European Social Forum, 1-4 July 2010, Istanbul
The 2010 European Social Forum (ESF) will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, from Thursday 1 – Sunday 4 July. We hope to be participating and will have news about how up on this website much closer to the time. A Turkish translation of our editorial article, ‘Life in Limbo?‘, published in Issue 5 of Turbulence, is already underway.
The international 2010 ESF website is: www.esf2010.org and a Turkish language site can be found at www.sosyalforum.org
The ESF process’ website is here, and it contains information about both previous European social fora, as well as the preparation of this year’s event.
Turbulence Book: ‘What Would it Mean to Win?’ Out Now!
Our book, What Would it Mean to Win?, published by PM Press, is out now! The book contains all the articles from the now out-of-print first issue of the magazine, our collective textMove into the Light? Postscript to a Turbulence 2007, and a previously unpublished extended interview by PM Press author Sasha Lilly with Turbulence editors Michal Osterweil and Ben Trott. John Holloway has written a Foreword.
More information can be found here.
A series of launch events are being held in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next week.
Movements become apparent as “movements” at times of acceleration and expansion. In these heady moments they have fuzzy boundaries, no membership lists–everybody is too engaged in what’s coming next, in creating the new, looking to the horizon. But movements get blocked, they slow down, they cease to move, or continue to move without considering their actual effects. When this happens, they can stifle new developments, suppress the emergence of new forms of politics; or fail to see other possible directions. Many movements just stop functioning as movements. They become those strange political groups of yesteryear, arguing about history as worlds pass by. Sometimes all it takes to get moving again is a nudge in a new direction… We think now is a good time to ask the question: What is winning? Or: What would–or could–it mean to “win?”
Contributors include: Valery Alzaga and Rodrigo Nunes, Colectivo Situaciones, Stephen Duncombe, Gustavo Esteva, The Free Association, Euclides André Mance, Michal Osterweil, Kay Summer and Harry Halpin, Ben Trott, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.
Reviews
“Where is the movement today? Where is it going? Are we winning? The authors of the essays in this volume pose these and other momentous questions. There are no easy answers, but the discussion is always insightful and provocative as the writers bravely take on the challenge of charting the directions for the Left at a time of ecological crisis, economic collapse, and political disillusionment.” – Walden Bello, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South
“Turbulence presents an exciting brand of political theorising that is directed and inspired by current strategic questions for activism. This kind of innovative thinking, which emerges from the context of the movements, opens new paths for rebellion and the creation of real social alternatives.“ – Michael Hardt, co-author ofCommonwealth, Multitude and Empire.
“The history of the past half-century and particularly the last decade is as easily told as a series of victories as defeats, maybe best as both. Sometimes we won–and this is what makes the What Does It Mean to Win?anthology such a powerful vision of the possible and the seldom-seen present. The authors of this book connect some of the more remarkable events of the last decade–in Oaxaca, in the banlieus of Paris, in the crises of neoliberalism–into a constellation of possibilities and demands, demands on the world but also demands on the readers, to think afresh of what is possible and what it takes to get there. As one author begins, ‘The new movements embodied and posited deliberate reactions to the practical and theoretical failures of previous political approaches on the left.’ This is the book about what came after the failures, and what’s to come” – Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell.
Product Details
Author: Turbulence Collective
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-110-5
Published: April 2010
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 160
Dimensions: 9 by 6
Subjects: Politics, Philosophy, Activism
‘What Would it Mean to Win?’ is available in bookshops and online here: PM Press | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.de | Amazon.at | Amazon.fr | Amazon.co.jp | Borders| Barnes and Nobel | Books-A-Million |
Turbulence Events in San Francisco Bay Area in March
In conjunction with our publisher, PM Press, Turbulence editors will be participating in a series of events in the San Francisco Bay Area in March.
All events are taking place under the title ‘Prospects for Winning in an Age of Crisis’ and mark the launch of the Turbulence book, ‘What Would it Mean to Win?’
At each event, panelists include: Turbulence editor and author Tadzio Mueller; Turbulence author Gifford Hartman; In and Out of Crisis and Spectre editor Sasha Lilley; and Wobblies and Zapatistas author Andrej Grubacic.
SUNDAY 14 MARCH
2.00pm at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, in the Café, SF County Fair Building, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
More info: http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/
Map and Directions: http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/directions-time-and-place/
MONDAY 15 MARCH
7.00pm at The Green Arcade, 1680 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
More info: http://www.pmpress.org/content/calendar_event.php?eid=20100217105837804
Map and directions: http://www.thegreenarcade.com/pg/05map.html
TUESDAY 16 MARCH
7.30pm at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
More info: http://www.pmpress.org/content/calendar_event.php?eid=20100217111327107
Directions: http://www.moesbooks.com/cgi-bin/moe/location.html?id=TJeHBg6u
IN ADDITION…
Turbulence editors Tadzio Mueller and Ben Trott will both be speaking at the eighth annual meeting of the Cultural Studies Association (CSA) at University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720.
