September 25: Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Manuel Callahan, and Annie Paradise

Dear seekers of more productive pleasures:

Many thanks to everyone who took part in our discussion the other week of texts by Denise Ferreira da Silva, Manuel Callahan, and Annie Paradise. We had a very useful and productive discussion, and look forward to talking to them, alongside Fred Moten and Stefano Harney…

This conversation will take place on Friday, September 25, at 4pm Pacific.

As further preparatory reading, we recommend:

  • The Undercommons, chapters 5-7:“Planning and Policy”; “Fantasy in the Hold”; and “The General Antagonism: An Interview with Stevphen Shukaitis”
  • If you have time, we also very much recommend a recent piece by Moten and Harney, “the university: last words”, which is presented and discussed here.
  • Our own discussion on Friday will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

    (And from Friday, October 9 we will return to our lunchtime slot.)

    Please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is aware that new Coronavirus cases are rising again, but we are holding on to our bubble, and pleased to welcome others, so long as they wear a mask. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

    And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog, https://blogs.ubc.ca/virtualkoerners/category/blog/), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

    You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

    We look forward to seeing you next week.

    Take care, stay alert, don’t panic, keep your distance, be kind, keep calm, and carry on

September 11

Dear seekers of more productive pleasures:

Many thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion about Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons, and who also helped us to reflect as Virtual Koerner’s moves to its new stage, a new hallway in the undercommons.

A reminder: we will now be meeting every other week, on Fridays, usually at 1pm Pacific (with one exception, detailed below).

As you know, we have some more very special guests joining us on September 25, and we are currently preparing ourselves for their visit.

As such, for our discussion this week, we propose the following two readings:

We will meet to discuss these texts on Friday, September 11, at 1pm Pacific.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

Then on Friday, September 25 (at *4pm* Pacific): We will be joined by Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Manolo Callahan, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Annie Paradise.

And from Friday, October 9 we will return to our lunchtime slot.

We are sorry if this is a little complicated. We have had to scramble a bit to find space and time as everyone becomes increasingly busy. And VK is always at the margins.

Please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog, https://blogs.ubc.ca/virtualkoerners/category/blog/), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you next week.

Take care, stay alert, don’t panic, wear a mask, be kind, keep calm, and carry on

September 2

Many thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion with Nelson Garrido and friends from Venezuela. It was a lively and productive exchange, and we thank again María Julieta Cordero for inviting him, and for organizing this cycle of discussions and readings.

Soon, we hope to upload video of the conversation to YouTube for those who missed it.

Now, though the pandemic continues unabated (here in British Columbia, where we were once so smug, we have just set a new single-day record for new cases), it seems that something like a modified normality is returning, as classes start and the Northern summer draws to a close.

We have some more very special guests joining us in a a few weeks, but first we should explain that there will be changes in Virtual Koerner’s.

  • We will have a *final* Wednesday meeting next week (September 2), at 4pm Pacific Time. We are thinking of this as closure for Virtual Koerner’s as it has existed since back in April. These have been a strange four and a half months. We are now putting them behind us.
  • We welcome everyone who has participated in this space, in one way or another, to join us and perhaps reflect on this odd period, on what we have learned, on what has gone wrong, on how we have managed to continue on nonetheless.
  • To help us think about all this (as well as in preparation for our next guests), we are recommending you read two chapters of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s book The Undercommons: chapter two, “The University and the Undercommons,” and chapter four, “Debt and Study.”
  • But if you are not able to do the reading, you are still very much welcome (with a drink in hand if you wish) to this special final Wednesday session of Virtual Koerner’s.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

After this final Wednesday session, Virtual Koerner’s will continue, for as long as we have the energy and desire, but it will move to Friday lunchtimes (i.e. 1pm Pacific), on alternate weeks *except* for our upcoming session, featuring a gamut of special guests, which will be on a Friday at 4pm.

In other words, here is the schedule for the next few weeks:

  • Wednesday, September 2 (4pm Pacific): Final Wednesday session; reading two chapters from The Undercommons
  • Friday, September 11 (1pm Pacific): First Virtual Koerner’s in its new incarnation
  • Friday, September 25 (4pm Pacific): We will be joined by Fred Moten, Stefano Harney, Manolo Callahan, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Annie Paradise
  • Friday, October 9 (1pm Pacific): We return to our new schedule

We are sorry if this is a little complicated. We have had to scramble a bit to find space and time as everyone becomes increasingly busy. And VK is always at the margins.

