Socialisme ou Barbarie (1948 67) was a revolutionary group whose journal of the same name helped inspire France's May '68 student-worker rebellion and influenced generations of radicals worldwide. This Anthology, for the first time in print in the English language, restores the collective nature of the group's adventure, where manual and intellectual workers creatively, and not without profound disagreements, reflected and acted together in anticipation of a non-hierarchical, self-governing society.The group radically reoriented critical revolutionary theory by affirming how social change emerges through ordinary people's everyday lives and struggles. In a world divided into two competing bureaucratic-capitalist camps, the autonomous grassroots response to rationalized forms of outside control (State-corporation-trade union-political party) would be workers' management a conclusion stunningly confirmed, against traditional Left expectations, by the workers' revolts of 1953 and 1956 in the East, and by increasingly widespread challenges to established organizational forms in the 1960s in the West.These texts not only examine the overall crisis of systems of domination, but explore their creative contestation in the workplace, in changing relations between the sexes and between generations, and in movements for national liberation (China, Algeria), to bring out "the positive content of socialism" while remaining clear-eyed about how bureaucratization may be reintroduced into emancipatory struggles.

Socialisme ou Barbarie: An Anthology

Politics & Social Sciences

Castoriadis, Cornelius

Social Sciences

Eris

We live in an age of ever-deepening anxiety. Free of convictions, released from certainties, we appear untethered--and alone. The values that underpinned our sense of, and need for, collectivity have been reduced to their lowest common denominator: liberty means nothing more than exploiting our individuality; equality has become an empty political slogan; as for solidarity, it's nowhere to be seen. Such ruptures are neither accidental nor benign. The not-so-brave new social mandates are outgrowths of globalisation's casualties: complete eclipsing of political sovereignty, gradual weakening of national identities, and breakdown of the welfare state. The situation is one of crisis. In this revelatory contribution to political science and sociology, Constantine Tsoucalas draws upon a wide range of philosophical discourses to understand and diagnose our anxious, opiate-seeking age, and to suggest that identity and difference have been incorporated into the deepest substratum of capital, culminating in our times' greatest woe: the extreme fetishization of the self.

Age of Anxiety

Tsoucalas, Constantine

Philosophy

Long neglected by art historians, Anna-Eva Bergman (1909-87) was a painter of major importance who invested her work with an almost mystical ambition. The story of her life, told for the first time in this meticulously researched biography, is extraordinary: a Norwegian childhood that was constantly overshadowed by fear; a bohemian and adventurous youth that spanned much of Europe; a career as an illustrator; encounters in Nazi Germany; increasingly severe health problems; three marriages, two of which were to the same man (Bergman's fellow artist Hans Hartung); and a tragic end in the splendour of their villa in Antibes. But above all Bergman's was a life dedicated to creation, often in defiance of fashion. Only recently has the scale of her achievement begun to be adequately acknowledged. Bergman undoubtedly enjoyed a distinguished career, crossing paths with such key artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Pierre Soulages and Mark Rothko. In many respects, however, she remained a marginal figure--little known in her homeland, and championed by only a handful of allies in France and the rest of Europe. Characterised by the use of gold and silver leaf and by the distinctive rhythm of her lines, Bergman's paintings are hieratic and simplified, radical evocations of the great structuring forces of the universe--minerals, the elements, and even time itself. Thomas Schlesser's biography, which draws upon the considerable body of written material that Bergman left behind, at long last enables us to understand this extraordinary artist in all the complexity of her character and the dramatic circumstances of her life.

Luminous Lives: A Biography of Anna-Eva Bergman

Arts & Photography

SCHLESSER, THOMAS

Individual Artists

"My entire poetic production is founded upon Wittgenstein's later writings. Although it has sat on my shelf for decades, I never actually read the Tractatus. But I always loved the idea of it; I am a conceptual writer, after all."-- Kenneth Goldsmith A major philosophical work, one of the most important written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is Ludwig Wittgenstein's attempt to conquer reality through logic. Written as a series of precisely numbered propositions, it elucidates the relationship of language to logic and to reality, ending with an infamous statement of breathtaking clarity: "What can be said at all, can be said clearly; and what we cannot talk about we must pass over to silence". Originally conceived as part of ERIS's Marginalia series of hand-annotated classics, this special edition consists of sixty-two original artworks inspired by the famous tract. Collages, drawings, sketches, handwritten comments, blacked-out and blanched text, shopping receipts and scans-within-scans--these are some of the techniques that appear in the pages of this book. Kenneth Goldsmith, on his maiden voyage into the unforgiving rigour of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, shows no appetite for timidity. His works, placed side-by-side with the original text, reveal the breadth and depth not just of its original author's genius, but also of the intervening artist's creative fervour. This is a unique book, beautifully presented in large bound format, and including a handwritten afterword by the artist.

