A poet, translator, and co-editor (of the letters of her late husband, Situationist Guy Debord) who has written extensively on the etymology and history of European slang, Alice Becker-Ho examines argot as a form of self-defense from the State, a code for people who survived outside the law. “In slang, loan words are above all borrowings of one dangerous class from another; that these loan words, confirmed in different slangs, go back to common sources, themselves blended initially into a sort of melting pot before being redistributed via a host of different routes….”

In this book Tim Stüttgen considers the paradigm of (post-)slavery as an important epistemological break within predominantely white Gender and Queer Studies, as well as within critical Film and Cultural Studies. Departing from what E. Patrick Johnson has proposed as a specifically intersectional »quAre«, instead of an »unmarked white queer perspective«, this book contrasts Deleuze’s cinema theory with Frantz Fanon, queer theories of color, the history of the African diaspora and utopian quAre futurisms to establish notions of a black locality, mobility and temporality in what Stüttgen calls the first emancipatory black cinema: Blaxploitation. Digging deeper in the imagery and temporalities of Blaxploitation film, his analysis deals with the sexualization of racism and mass media imagery of armed black liberation struggles, and shows the development of more and more complex spaces, main characters and representational constellations, including black revolutionary women (with guns) and also queer subtexts. Following the analysis of a specifically black movement-image, the book engages in a comprehensive intersectional reading of John Coney’s legendary 1974 Sun Ra film Space is the Place, crystallizing the concept of a »black time-image« that interconnects formal aesthetic concepts to afro-futurist queer utopias. By producing these sorts of »quAre assem- blages« Stüttgen ultimately aims at an epistemological renewal of the dominant discourses on race, class and gender, that helps to at least temporarily suspend reifying identity pat- terns at stake, and rethink them critically based on the principles of intersectionality and heterogeneity.

Become a citizen of the first global state of the universe! The NSK State in Time emerged in 1992, evolving in the context of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the transformation Neue Slowenische Kunst. Existing both as artwork and social formation, a state that encompasses all time but holds no territory, the NSK State in Time has for two decades pushed the boundaries of artistic and political practice. This volume collects together for the first time analyses of the NSK State in Time, including its relationship with the changing context of Eastern Europe, the connection between aesthetics and the state, the rise of NSK folk art, and documents the First NSK Citizen’s Congress in 2010.

Major Waldemar Fydrych In Communist Poland, Surrealism Paints You!!! Between 1981 and 1989 in Wroclaw Poland, in an atmosphere in which dissent was forbidden and martial law a reality, the Orange Alternative deployed the power of surrealist creativity to destabilise the Communist government. It worked. The militia were overwhelmed by thousands of unruly dwarves; celebrations of official festivals so disturbingly loyal that the Communist forces had to arrest anyone wearing red; walls covered in dialectical graffiti; new official festivals to assist the secret police with their duties; and a popular restaging of the storming of the Winter Palace using cardboard tanks and ships. Lives of the Orange Men tells for the first time the story of this activist-art movement and its protagonists that played a key role in the 1989 revolution in Poland. Written by its central figure and featuring an appendix of newly-translated key texts including the ‘Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism’, a timeline of every Orange Alternative happening and a new foreword from the Yes Men.

2015 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints
Radical Heroes for the New Millennium!
James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Autonomedia's Jubilee Saints Calendar for 2015! Our 23rd annual wall calendar, with artwork by James Koehnline, and text by the Autonomedia Collective.

Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project — a reprieve from the 500-year-long sentence to life-at-hard-labor that the European colonization of the "New World" and the ensuing devastations of the rest of the world has represented. It is increasingly clear — at the dawn of this new millennium — that the Planetary Work Machine will not rule forever!

Celebrate with this calendar on which every day is a holiday!

32 pages, 12 x 16 inches, saddle stitched

isbn 978-1-57027-299-8 : price $9.95 : 32 pages

Pay for two, and we will send a third calendar for free!

“Tom Savage wrote these poems during his travels through Afghanistan. He was twenty-three at the time but his words ring with unparalleled maturity. His journey took place before the Taliban came to power and had a chance to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas, a 20th century tragedy for all mankind. He describes their glory, giving us a guided tour of his spiritual and physical states while doing so. These are love poems: They are tender, witty and full of compassion, wisdom and insight. Savage says it plainly yet ever so deeply when he chants: ‘my book is my pillow / my fireplace is breath / my friends are my food / the tree-swept is singing.’ While reading these gems, which are not unlike their great eastern predecessors Rumi or Jami, you too might make this book your pillow, your breath and your food as you let these poems sing to you.” — Steve Dalachinsky, author of The Superintendent’s Eyes and The Final Nite & Other Poems: The Complete Notes from a Charles Gayle Notebook 1987–2006

“Tom Savage's new book of poems offers a rare glimpse of Buddha in His humanistic manifestations. Savage's observations and reflections remind me of Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The soil, in return for her service, keeps the tree tied to her; the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.’ Or as Savage puts it, ‘I cannot live with imagination. / I cannot live otherwise.’ a spiritual account of merging with the unknown with the doors of perception open and shut at the same time — immortality is seen through the cracks. When the doors are shut, his love seeks others. When the doors are open, nature comes alive. An amazing book.” — Hal Sirowitz, author of Mother Said: Poems, Stray Cat Blues and former Poet Laureate of Queens, NY