Please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog, https://blogs.ubc.ca/virtualkoerners/category/blog/), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like María Julieta’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

Take care, stay alert, don’t panic, wear a mask, be kind, keep calm, and carry on.

Nelson Garrido

Thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion of Nelson Garrido’s work. It was an interesting and thought-provoking conversation, and we will have many questions for Nelson when he joins us on Wednesday.

Many thanks again to María Julieta Cordero for inviting him, and for organizing this cycle of discussions and readings.

In the meantime, recent blog posts include two from Rodolfo Ortiz:

This week, we will be looking at more images and texts by and from Garrido, in anticipation of our discussion with him.

Then we recommend two other texts:

We also continue to recommend an article that we discussed last Wednesday:

We will meet on Wednesday, August 26, from 4pm Pacific.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

As always, however, feel free to join us later in the evening (from around 5:30pm onwards), without any expectation of having done any of the reading, and drink in hand if you so wish, for a more social check in.

Also as always, please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like María Julieta’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

August 19

Thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion of Butler and Appelbaum. There were fewer participants than sometimes, but it was an engaging and productive discussion about representation, photography, and violence.

Recent blog posts include:

  • Ricardo on Butler: “Criticism of photography should go beyond identifying the forcible frame, since knowing about this frame won’t stop us from eating from the trashcan of ideology everyday.”
  • Jorge on Fogwill’s Los pichiciegos: “La postura de los pichiciegos de Fogwill frente al proyecto argentino tampoco es progresista, pero sí es radical: cavar un hueco en la tierra, desconsiderando que afuera existen los países, como insectos inmundos. ¿Es esa es la auténtica y pobre postura del criollo lationamericano?”

This week, we continue with the cycle of readings that will lead up to a visit from the Venezuelan photographer, Nelson Garrido. This cycle is organized by María Julieta Cordero. This is a series that deals with photography and the representation of violence, among other issues.

The following is this week’s reading, the one primary, the others secondary or optional:

We will meet on Wednesday, August 19, from 4pm Pacific.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

As always, however, feel free to join us later in the evening (from around 5:30pm onwards), without any expectation of having done any of the reading, and drink in hand if you so wish, for a more social check in.

Also as always, please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like María Julieta’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

Los pichiciegos

Los pichiciegos de Fogwill

Por Jorge Izquierdo
PhD en Estudios Hispánicos de la Universidad de Columbia Británica (University of British Columbia)
Actualmente Docente y Coordinador Académico de UDLA Honors, Universidad de las Américas, Quito-Ecuador
Co-fundador de Editorial Festina Lente

Planteo esta breve lectura de la novela de Fogwill en el marco de la conversación con Diego Sztulwark y el ciclo organizado por Ana Vivaldi, a quienes agradezco por su input reciente al Virtual Koerner’s.

Los pichiciegos es una novela sobre la Guerra de las Malvinas, y en un principio, debo admitirlo, la testosterona detrás del proyecto, no solo por lo excesivamente masculino del tema sino de la escritura me desalentó un poco o me aburrió. Pero la novela de Fogwill funciona más y mejor mientras más se escarba en ella. El planteamiento no gira alrededor de la trama de los soldados (a la final sabemos quién va a ganar la guerra) sino que se construye como un espiral, los personajes vuelven y repiten reflexiones sobre el miedo, sobre el frío y el calor, sobre los detalles autóctonos de cada una de sus comunidades específicas, sobre el archivo y la escritura.

Además, es un texto que se ofrece como metáfora aguda de temas que se desprenden del conflicto armado por las Malvinas, ocurrido a inicios de los ochenta: el colonialismo, el mestizaje, la figura del criollo, el mundo natural. Es decir, calza muy bien en propuestas destinadas a pensar, reflexionar e interrogarse acerca de lo latinoamericano, acerca del Sur.