Here are the details of the panel:
Thursday March 18, 2010
ANTAGONISM AND THE PLURALITY OF SOCIAL STRUGGLES
(ASUC Student Center, Stephens)
Chair: Stevphen Shukaitis
‘Defining the (Post)Operaist Approach: Naming its Four Primary Elements’ – Ben Trott, Freie Universitaet Berlin
‘Another capitalism is possible? The Green New Deal, postOperaismo and the Biocrisis’ — Tadzio Mueller, Independent researcher, Berlin
‘Reading and Refusing Cultures of Fear/Terror with Autonomist Feminism’ — Fiona Jeffries, Center for Place, Culture and Politics, City University of New York
‘Thinking in the Conjuncture: Between Hegemonic and PostHegemonic Strategies’ — Chris Hurl, Carleton University
The full CSA conference program is online here.
Registration required. For more information, click here.
Mobile Turbulence
We’ve just installed some software (WPtouch iPhone Theme) which should make it much easier to read Turbulence articles online direct from your phone. The software should improve readability for anyone with the following phones or devices: iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre or BlackBerry Storm.
The software should provide a much more user-friendly format for readers using small devices, like mobile phones, and dramatically increase load time while doing so.
We’ll be tweaking the settings on this over the next few weeks, but any feedback is appreciated.
If you don’t like the new set up, you should be able to manually switch back to the old standard desktop version of the website in one flick of a digital image of a switch.
Google Buzz on the Turbulence Website
Last week, Google introduced a new social networking tool — Google Buzz — for Gmail users. You can learn more about how it works here. You can share Turbulence articles or news items via the new tool by clicking on the ‘Add This’ button visible on every page. It’s in the right hand column, directly above the Facebook Fan Box. The button looks like this:
Simply click on it and then on the Google Reader tab:
You’ll be taken to a page where you can post a link, with or without a comment, in Google Buzz.
We’ve also installed a one-click Google Buzz button in the News thread. You can use the tool simply by clicking on the red, blue, yellow and green speech bubble at the bottom of each News item on the right.
If you encounter any problems with the new tools, or have any ideas for improvements, email us at editors[at]turbulence.org.uk
More digital Turbulence: MySpace | Twitter | Turbulence on Facebook | E-Newletter
Coming Soon: Turbulence Book
In April 2010, we have a book, What Would it Mean to Win?, coming out with PM Press. The book contains all the articles from the now out-of-print first issue of the magazine, our collective text Move into the Light? Postscript to a Turbulence 2007, and a previously unpublished extended interview by PM Press author Sasha Lilly with Turbulence editors Michal Osterweil and Ben Trott. John Holloway has written a Foreword.
More information can be found here.
Movements become apparent as “movements” at times of acceleration and expansion. In these heady moments they have fuzzy boundaries, no membership lists–everybody is too engaged in what’s coming next, in creating the new, looking to the horizon. But movements get blocked, they slow down, they cease to move, or continue to move without considering their actual effects. When this happens, they can stifle new developments, suppress the emergence of new forms of politics; or fail to see other possible directions. Many movements just stop functioning as movements. They become those strange political groups of yesteryear, arguing about history as worlds pass by. Sometimes all it takes to get moving again is a nudge in a new direction… We think now is a good time to ask the question: What is winning? Or: What would–or could–it mean to “win?”
Contributors include: Valery Alzaga and Rodrigo Nunes, Colectivo Situaciones, Stephen Duncombe, Gustavo Esteva, The Free Association, Euclides André Mance, Michal Osterweil, Kay Summer and Harry Halpin, Ben Trott, and Nick Dyer-Witheford.
Reviews
“Where is the movement today? Where is it going? Are we winning? The authors of the essays in this volume pose these and other momentous questions. There are no easy answers, but the discussion is always insightful and provocative as the writers bravely take on the challenge of charting the directions for the Left at a time of ecological crisis, economic collapse, and political disillusionment.” – Walden Bello, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South
“Turbulence presents an exciting brand of political theorising that is directed and inspired by current strategic questions for activism. This kind of innovative thinking, which emerges from the context of the movements, opens new paths for rebellion and the creation of real social alternatives.” – Michael Hardt, co-author ofCommonwealth, Multitude and Empire.
“The history of the past half-century and particularly the last decade is as easily told as a series of victories as defeats, maybe best as both. Sometimes we won–and this is what makes the What Does It Mean to Win?anthology such a powerful vision of the possible and the seldom-seen present. The authors of this book connect some of the more remarkable events of the last decade–in Oaxaca, in the banlieus of Paris, in the crises of neoliberalism–into a constellation of possibilities and demands, demands on the world but also demands on the readers, to think afresh of what is possible and what it takes to get there. As one author begins, ‘The new movements embodied and posited deliberate reactions to the practical and theoretical failures of previous political approaches on the left.’ This is the book about what came after the failures, and what’s to come” – Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell.
