IN-STORE EVENTS at HOUSMANS
We regularly have a variety of events in the shop, and are always welcome for suggestions from authors, artists and campaigners who want to use the shop for evening events. Past events include talks, book signings, film screenings, art exhibitions and musical performances.
Click here for an archive; which includes a number of selected filmed highlights, of our previous events. Also, you can view video from some special events here.
FEMINIST BOOK FORTNIGHT AT HOUSMANS
from the 4th to the 20th MAY
'This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism'
with author Ashton Applewhite
Monday 20th May, 7pm - Tickets in advance from HERE
From childhood on, we’re barraged by messages that it’s sad to be old. That wrinkles are embarrassing, and old people useless. Author and activist Ashton Applewhite believed them too—until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does.
Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces Applewhite’s journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. The book explains the roots of ageism—in history and in our own age denial—and how it divides and debases, examines how ageist myths and stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of olders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and concludes with a rousing call to action.
Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!
REVIEWS
Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age—62. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.
ANNE LAMOTT, New York Times best-selling author
Along comes Ashton Applewhite with a book we have been waiting for. Anti-ageism now boasts a popular champion, activist, and epigrammatist in the lineage of Martial and Dorothy Parker. Until This Chair Rocks we haven’t had a single compact book that blows up myths seven to a page like fireworks.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Coiled Verbal Spring/Devices of Lenin's Language'
with Ben Watson and the AMM All-Stars
Wednesday 22nd May, 7pm - Tickets in advance from here
This event has been called by AMM All-Stars to launch, draw attention to, celebrate, perform, discuss, worship, use, abuse, fondle, publicise - what you will - Coiled Verbal Spring/Devices of Lenin's Language, a book edited by Sezgin Boynik and published by Rab-Rab Press in Helsinki. The core of this shiny blue slab (21cm x 13cm x 2.3cm; 530g; 468pp) is the entire contents of the LEF (Left Front of the Arts) Journal (no. 5), published just after Lenin's death in January 1924: texts by Mayakovsky, Shklovsky and other Zaum Formalists which have never appeared in English before. They begin with a newspaper advert for marble busts of Lenin, and say - directly, clearly and unequivocally - WE OPPOSE THIS. Aware that the epigones are threatening the revolution, the writing is fierce, analytical, funny and cutting. It proves that Great Literature and Revolution cannot be separated, and whoever separates them is a Stalinist, and a liar to boot. Far from being the "dilettantes" denounced by the Perpetrators of Leftwing Boredom, AMM All-Stars and Psychedelic Bolsheviks are prescient in their refusal to separate art and revolution, subject and object, chicken and egg. We are funky time-travellers who refuse to be crucified on the cross of calendar time. We existed in 1924 and we exist in 2019. Sezgin's publication proves this. If Debord had known these texts, he wouldn't have allowed the French Communist Party to dictate his reading of Lenin, and Situationist politics would have avoided the swamps of anarchism and the crap pictures of Ralph Rumney.
Sezgin's 135-page introduction, "Out of Synch with the Thing" is a book in itself, using the vogue terms "contemporaneity" and "conjuncture" to expound the class nature of Lenin's politics. His bootnotes smash the pretensions of the bourgeois academy to understand Shklovsky and the Formalists (the one for Marjorie Perloff deserves a bottle of vodka). Craig Brandist, arise! Also included is a pamphlet by Alexei Kruchenykh from 1928, and there's an afterword by Darko Suvin (like Sezgin, although from a previous generation, Suvin is a product of Tito's Yugoslavia, where Cold War cliches held less sway) pointing out that we live in a war economy and that to stop war you need class politics. For fuck's sake, can't people stop gassing on about Brexit and talk about something important for a change? Thomas Campbell's translations are fab. This book is a conceptual explosion. It even smells of paraffin. You want to lick the cover!