La novela sigue los pasos de un grupo de alrededor de veinte y cinco soldados desertores. Tienen pactos turbios con algunos británicos, pero que no les garantiza nada, se esconden de sus propios camaradas argentinos y son testigos privilegiados de la derrota bélica, que no puede ser otra que la derrota del proyecto Estado-nación. A los pichis los lidera un grupo conocido como los Reyes Magos. Sus circunstancias se conectan muy bien con, por ejemplo, las tantas historias sobre Lope de Vega, el pichi original, si se quiere. Renegado, violento, solitario, pero donde Lope tiene sueños de grandeza los Magos desean para ellos y su grupo cosas mucho más terrenales, como polvo químico para cubrir heces. También se me ocurre que la naturaleza de los pichis ayuda a entender el carácter criollo: personas de origen europeo nacidos en suelo americano y destinados a permanecer en él. Tienes ciertos privilegios (puertas adentro) pero eres desposeído apenas te colocas ante el Imperio. Por corregir esa injusticia lucharon figuras como Bolívar, Sucre y San Martín (otros Reyes Magos, otros pichis)… pero cometieron muchos otros errores en el camino y murieron traicionados por el mismo vuelco independentista.

Con la lectura de la novela de Fogwill me puse a pensar más en algo que Sztulwark dijo en un momento de la conversación que tuvimos con él. Dijo algo así como que estaba convencido de que las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo fueron las responsables directas de salvar a su país o rescatarlo, no me acuerdo las palabras exactas.

Más allá de lo que se pueda pensar ahora, en términos críticos, de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, por poner otro ejemplo del Cono Sur, en los movimientos sociales que luego conformaron los recientes gobiernos del Frente Amplio en el Uruguay, me pareció válido pensar en esto que planteaba Sztulwark, que en un determinado momento esos grupos, resistiendo a la dictadura, dotaron de sentido a algo que a todas luces perdía todo sentido, pero habría que entender que a la larga es un gesto conservador no progresista, valor, este último, al que a veces asociamos los procesos de la izquierda, en cuanto a que buscaron conservar, literalmente, el Estado-nación.

La postura de los pichiciegos de Fogwill frente al proyecto argentino tampoco es progresista, pero sí es radical: cavar un hueco en la tierra, desconsiderando que afuera existen los países, como insectos inmundos. ¿Es esa es la auténtica y pobre postura del criollo lationamericano? Casi al inicio de la novela, uno de los pichis quiere saber por qué “el uruguayo” está peleando en la guerra:

-…¿Si vos sos uruguayo, por qué carajo estás aquí?
-Porque me escribieron argentino. ¡Soy argentino!
-Che… ¿y por qué te dicen uruguayo?
-Porque yo nací ahí, vine de chico…
-¡Es una mierda el Uruguay!
-Sí, mi viejo dice que es una mierda. (Fogwill, 16-17)

Se refieren, creo, a que allá hay dictadura también. Ese país también está jodido por eso.
Existe un marco teórico, desarrollado por el antropólogo francés Claude Lévi-Strauss, para entender la organización de sociedades primitivas según el modelo de las sociedades frías y el modelo de las sociedades calientes. Lo frío en este caso, y reduciendo las cosas al mínimo, tiene que ver con sistemas estáticos, una organización social que se asienta, inmóvil. Lo caliente, en cambio, tiene que ver con una inclinación natural hacia la mutación constante y el movimiento. En la novela de Fogwill hay un planteamiento sobre algo muy similar pero en términos de sobrevivencia. Estar frío significa estar moribundo, estar helado es estar muerto. Estar caliente aparece muchas veces en relación del impulso sexual, otro tema constante del libro, cómo, en medio de la guerra, estos soldados desearían estar “culeando”.

