVENT. What is the relevance of the event—revolution, insurrection, etc—today? Is it still relevant, for us?

The Anarchist Tension by Alfredo Bonanno, The Revolution in Reverse by David Graeber, What is the Contemporary by Giorgio Agamben

12:30 pm – Pleasure

We live to work and work to live. But what about pleasure? For too long, we have sacrificed our satisfaction, today, in the name of a better tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. Is there a liberatory potential in the immediate unleashing of enjoyment? What would such an enjoyment look like? We discuss two provocative texts, which argue that—whatever the ‘enjoyment to come’ might look like—it will not take the form of a revived sexual revolution, but rather, a revolution against sexuality.

On the Genealogy of Ethics by Michel Foucault, To Destroy Sexuality by Guy Hocquenghem

3:00 pm – Violence

Violence vs Non-Violence: A Debate

Ariel Attack v Aragorn!

4:30 pm – Nature

Wake up and smell the permafrost reads a familiar sign on the I-80. Indeed: the permafrost is melting. As it does so, it releases tons of additional greenhouse gases into the air. Climate change is happening way ahead of schedule, and—due to feedback loops, like melting permafrost—it may be unstoppable. What do we do, in the face of the ongoing loss of nature, our de-naturing of ourselves and of the Earth? How does climate change affect our aspirations? Catastrophism is an attractive attitude, to many, but in the midst of an unfolding catastrophe, won’t we still be forced to take sides?

One Shot Left by George Monbiot,  Desert by Anonymous

Crisis

Open the papers ten years ago, and one would have read story after story of a triumphal capitalism. It was spreading wealth, in the form of home-ownership, in rich countries, and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, in poor countries. All the good of society came, and could only come, from the market. Open the paper today, and that atmosphere of cheery self-congratulation has dissipated. Instead, the talk is of endless crisis: financial crisis, housing crisis, euro crisis, economic crisis, food crisis, ecological crisis, etc. What does this litany of crises mean, for us? Do they spell the end of capitalism and the collapse of civilization, or merely their continuation in new forms?

What Is To Be Done? by Paul Mattick, Identity in Crisis by Baedan

Download your copy of the EBAB-ReaderPDF