I Declare A Permanent State of Happiness

Goldsmith, Kenneth

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos's Book of Water is a collection of short stories about desire, fear, life, care, and ecological anxiety, all narrated through the physical and metaphysical presence of water. This water is not the open, bucolic water of the romantic imagination. It is the claustrophobic water of the deep seabed, the flooded cities, the womb. It is a water that brings oblivion, serenity, and salvation. At first impression, the stories are narrated by a multiplicity of voices preoccupied with everyday psychological situations. At some point, however, the quotidian withdraws and gives way to surreal and disorienting moments of ethical, political, psychoanalytical, ecological, and personal challenges. The book is a literary response to the current geological epoch of the Anthropocene, where the effect of the human presence on the planet and its various elements seems by now irreversible. The bodies in this collection are not limited to the human--nonhuman and inhuman alike centre in the stories. The protagonist, however, remains the body of water.

Book of Water

Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas

Literature & Fiction

Bacon/Giacometti: A Dialogue (ERIS Dialogues)

While working on 'Bacon-Giacometti', a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2018, the curator, writer, and art historian Michael Peppiatt carried out extensive research on the relationship between the two artists. "At one point I felt I could almost hear the two of them talking", he revealed. For Peppiatt, the dialogue between Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti has been 'turning slowly' in his mind ever since Bacon told him in detail about his encounters with the Swiss artist, while the latter was in London in 1965 to supervise the preparations for his major exhibition at the Tate. This book, written in the form of a play, is about an imagined encounter between the two men. On the evening imagined by Peppiatt, Bacon and Giacometti enjoy a lavish dinner at Wheeler's fish restaurant, then go on to the Colony Room--Bacon's favourite club in Soho--to pursue their freely flowing conversation about life, art, and their mutual friends. After a while, the club begins to empty out, but the two artists, sensing that they may never have another occasion to talk, order more champagne...

Peppiatt, Michael

Dramas & Plays

Dialogues on Consciousness (ERIS Dialogues)

Manzotti, Riccardo

PARKS,Tim

An international all-star cast of thinkers, artists, and policy makers joins forces for a transparent, united, democratic Europe. A Vision for Europe 2020 features contributions by Kate Aronoff, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Evgeny Morozov, Jerome Roos, Elif Shafak, Slavoj Zizek, Shoshana Zuboff and more. The European Union was an exceptional achievement. It brought together and in peace peoples speaking different languages and submersed in different cultures, proving that it was possible to create a shared framework of human rights across a continent that was not long ago tormented by murderous chauvinism, racism, and barbarity. It could have been the proverbial Beacon on the Hill, showing the world how peace and solidarity may be snatched from the jaws of age-old conflict and bigotry. But things turned out differently. Today, a common bureaucracy and a common currency divide Europeans who were beginning to unite despite their different languages and cultures. A confederacy of myopic politicians, economically naïve officials, and financially incompetent 'experts' submit slavishly to the edicts of financial and industrial conglomerates, alienating people and stirring up a dangerous anti-European backlash. Proud peoples are being turned against each other. Nationalism, extremism and racism are being re-awakened. With contributions from some of the world's foremost thinkers, artists and politicians covering the full spectrum of concerns for the future of the Union, this volume presents realistic and viable alternatives to the mainstream barrage of dreadful prospects--a true vision for Europe.

A Vision for Europe 2020: Nothing but an Alternative

Rameau's Nephew (ERIS Dialogues)

DIDEROT, DENIS

In an era when intellectual and artistic life is increasingly being distorted by political dogmatism, Julian Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals is a classic that speaks with a new and extraordinary urgency. Benda’s essay, published by ERIS in a new translation by David Broder, offers an incisive account of interwar Europe that ranges from the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and Georges Sorel to the activities of Charles Maurras and Benito Mussolini. It also serves, however, as a remarkably timely warning against the seduction of modern intellectuals by tribal loyalties and antipathies. Rather than detaching themselves from communal ties as their forebears had done, Benda argues that twentieth-century European intellectuals willingly subordinated the disinterested pursuit of truth to the servicing of group interests (particularly the interests of their own nations and social classes). Partisan agendas had a corrosive effect not only on moral and political philosophy, but also on the writing of history and fiction. With its penetrating analyses of nationalism and of the tensions between group identity and intellectual freedom, Treason of the Intellectuals is as necessary a book in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth.

Treason of the Intellectuals

Benda, Julien

Sociology

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