As this season of the podcast comes to an end… I wanted to review what we have done in 2018 and what we hoped to have done. I presented my initial sketches of what is to be done and wanted to discuss them with some people. The next few episodes will be those conversations from three different post-left positions. Andy Robinson is an author, commentator, and provocatour.
From the article Thinking from the Outside: Avoiding Recuperation
Working inside the system in any way immediately creates difficulties, not least the dangers of recuperation, reformism, and selling-out. These dangers have a structural form — the turning-against-itself of desire, the conversion of an active force, which uses the external world as a series of tools or partners in dialogue, with a reactive force, which comes to value the fixed forms of the external world as goods in themselves.
We discuss the crisis in anarchism (and second wave in particular), the critique of modern reason and cybernetic capitalism, 1973 (and the end of Breton Woods), and the movements we need now (the fight against fordism vs cybernetic power). How a yearning for an authentic life pits us against the monopoly of violence. Andy is very smart.
Contact us at thebrilliant@thebrilliant.org
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Aside from the@library and comments on anews, is there any more content from Andy, original content or even what they read or where they are doing their research / getting information online? Such a powerful analysis.
Came along to ask for similar! Generally, and in particular around cybernetics.
So I found a series of articles from Ceasefire magazine written by an Andrew Robinson who I *think* is the same person, though it appears to be a pretty common name. I remembered someone asking about it here so if anyone’s paying attention 8 months later, here you go:
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/author/andrew-robinson/
How does “it”, the cyber model of social control, restrict options? How does it do the restricting and the enabling? He said that around 24:00 but didn’t break that down any further.
I’m not Andy R or speaking for them, but I suppose the cyber model of social control restricts options through social media via same’s supplanting of traditional organizational methods. The cyber model makes all preceding methods inefficient and obsolete, but is difficult (impossible?) to effectively organize anything without using the cyber model’s tools. We all have, or have had, the FB and Tw and YT etc accounts, but how much, how, towards whom, and how transparently do we use them?
Thus you can get a higher headcount for your thing, but the quality (=depth of affinity), commitment, or sincerity could be lower than in traditional word-of-mouth methods. It both restricts and enables.
Great ep. Im unclear on what Amdy meant about Modern Reason? Is he just referring to rationality, the age of reason, enlightenment, etc?