“Written at a time and place when it was still possible to‘wait patiently for laughter’ this travelogue consisting of descriptive, lyrical and, in hindsight, elegiac poems by a twenty-three-year-old very far from home, exudes his love, longing, sadness and fascination, while moving among exotic particulars, many of which are now lost to us. One can’t read the stunning ‘Bamiyan Poems’ without being aware of the presence of ghosts.” — Larry Fagin, author of Nuclear Neighborhood and Complete Fragments

How does one demonstrate the enduring relevance of a sacred text but to help it speak to present times? This is what churches do with the Bible and what Marxists do with the writings of Marx. Richard Gilman-Opalsky offers a book-length détournement of The Communist Manifesto as a loving blasphemy, as a grateful revolt, both for and against the original text. Gilman-Opalsky detourns the 1848 manifesto as an exploration of its ongoing applicability, as well as its failures, in relation to capitalism and its evolving crises. Precarious Communism explores long-form détournement as a tool for critical theory. But most importantly, Gilman-Opalsky’s new book is a mutant manifesto of its own that makes the case for an autonomist and millennial Marxism, for the many movements of precarious communism.

“Precarious Communism offers a creative, convincing, and provocative rerouting of The Communist Manifesto, exploring the catastrophes of both statism and capitalism in a fresh new light. Gilman-Opalsky lays bare ideological specters of the past that continue to haunt the present. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what autonomy, dignity, and association mean today, and in understanding the insurrectionary hope of people everywhere.” – John Asimakopoulos, Director of the Transformative Studies Institute

Bio: Richard Gilman-Opalsky is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He is the author of Spectacular Capitalism: Guy Debord and the Practice of Radical Philosophy (2011) and Unbounded Publics: Transgressive Public Spheres, Zapatismo, and Political Theory (2008).

“The esoteric and the exoteric co-exist in a B-Movie carnival of noir nocturnes where mortality is pondered and meaning is plumbed in wry and witty vignettes. Black humor laced with Victorian secrets, the clever conceits and cunning confessions of this Shakespearian steam-punk auteur will have you writhing with pleasure as he articulates his plight. Like Virgil, the venerable Carl Watson takes us on a mystical, mythical tour. Here, hope has been replaced by a sophisticated synthesis of emotions — of despair and delight — in what can only be called a triumph of style.’’—Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, author of Triple Crown: Three Crowns of Sonnets. Employment of the Apes and editor/publisher of Live Mag!

“Carl Watson is a Steampunk Baudelaire, his genius a Last Exit To Nowhere Existentialism of sinisterly exotic thoughts. Both behind and ahead of his time; a futuristic-classicist, Watson’s richly reposited and rescued English language butchers Corporate Clone-Speak , and reveals to us an Adamic namer-poet-seer of the cruelest nightmares slouching our way to be born .”—Alan Kaufman, author of the memoir Drunken Angel and editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

“In images of great beauty, and play within poetic form, Watson has written a passion play in what might be a meeting between Rimbaud and Donne in a final dream where ‘...sleep can offer both terror and escape’.” —Bonny Finberg, author of Kali’s Day.

“The poems in Astral Botanica, Carl Watson’s new collection, are hybrid things indeed; like Fabergé eggs with shoe-bombs inside. To give you some idea of what we’re talking about here, imagine an Edgar Poe gene-spliced with J.R. Oppenheimer – the resultant being would be able to fill black holes with gothic musings on ancient sexuality and repressed modernity. Everything is grist for Watson’s mill: Anglo-Saxon epic notions surround Wasteland remnants. What he’s put on the page invites you to think, and in this age of non-thought, that’s art of a very high order.’’ —Ron Kolm, editor of The Evergreen Review and author of Divine Comedy.

“Ron Kolm’s poems leave you with a lot of images and lines to savor and ponder — ‘absolute gravity / In a zero-cold zone,’ the lone nightfighter ‘out beyond the edge of love’ — but he’s no mere cleverist. There’s a deep and devious wisdom here, and a big heart.’’ — John Strausbaugh, author of The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, A History of Greenwich Village.

For debtors everywhere who want to understand how the system really works, this handbook provides practical tools for fighting debt in its most exploitative forms. Over the last 30 years as wages have stagnated across the country, average household debt has more than doubled. Increasingly, people are forced to take on debt to meet their needs; from housing to education and medical care. The results—wrecked lives, devastated communities, and an increasing reliance on credit to maintain basic living standards—reveal an economic system that enriches the few at the expense of the many. Detailed strategies, resources, and insider tips for dealing with some of the most common kinds of debt are covered in this manual, including credit card debt, medical debt, student debt, and housing debt. It also contains tactics for navigating the pitfalls of personal bankruptcy, as well as information on how to be protected from credit reporting agencies, debt collectors, payday lenders, check-cashing outlets, rent-to-own stores, and more. Additional chapters cover tax debt, sovereign debt, the relationship between debt and climate, and an expanded vision for a movement of mass debt resistance.