Product Details
Author: Turbulence Collective
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-110-5
Published: April 2010
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 160
Dimensions: 9 by 6
Subjects: Politics, Philosophy, Activism
Available for Pre-Order from: PM Press | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.de | Amazon.at | Amazon.fr | Amazon.co.jp | Borders | Barnes and Nobel | Books-A-Million |
New Discussion Feature on Website
In a new section on our website, we hope to continue and extend the discussion begun the pages of our magazine. We will post links to reviews and publish select readers’ letters, as well as offering Turbulence authors the chance to respond.
If you would like to comment on, or respond to, any of the articles published by Turbulence, write to us at editors@turbulence.org.uk, stating clearly that what you are sending us is for publication.
The new section can be found here.
Sweden’s ‘Dagens Nyheter’ Newspaper’s Discussion of ‘Life in Limbo?’
A recent article in the cultural pages of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s biggest circulation daily newspaper (Wikipedia entry here), began by discussing the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar before segueing into a summary of the Turbulence 5 editorial, ‘Life in Limbo?‘ The original Swedish article is online here, and we’re posting an English translation below.
The world’s currently most watched film conveys suspicion against “the system”. What does that tell us?
Sverker Lenas in Dagens Nyheter (12/1/2010)
At the same time as the numbers for the Christmas trade are – once again – up to record heights, the number one cinema blockbuster takes issue with the destructiveness of a society that aspires to infinite growth. In “Avatar”, humanity has been forced to colonise and exploit a new planet in order not to perish on the old one. With the help of gigantic “hell trucks”, confusingly similar to those gigantic trucks that transport the Canadian tar sands, they mine the mineral unobtanium – a necessary component of Earth’s energy supply, all the while the planet’s indigenous population is being murdered, and the forest devastated.
Does director James Cameron believe in infinite growth on a finite planet? I’m guessing not. The real question is what it says about the state of world order if the world’s currently most-watched movie – produced in the heart of the global Empire – conveys suspicion against “the system”?
“We are trapped in a state of limbo” writes the international magazine Turbulence (no. 5/2009) in a massive manifesto in their most recent issue. Limbo, this emptiness, refers to the absence of an ideological core at the heart of the system. Although neoliberalism has been in crisis for nearly two years, the neoliberals are still in power. Banks and major companies have been nationalised, not in order to change a useless system, but in order to save it. Everything has changed, so everything can stay the same.
But, Turbulence points out, there has nonetheless been a change insofar as the middle ground of politics has moved. For example, only two years ago it was impossible to articulate a critique of growth without being labelled a loony. Today the 1972 Club of Rome’s report “Limits to Growth” is cited ever more frequently without mockery or ridicule. In Sweden there are today discussions about the economy’s ecological limits on well-known blogs such as Livet efter oljan (Life after oil), Cornucopia or Flute, newspapers such as Effekt magasin, and ever more frequently even in established outlets. The Social Democrats’ student organisation’s programme for the coming decade raises questions about the habit of growth. Even conservative politicians are doing it.
What will come to occupy the middle ground of politics instead of deregulation and privatisation? Climate justice and commoning – the extension of the commons – Turbulence hopes.
More suggestions are likely to follow at the same speed as Hollywood will produce movies predicting the collapse. All the while, the growth society’s container ships will continue on their journey. But is there really anybody standing behind the wheel? Or is it just the law of inertia that keeps the vessel on course?
Sverker Lenas
MP3 of Turbulence Panel at 2009 Historical Materialism Conference
The latest issue of Turbulence (number 5) was officially launched at the 2009 Historical Materialism Conference at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) in London last November. We did so with a panel chaired by Matteo Mandarini, with John Holloway as a discussant (thanks to both for their participation!) Turbulence editors participating were: David Harvie, Keir Milburn, Tadzio Mueller and Ben Trott.
An MP3 of the presentation of the new issue, John Holloway’s response, and the discussion which followed has been made available here.
Websites: Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory | Historical Materialism NYC 2010 Conference | Historical Materialism Toronto 2010 Conference
German translation of Turbulence 5 editorial, ‘Life in Limbo?’
A German translation of the editorial article, ‘Life in Limbo?‘, published in Issue 5 of Turbulence is now available online here. An extract from this translation was published in ak – zeitung für linke debatte und praxis, 546 (22.01.10). We would like to thank Angelica Seyfrid for the translation.
Danish and Dutch translations of the article are also available. Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Hindi, Finnish and Swedish translations are expected soon. Watch this space! (And let us know if you have any ideas about publications who might be interested in carrying these translations.)
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Who we are
Turbulence is a journal/newspaper that we hope will become an ongoing space in which to think through, debate and articulate the political, social, economic and cultural theories of our movements, as well as the networks of diverse practices and alternatives that surround them. Read more here
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