Por último, y esta es la parte que me interesa, el tema es planteado a manera de transición. Una forma de negar que existan cosas tan monolíticas como el frío y el calor, para empezar, porque están conectadas muchas veces, y ese es el punto. Según uno de los pichis: “estás dos o tres días en el calor y lastima salir al frío. Pero los que estuvieron un tiempo en el calor –parece mentira- resisten el frío más y por más tiempo” e insiste “el que estuvo en el frío, siempre en el frío, está frío, olvidó. Está listo, está frío, no tiene más calor en ningún lado y el frío lo come, le entra, ya no hay calor en ningún sitio, lo único que puede calentar es el frío, quedarse quieto, y en cuanto puede imaginar que ese frío quieto es calor, se deja estar al frío, comienza a helarse y el frío ya deja de doler y termina”; y es casi igual si estás todo el tiempo en el calor: “…te quedás como dormido y ya nada te gusta, ni el frío ni el calor, ni el aire, ni vos mismo: nada te gusta” (Fogwill, 140-141). Sospecho que estas palabras podrían servir para adentrarse y entender ciertos temas relacionados a la memoria cultural de América Latina.

Todxs somos pichis, nada nos gusta.

Fogwill. (2006). Los pichiciegos. Buenos Aires: Interzona

August 12

Thanks to everyone who took part in this week’s discussion of Cortázar’s “Las babas del diablo” and Antonioni’s Blow-Up. It was both productive and fun, I felt. We touched on a lot of topics: representation, violence, gender, subjectivity, machines, objectification… Personally, I remain haunted by the movie’s final scene, the invisible tennis ball, the man lost in the park with his camera on the ground.

We also have two recent blog posts:

  • From Ricardo, on Cortázar and Antonioni. His conclusion: “Si el arte tiene un lugar en la sociedad capitalista, no es sólo el de bombear agua fuera de la nave que se hunde, sino el de dejar de apuntar a las nubes para emprender la línea de fuga ya no hacia el cielo, sino hacia la inmensidad de la tierra.”
  • From George, on Sztulwark and Mundo grúa. His question: “To what degree is Sztulwark’s redemptive reader-bricoleur, friend a venir (etc.) colored by the fantasy of disjunction and the reaction against neoliberal injunctions?”

Meanwhile, our conversation with Sztulwark is on YouTube.

And we are hoping to publish an edited version of that conversation. If you would like to help with the transcription and editing, please be in touch.

This week, we continue with the cycle of readings that will lead up to a visit from the Venezuelan photographer, Nelson Garrido. This cycle is organized by María Julieta Cordero. This is a series that deals with photography and the representation of violence, among other issues.

We have two readings, one primary, the other secondary or optional:

We will meet on Wednesday, August 12, from 4pm Pacific. If you only have time to read the story (or only have time to watch the film), that is of course fine.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020. Please note that we have a new link for our meetings.

As always, however, feel free to join us later in the evening (from around 5:30pm onwards), without any expectation of having read the text or seen the movie, and drink in hand if you so wish, for a more social check in.

Also as always, please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like María Julieta’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

Take care, stay alert, don’t panic, wear a mask, be kind, keep calm, and carry on

Foolish Addendum

Foolish Addendum in Response to Sztulwark
(With many thanks to Ana for organizing the series)

By George Allen, PhD student at the University of California, Irvine

The radical restructuring of the economy towards neoliberalization in the past 40+ years altered the governance of relationships, conduct, self-awareness, values, and feelings. Neoliberal rationality attempts to create a normative subjectivity that is individually responsible for material subsistence by equating the value of individuals and institutions with market rationality, “Because neoliberalism casts rational action as a norm rather than an ontology, social policy is the means by which the state produces subjects whose compass is set entirely by their rational assessment of the costs and benefits of certain acts” (Wendy Brown). Precarity is rationalized and normalized by the dissemination of market logics into every sphere of life, often under the aegis of ‘personal responsibility’.

One of the features of neoliberalism is the way that vocabularies have been co-opted, or as Alessandro Fornazzari writes, “one of the characteristics of post-dictatorship Chile is that the boom in memory becomes undistinguishable from the boom in forgetting”.

With this in mind, in his article “¿Dónde están los amigos y las amigas?” Diego Sztulwark writes emphatically,“¡Manipular los enunciados teóricos para hacerlos funcionar de modo tal que sea la propia vida la que reciba orientación! El amateur apasionado es la versión bricoleury activista del sujeto del poema. Es el militante buscando los medios de darse nuevas posibilidades de vida.” Sztulwark finds “nuevas posibilidades de vida” of subjects becoming non-subjects or non-subjects qua becoming, qua friendship, qua militant readers and amateur bricoleurs.

