“Capitalism defeated traditional societies because it was more exciting than they were. But now there is something more exciting than capitalism: its destruction.” In the face of things with true power (capitalism, the law, public opinion, etc.), philosophy is not provisioned to battle them head-on. But it can wage “a guerrilla campaign against them,” writes Andrew Culp (referencing Deleuze) in his new book A GUERRILLA GUIDE TO REFUSAL. Harnessing critical theory, this book takes us on a journey through a subterranean network of communiques, military documents, contemporary art, political slogans, adversarial blogs, and captive media. This conversation among scholars traces a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know it.



Andrew Culp is professor of media history and theory in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. He is author of A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal (2022) and Dark Deleuze (2016).

Will Conway is a PhD candidate whose research centers around disability, biopolitics, and theories of resistance.

Jose Rosales is an independent researcher. With Claire Fontaine and Iman Ganji, they are co-author of Foreigners Everywhere and the author of 'Communism as the Riddle Posed to History' in The Double Binds of Neoliberalism (Rowan & Littlefield, 2022), as well as various other texts that can be found online. Currently, they are co-editor (alongside Andreas Petrossiants) of the multi-volume series, Diversity of Aesthetics. 

Violet is a queer independent researcher based in India working on theories of resistance, biopolitics, and destituent communism.



References:
Gilles Deleuze
Michel Foucault
Arlette Farge
May 68
Jean Genet
Guy Hocquenghem
Johann Most
Lucy Parsons
Friedrich Engels
Paul B. Preciado (and “Marcos”)
Christopher Chitty (Sexual Hegemony)
Karl Marx
Jacques Derrida
Roberto Esposito
Antonio Negri
Félix Guattari
Bernadette Corporation’s Get Rid of Yourself (film)
Edward Said
Eqbal Ahmad (Confronting Empire)
Frantz Fanon
Robin D. G. Kelley (Race Rebels)
Homi Bhabha
Fred Moten
Nahum Dimitri Chandler (paraontology)
Claire Fontaine
Tiqqun
Saidiya Hartman
Kwame Ture
Nanni Balestrini (The Unseen)

     

Keywords: archive, power, surveillance, cybernetics, refusal, political, political control, philosophy, anarchy, class, class war, transformation



Several references are made to specific current events, and as such we want to mention the date of this recording: March 31, 2022.

A field guide to a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know it

Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is a book that asks why so many big bluefin tuna have vanished from the Atlantic Ocean. Author Jen Telesca notes that the term “red gold” has emerged out of the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands on the global market; for reference, in January 2019, a 613-pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold at market in Tokyo for an astounding record of $3.1 million US dollars. To research this book, Telesca gained unparalleled access to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (also known as ICCAT) to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned to it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. This interview between Telesca and editor Jason Weidemann was recorded in May 2020.

More about the book: http://z.umn.edu/redgold

A transcription of this conversation is available: z.umn.edu/t-redgold

A field guide to a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know it

University of Minnesota Press

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