August 14, 2009
You could, if you wanted!
So this post by Carl and this reading group that Mikhail and co are doing made me think of this -
I think it’d be fun to get some folk to blog on the same reading or one of a small set of readings. Of course my impulse is always to go to Marx. Any takers? Any ideas for what to read? (How about some of v2 of Capital? Or ch25 of v1?)
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Hey Nate - I’m up for something on Capital - although if it could wait until our term break (in two weeks), it’d be mighty nice…
I have a pile of things planned to write on Capital (well, planned is probably too strong a word, but…), but the first half of this term has simply been horrific, workload-wise… The second half involves even more teaching hours, but far less prep, so I’m hoping that’ll be when I get my brain back for a few hours each week…
Comment by N. Pepperell — August 14, 2009 @ 7:04 am
Hey - I’d be up for this too - don’t have any real thoughts as to what’d be good to read / discuss. Something from Captial sounds cool though.
Comment by duncan — August 14, 2009 @ 7:16 am
I’m game, especially something from Capital.
Comment by Reid Kane — August 14, 2009 @ 7:25 am
I’m all for it, and something from Capital would be great. But how to keep the dead tradition of NP’s dissertation from weighing like a nightmare on our brains?… ;-p
Comment by Carl — August 14, 2009 @ 9:07 am
I’d be in on some Capital as well, but anything by Marx really - I haven’t read Grundrisse in a while or something to restore our faith in the value of criticism (some “critical critique of criticism”) after recent attacks on its usefulness by some (isn’t that ultimately a form of critique itself?) - let me know.
Comment by Mikhail Emelianov — August 14, 2009 @ 10:53 am
One more thing, anyone is planning on going to Rethinking Marxism at UMass this time around (last one was in 2006)? It should be fun. I’m trying to persuade wife to come along.
Comment by Mikhail Emelianov — August 14, 2009 @ 10:57 am
Something from volume 2! I can’t get this comment thing to work.
Comment by JCD — August 14, 2009 @ 11:19 am
Nevermind, there it goes.
Comment by JCD — August 14, 2009 @ 11:31 am
I propose we use an overly complicated vote, in two parts, the first as a general scope from which to select readings the second as a specific what to read from the selected scope.
Option 1 -
selection from Capital (I prefer any of the following - the … I dunno, empirical or historical sections [machinery, working day, primitive accumulation]; or ch25)
Option 2 - The preface to the contribution to the critique of political economy AKA the beginning of the Grundrisse; or all of the Contribution to the critique; or wage labor and capital+value price and profit
Option 3 - some selection from v2 (JCD can you come up w/ a proposal right quick?)
Pace: catch as catch can, with all contributors posting comments all round to let folk know they posted, and trying to discuss each others’ posts.
How’s that?
gotta run
xo
n8
Comment by Nate — August 14, 2009 @ 11:52 am
ps - fuck, forgot to say: thanks y’all. you’re great.
Comment by Nate — August 14, 2009 @ 11:52 am
I like options 1 and 2 (but that’s only because I don’t have volume 2 in English which could create awkwardness, but I’ll butt in if it’s chosen). If I had to choose (I know that that’s the point of “options” but), I’d go for Option 2.
Comment by Mikhail Emelianov — August 14, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Happy to read whatever the group decides.
Mikhail, I failed to get my fecal material aggregated so I don’t have a panel or paper at rM this time, but I still may go. It’s a sentimental favorite since that’s where Rachel and I hooked up (we laughed at Zizek together, and the animated fella in the flamboyant scarf who ranted about how we MUST DO SOMETHING NOW), plus my auntie’s up there to stay with. If some of us are going we should definitely find each other over some beers or such.
Comment by Carl — August 14, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
Definitely, Carl - let me know if you go.
Comment by Mikhail Emelianov — August 14, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Hey Nate - My vote would be for option 1 (mainly because I’ve been running around to conferences writing on option 2 (and am worried people have seen anything worthwhile I have to say on that section…), and have future conference plans on option 3, but have been chafing at not having been able to find time to write enough on the topics you list for option 1).
If I had the choose an order of preference within option 1, I’d say: machinery, then primitive accumulation, then working day. Although the reality is that it probably makes some sense to do each of these, if we’re going to do them - and it may not make sense to do them in the order I list, if we’re thinking about doing more than one…
But I’ll dive in whichever we do, so…
Mikhail - I would like to attend, but knocked back an offer to be on a panel, because I’ve already got another overseas travel commitment for a few weeks later and, now that I’m officially employed, didn’t think I could swing permission to be away for that long. I’m interested in hearing how things go, though…
Comment by N. Pepperell — August 14, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
I vote for option 2, the Grundrisse… but my vote should probably only count for half a vote because being in late stage thesis territory I can’t promise to write anything much. I reckon v2 of Capital is much too dry for an interesting discussion - the arid tablelands as Althusser put it - and I feel like we’ve done v1 to death in this corner of the blogosphere. V3 could be interesting… but I think the Grundrisse would be most fun in raising the most general questions about society, history, and so on. And starting with just the intro is not so ambitious… vol 2 would require a big commitment before we get anywhere interesting.