Sztulwark summarizes these theorizations under the banners of a ‘transfiguración perservante’, ’ejercicios espirituales,’—or, put in the language of Colectivo Situaciones, “describir mutaciones subjetivas, y participar de una imaginación política capaz de proyectar formas diferentes del hacer-pensar colectivo” (similarly, Veronica Gago uses the term ‘pragmática vitalista). This line of thinking apropos Fornazarri’s point asks us to think beyond “what is lost?” towards “what is emerging?”. One answer to the latter can be found in the Argentine film Mundo Grúa which tells the story of Rulo, a rotund underemployed handyman–in and around 2000–training to work as a crane operator on a Buenos Aires high-rise. The film questions the language of melancholia—in the neoliberal context—as exclusively contestatory, in favor of documenting a differentiated field of emergent and materializing exhaustion. It utilizes a number of neorealist techniques such as onsite shooting, long takes, deep focus shots, and a cast of non-professional actors—techniques often associated with a representational fidelity to marginalized subjects, repressed histories, and alternative production models that reflect a commitment to social justice. However, the film undermines ‘realist’ aesthetic tendencies with irrational cuts that make characters distant and complicate spatial transparency while at the same time using an observational style not unlike documentary. Film scholar Joanna Page reads this blurring of aesthetic styles as a “provisional form of (auto)ethnography” that seeks to deconstruct the relationship between visibility and knowledge. Writing on the absence of character POV shots in the film, Page argues “As spectators we are denied knowledge of what Rulo is able to see; this technique works to undermine conventional processes of identification” (51).

The appropriation or the faithful mis-reading of texts ala Sztulwark implies a nomadic, fugitive, de-colonial, and anti-institutional movement. However, there is something unsettlingly comfortable about this vision of bricolage, dis-identification, and discontinuity. What kind of consequential choices are left (and what choices does this approach leave us with) to make in a society where commodification, consumer consumption, and capitalistic disjunctive and unequal expansion is the norm? Do the micropolitics of becoming no-neoliberal steer us away from thinking the (re)structure of society? Put differently, what is the congruence of Sztulwark’s redemptive figure of the bricoleur, the friend a venir, the nomad—assemblers for the purposes of disjunction and in the process of dis-identification—with the unequal and discontinuous expansion of capital? Ricardo provides some eloquent thoughts on this.

These structures of relations seek to avoid the fundamental mistake of the Lacanian ‘fool’ who believes in his immediate identity—unlike Zuangh Zi who wonders if he is Zuangh Zi dreaming of being the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming he is Zuangh Zi, the fool believes his identity is his property, not defined by the material and symbolic relations that subtend it. In other words, the ‘fool’ is not far from the psychotic and the narcissist who deny and disavow any mediation of identity. However, even as non-fools, we are the consciousness of the dream–the Lacanian gaze is that which colors Zhuang Zi’s dream. To what degree is Sztulwark’s redemptive reader-bricoleur, friend a venir (etc.) colored by the fantasy of disjunction and the reaction against neoliberal injunctions?

To return briefly to film: Furthering Page’s argument in the vocabulary of Sztulwark, we might say that Mundo Grúa performs an aesthetic coaching, but does not confirm Diego’s ‘ontological optimism.’ Rulo, Mundo Grúa‘s protagonist, is the bricoleur par excellence, but his efforts to assemble and re-arrange the detritus of his lifeworld are constantly thwarted. In one scene, Rulo stops and expresses his admiration for a large film projector. The implications are clearer than they may first appear. Rulo the repairer is fascinated by the smooth-functioning projector just as he views the crane as a space of free-movement. However, Mundo Grúa shows both to be idealistic fantasy spaces, unattainable for and unrelated to Rulo and his lifeworld. On the one hand then, we should reiterate Page’s argument to read the film as anti-representational in the sense that film can not provide direct depictions of life, capital, space, etc. But, it is important to emphasize the way Mundo Grúa, at the aesthetic level, interrupts rather than smoothes and synthesizes depictions through neat cross-cuts. The gambit of Mundo Grúa is one of filmic dysfunction and repair in opposition to the smooth-functioning spaces of commercial cinema.