AMM All-Stars are a musical unit, a survival boatload from the goode shyppe Association of Musical Marxists, a groupuscule founded by Ben Watson and Andy Wilson, which between 2010 and 2015 ruffled the smooth surface of London life by daring to suggest that without pertinent art Revolutionary Politics are void, and that without politics Avant is a disposable charade for hipsters, snobs and posers. At the time of going to press, the worthy constituents were Peter Baxter on punk drums; Dave Black on Northumbrian blues guitar; Paul Shearsmith (our Rico) on situational trumpet; Helen Tate on east-european violin; Graham Davis on krautrock synth & like absurdities; Out To Lunch on google-gargle; Jair-Rohm Parker Wells on bass; Esther Leslie on text - but there are other strange entities in orbit (Luke Davis, Kit Mackintosh, Rob Goldsmith ...) who may be persuaded to come down. Tune in to hear AMM All-Stars on Resonance 104.4FM between 2pm and 3pm on Wednesdays, by all means, but don't expect us to sound like that again. Oh yes, if you need any Unkant books we'll probably have a selection.
AUTONOMY NOW PRESENTS:
‘The Anarchist Imagination:
Anarchism Encounters the Humanities and the Social Sciences’
with Carl Levy, Constance Bantman, Ole Birk Laursen and Carne Ross
Thursday 30th May - Free entry - register for a ticket here
Our panel discuss the continuous role of the anarchist imagination as muse, provocateur, goading adversary, and catalyst in the stimulation of research and creative activity in the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, art, feminism, geography, international relations, political science, postcolonialism, and sociology.
At the event two books will be launched:
The Anarchist Imagination
Anarchism Encounters the Humanities and the Social Sciences, 1st Edition
Edited by Carl Levy, Saul Newman
https://www.routledge.com/The-Anarchist-Imagination-Anarchism-Encounters-the-Humanities-and-the/Levy-Newman/p/book/9781138782761
The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism
Editors: Levy, Carl, Adams, Matthew (Eds.)
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319756196
Carl Levy is a Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is currently writing two books, ‘Anarchists and the City’ and a biography of Errico Malatesta: ‘Errico Malatesta: The Rooted Cosmopolitan, the Life and Times of an Anarchist in Exile’.
Constance Bantman is Senior Lecturer in French and Director of Teaching and Learning and author of 'The French Anarchists in London, 1880-1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation'
Ole Birk Laursen is a literary critic and historian of Black and South Asian people in Britain and Europe, researching and writing about race, resistance, and revolution, focusing particularly on Indian anticolonialism, nationalism, and anarchism, as well as the contemporary legacies of colonialism, racism, riots, and human rights.
Carne Ross is best known for once working as a British diplomat before leaving the civil service in disgust over the Iraq war, and testifying against the government at the Butler Review. He has gone on to become an advocate for anarchist organising.
THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE ANARCHIST FESTIVAL 2019
'Cooperation Jackson: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi' with Kali Akuno
Friday 31st May, 7pm - Tickets in advance from here
On a rare visit to London from Mississippi, we are delighted to welcome a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, Kali Akuno, to discuss the inspiring work they have been undertaking to create sustainable community development, economic democracy, and community ownership, within the confines of a historically structurally racist state.
Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S. with the highest percentage of Black people, and a history of vicious racial terror and concurrent Black resistance is the backdrop and context for this programme of community organising.
Undeterred by the uncertainty, anxiety and fear brought about by the steady deterioration of the neoliberal order over the last few years, the response from Black activists of Jackson, Mississippi has been to organise. Inspired by the rich history of struggle and resistance in Mississippi and committed to the vision of the Jackson-Kush Plan, these activists are building institutions rooted in community power that combine politics and economic development into an alternative model for change, while addressing real, immediate needs of the people.
Cooperation Jackson’s basic theory of change is centered on the position that organizing and empowering the structurally under and unemployed sectors of the working class, particularly from Black and Latino communities, to build worker organized and owned cooperatives will be a catalyst for the democratisation of our economy and society overall.
The experiences and analyses in this compelling collection reflect the creative power that is unleashed when political struggle is grounded by a worldview freed from the inherent contradictions and limitations of reform liberalism.
Kali Akuno is also co-editor of 'Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi' (2017)
THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE ANARCHIST FESTIVAL 2019
Pluto Press 50th Anniversary event
'The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line'
with Kojo Koram and Ash Sarkar
Wednesday 5th June, 7pm - tickets in advance from HERE
£3 redeemable against any purchase on the night
The War on Drugs has led to millions of people dead, displaced and incarcerated. Disproportionately enforced on oppressed races, international drug prohibition has reinforced the colour line across the globe.
