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# 86

Hito Steyerl, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, and Anton Vidokle

Imagine a big roll call. Names of nations, creeds, and genders are called out. Everyone is supposed to join their kin. Several hours later the crowd is all divided up into groups and subgroups, all neatly arranged on a large grid. There is just one person left. And this person says, “Sorry guys, I’m with the universe. Where do I go?” The universe? It does not figure on the grid. Today, the most important question is not what belongs to whom but who belongs to what—as in what kind of…

e-flux Journal

Posted: November 7, 2017

Subjects

Editorial

# 86

Parahistories of Self-Instituting Sunlight

Stephen Squibb

Revolutionary theory begins with recognizing accumulation as a fact of planetary existence. We find ourselves on a rock on which five billion years of solar accumulation have already taken place. If we also find ourselves in a planetary crisis, it is because rather than capturing the energy already falling on the earth, we have rereleased previously gathered energy back into the air. Rather than shifting our legacy infrastructures away from digging up old, consolidated sunlight and towards…

e-flux Journal

Posted: November 7, 2017

# 83

Editorial—”The New Brutality”

Rosi Braidotti, Timotheus Vermeulen, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, and Anton Vidokle

Every December, dictionaries and language societies across the globe identify the “words of the year”—words that resonated widely during the previous twelve months. In the mid-2000s, these lists were populated with words like “contempt” and “quagmire,” “ambivalence” and “conundrum.” A few years later, dominant words included “trepidation” and “precipice” and “fail,” “vitriol” and “insidious” and “bigot.” The OED ’s word of the year for 2012 was “omnishambles.” 2016, however, was for OED…

e-flux Journal

Posted: June 13, 2017

Subjects

Editorial

# 79

Editorial—“As the world falls apart…”

Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Gean Moreno, Stephen Squibb, and Anton Vidokle

So this is the plan that we came up with in the huddle, stunned and not so stunned at the storm clouds that have broken, at the deluge that is here: we are putting up alternative facts to the alternative facts that are being deployed in a rightward swerve that has us up against the rails. We are also putting up an alternative common sense to the centrist liberal one that is what ultimately, at the fundamental level, keeps this world from coming undone, preservation being its constitutive…

e-flux Journal

Posted: February 2, 2017

Subjects

Editorial

# 78

This Machine Builds Fascists: Nationalism as Mode of Distribution

Stephen Squibb

The reappearance of fascism on the world scene requires a retheorization of nationalism. If the purpose of theory is that it allows us to see something safely, as Andrea Wilson Nightingale has argued—accompanying and guarding us like an old army general whose view of combat from distant elevated ground reveals patterns no fighting soldier could see—then the return of the past century’s most dangerous phenomenon indicates a theoretical failure at the heart of our strategic planning. Our inherited concept of nationalism has made navigating the lifeworld much more dangerous and difficult than it needs to be. It is either unfinished or poorly made.

e-flux Journal

Posted: December 8, 2016

Category

Nationalism, Fascism, Labor & Work, Capitalism

Subjects

Class

# 76

Editorial—“The Perfect Storm”

Sven Lütticken, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, and Anton Vidokle

“How Much Fascism?” asked the curatorial collective WHW. Quite a bit, it would appear. As always, the prefix “neo-” can stand for many differences in the repetition, yet the noun asserts itself with all the subtle grace of an elephant in the room. Historical fascism, too, was a many-headed hydra, and scholarly struggles over exact definitions are ongoing, and will continue, for there is no Platonic Idea, but rather a set of historically grown family resemblances—revolving around tropes such…

e-flux Journal

Posted: October 5, 2016

Category

Fascism

Subjects

Authoritarianism, Racism, Editorial

Claire Fontaine’s "Stop Seeking Approval"

Stephen Squibb

e-flux Criticism

Posted: April 2, 2015

Category

Psychology & Psychoanalysis, Capitalism

Chris Marker’s “Koreans”

Stephen Squibb

e-flux Criticism

Posted: October 9, 2014

Category

Photography, Theater, Film

Subjects

Propaganda, Realism

# 54

Genres of Capitalism, Part II

Stephen Squibb

Continued from “ Genres of Capitalism, Part I ” The first part of these notes presented spiritualism, commercialism, and productivism as three ways of reading “capitalism,” which have formed, over time, into genres. This exercise proceeded from a slow-building impression that we don’t know precisely what we are talking about when we talk about “capitalism.” Or simply that the way we talk, read, and write about “capitalism” is not as helpful as it could be. Part I ended by noting…

e-flux Journal

Posted: April 1, 2014

Category

Capitalism, Literature, Marxism , Economy

Subjects

Class, Representation, Temporality

# 52

Genres of Capitalism, Part I

Stephen Squibb

The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude—melancholy sadness—toward it. This attitude is not correct. Fortunately your letter came, at that instant. “Dear Rupert, I love you every day. You are the world, which is life. I love you I adore you I am crazy about you. Love, Marta.” Reading between the lines, I understood your critique of my attitude toward capitalism. —Donald Barthelme, “The Rise of…

e-flux Journal

Posted: February 1, 2014

Category

Capitalism, Marxism , Economy

Subjects

Money & Finance