August 3

Thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion with Diego Sztulwark. People have commented to me that it was one of the best sessions we have had to date, and most of the credit for that goes to Ana Vivaldi, for putting together an excellent and very coherent series of readings and conversations in preparation for Diego’s visit. Once again, moreover, I am struck by the continuities in the topics and questions across the last several months, at the very least from Alberto Moreiras’s visit to the present.

Meanwhile, as always, Ricardo has put up some ungodly thoughts on our blog: Notas a La ofensiva sensible: neoliberalismo, populismo y el reverso de lo político de Diego Sztulwark (2).

And once again, I want to remind everyone that you are all invited to contribute short texts (c. 500 words) to the blog, whether about our readings and discussions, or on any other topic that you want to share with us. Please do avail yourselves of this opportunity.

We now move to a new cycle or series of readings, which will lead up to a visit from the Venezuelan photographer, Nelson Garrido. This cycle is organized by María Julieta Cordero. This is a series that will deal with photography and the representation of violence, among other issues.

We begin, as is becoming a bit of a habit, with some film and literature.

  • Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow-Up (1966). More information about the film here. And you can download a (high-definition) copy here.
  • Julio Cortázar, “Las babas del diablo” (from Las armas secretas, 1959). This is the story on which Antonioni’s film is (rather loosely) based, and it can be found here.

These are both “classics,” but introduce us to some of the themes we will be tackling over the next few weeks.

We will meet on Wednesday, August 5, from 4pm Pacific. If you only have time to read the story (or only have time to watch the film), that is of course fine.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

As always, however, feel free to join us later in the evening (from around 5:30pm onwards), without any expectation of having read the text or seen the movie, and drink in hand if you so wish, for a more social check in.

Also as always, please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like María Julieta’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about subsequent meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

Take care, stay alert, don’t panic, wear a mask, be kind, keep calm, and carry on

July 29: Diego Sztulwark

Thanks to everyone who took part in last week’s discussion. It was, I thought, a very useful conversation about Diego Sztulwark’s book, La ofensiva sensible, which, in combination with the other preparatory readings and discussions over the past few weeks, should set us up for a very interesting and productive visit from Diego himself this coming Wednesday. Many thanks again to Ana Vivaldi for organizing a great series of readings and meetings. I for one very much look forward to this week’s final session.

Meanwhile, Ricardo continues his habit of writing a blog post at an ungodly hour following our Wednesday meetings. Here is his latest: “Notas a algunos fragmentos de La ofensiva sensible: neoliberalismo, populismo y el reverso de lo político de Diego Sztulwark”.

As Ricardo puts it: “Por lo último que se lee en el fragmento de Sztulwark y por las entrevistas de Contra ofensiva sensible, uno puede intuir que a pesar de la reproducción alocada del modelo neoliberal, cada forma de reproducción social no sólo carga con su dosis de abyección, pero también con las herramientas para la recodificación de una potencia secreta que escape de la lógica del estado y del capital.”

The reading suggested for this week is the third and final chapter of La ofensiva sensible: Neoliberalismo, populismo y el reverso de lo político.

You may also wish to look at chapter two, as an optional, extra reading.

(Many thanks to Gwen Pare for the scanning!)

We will meet on Wednesday, July 29, from 4pm Pacific.

All this will take place on Zoom, of course. Because it’s 2020.

As always, however, feel free to join us later in the evening (from around 5:30pm onwards), without any expectation of having read the texts, and drink in hand if you so wish, for a more social check in.

Also as always, please do feel free to invite others (whether they are in Vancouver or not) to join us. Virtual Koerner’s is fully in Phase Four of lockdown, and we are delighted to see our “bubble” continuing to expand. If anyone wants to be added to the list, they can be in touch with me.

And again, we very much welcome and invite suggestions of texts, speakers, discussion topics, and so on. We especially welcome a) texts written by VK participants (short texts can be posted to our blog), and b) suggestions for linked “cycles” of sessions that might, like Ana’s current cycle, include different kinds of texts on a common theme.

You will hear information about our next cycle of meetings very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you this week.

Spam prevention powered by Akismet