Comment by Mike Beggs — August 14, 2009 @ 11:18 pm
lol - Carl - I missed this the first time checking the thread:
Certainly it weights light a nightmare on mine… ;-P I was told on Friday that examiners have finally been chosen (policy here means I can’t know for certain who they are, although I have a sense of the sorts of folks they’re likely to be). So now the thesis can finally make its way into the world (well, after a few more weeks of hand-wringing edits)- and then several months of waiting to find out how it’s gone… Is there a nail-biting emoticon?
Comment by N. Pepperell — August 16, 2009 @ 4:10 am
NP, you will bury them.
Comment by Carl — August 17, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
I looked over the comments and I see 4ish votes for something out of capital v1 (and little decisive voting, you jerks!) Is it cool then if we do some of the v1 selections I suggested? (Mike, Mikhail, I’m up for Grundrisse stuff as well later on, and JCD definitely into doing v2, I just figure it’s good to be majoritarian….)
How does this sound - we finalize the what of the reading, then someone sets up a reading group page (someone who is not me, cuz I think I’ll screw it up, I can barely manage to post regular blog posts), as a place to have all participating bloggers’ posts track back, that way everyone will know when a participant has posted. Know what I mean?
xo
n8
Comment by Nate — August 17, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
I will see if I can set up an RSS feed that aggregates all stuff from each of our sites and that includes a certain tag. Gotta love Yahoo Pipes.
Comment by JCD — August 18, 2009 @ 10:30 am
awesome jcd. On vol. 1 my preference is ch. 25, though all other stuff is also a-ok.
Comment by duncan — August 19, 2009 @ 6:09 am
Alright, the link for the RSS tool that will search our blogs is the following
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=5e258560b93b4ba96e554c760f9b4af5
At the moment it asks you to enter a tag, which will have to be included in the title of each post related to the reading group, that it will use to sift through the blogs and highlight. Rather than choose a tag all on my lonesome, I left it as a text entry box. Once we have chosen a proper title tag (perhaps “Reading Group:”) I can just set it in stone in the pipe.
No posts with a pub date before 8/14/09 will be indexed.
Comment by JCD — August 19, 2009 @ 11:40 am
Oh, also, take a look at the sites that are being vacuumed as sources. If yours isn’t there let me know.
Comment by JCD — August 19, 2009 @ 11:41 am
Hey JCD. roughtheory.org!
. Also, I’m a Pipes neophyte, so this is likely a dumb question - but does the inclusion of general sources like wordpress.com make it possible that other folks’ reading groups will be picked up by the aggregator, & also make the inclusion of joebloggs.wordpress.com (or whatever) redundant? Cheers…
Comment by duncan — August 20, 2009 @ 4:07 am
Okay, I think I’ve successfully added the Pipe RSS to my blog’s sidebar
. Thinking about it… once we’ve chosen the reading(s), I’d quite like also to put up a post aiming to collate links to reading group people’s contributions - if folk are cool with that. This should satisfy my Nick Hornby-ish impulses - and surely it’s always good to have an inefficient, intentionally planned solution to the task of organising a dispersed network… right?
Best…
Comment by duncan — August 20, 2009 @ 8:30 am
Hey Duncan. As far as I can tell, rough theory’s feed is through feedburner. At any rate, I tested it (set the date limit back to 8/4 and searched for “goes”), and the most recent RT post comes up.
I am going to put the RSS in the sidebar of my site too. Ha! So, are we decided on doing chapter 25? How about “Chapter 25″ as the string that has to be included in titles?
Comment by JCD — August 20, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
hey JCD,
would it be a bother to just call it “Marx”? That way whatever folk select or if we decide to this again later then it’s all set?
cheers,
Nate
Comment by Nate — August 21, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
I’m setting it up to cull out Marx from the titles.
Comment by JCD — August 24, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
So any other votes on reading matter folks? I feel my preference has undue sway so far…
Comment by duncan — August 25, 2009 @ 6:04 am
I took a second gander at vol ii, and it is a bit dry. But I am very much interested in either the historical sections or chapter 25. The Grundrisse section may be interesting, as well…
Comment by JCD — August 25, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
hey JCD is there a link or a page where all the posts are aggregated to, that we could all put up at our blogs if we want to?
and - just to be clear: all post titles should have the word “Marx” in the title, yeah?
I say we just dive in w/ ch 25 soon-ish, it won’t take all that long and we can always do something else later.
Comment by Nate — August 25, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
Some lithographs of Chapter 25… http://lumpenprofessoriat.blogspot.com/2009/10/marx-reading-group-general-law-of.html
Comment by LumpenProf — October 2, 2009 @ 10:23 am