While laws prohibiting the production, sale and use of particular drugs are presented as politically neutral and objective, this collection reveals the racist impact of the war on drugs across multiple continents and in numerous situations. From racialised drugs policing at festivals in the UK to the necropolitical wars in Juarez, Mexico and from the exchange of drug policing programs between the United States and Israel to the management of black bodies in Brazil, this collection proves that the regulation of drugs and race is an international, and intentional, disaster.
Pushing forward the debate and activism led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and calling for radical changes in drug policy legislation and prison reform, both nationally and internationally, this collection cuts deep and rings true for all people fighting racism today.
“A monumental study of the transnational circuits of racist policing etched out through the War on Drugs, the immeasurable toll of human suffering they have induced, and the resistances mounted against them.”
Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming
Kojo Koram is a Llcturer in Law at the School of Law, University of London.
Ash Sarkar is a British journalist and political activist. She is a senior editor at Novara Media and teaches at Anglia Ruskin University and the Sandberg Institute
Pluto Press 50th Anniversary event
'To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe '
with Akwugo Emejulu and Francesca Sobande
Wednesday 12h June, 7pm - tickets in advance from HERE
£3 redeemable against any purchase on the night
This book brings together activists, artists, and scholars of color to show how Black feminism and Afrofeminism are being practiced in Europe today, exploring their differing social positions in various countries, and exploring the ways in which they organize and mobilize to imagine a Black feminist Europe.
Deeply aware that they are constructed as “others” living in a racialized and hierarchical continent, the contributors explore gender, class, sexuality, and legal status to show that they are both invisible—presumed to be absent from and irrelevant to European societies—and hyper-visible, assumed to be passive and sexualized, angry and irrational.
In imagining a future outside the neocolonial frames and practices of contemporary Europe, this book explores a variety of critical spaces including motherhood and the home, friendships and intimate relationships, activism and community, and literature, dance, and film.
Akwugo Emejulu is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Community Development as Micropolitics: Comparing Theories, Policies and Politics in America and Britain (Policy Press, 2015), and the co-author with Leah Bassel of Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain (Policy Press, 2017) and Fugitive Feminism (Silver Press, 2018).
Dr Francesca Sobande is a Digital Media Studies Lecturer at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on how racism and sexism manifest in media and the marketplace. She has published work in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Consumption Markets and Culture, and is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020).
GRENFELL ANNIVERSARY EVENT
'Safe as houses: Private greed, political negligence and housing policy after Grenfell' with Stuart Hodkinson
Friday 14th June, 7pm- - Tickets in advance from HERE
£3 redeemable against any purchase on the night
The Grenfell Tower fire has slowly revealed a shadowy background of outsourcing, deregulation and landlords turning a blind eye to residents' safety concerns across the UK. Stuart Hodkinson is an academic who has worked for over a decade with residents' groups in different cities, documenting their shocking regeneration experiences at the hands of private companies allowed to self-regulate on quality in lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts. His research has focused on council housing regeneration schemes in London under the infamous Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
In this talk he will draw on this research to present an original analysis of why Grenfell happened and how it could easily happen again, weaving together stories from different regeneration schemes to show a terrifying pattern in which the initial promise of better quality housing melts away, leaving residents to grapple with unsafe work, higher rents and service charges, and a united front of local authority landlords and their private contractors determined to ignore, deflect, and even silence those who speak out.
He will argue that the only way to end the era of unsafe regeneration and housing provision is to end the disastrous regime of self-regulation for good. This means strengthening safety laws, creating new enforcement agencies independent of government and industry, and replacing PFI and similar models of outsourcing with a new model of public housing that treats the provision of shelter as 'a social service' democratically accountable to its residents.
Stuart Hodkinson is Associate Professor in Critical Urban Geography at the University of Leeds and is active in radical housing networks and campaign groups.
Pluto Press 50th Anniversary event
‘Rebel Footprints: A Guide to Uncovering London's Radical History’ with David Rosenberg
Monday 24th June, 7pm - tickets in advance from HERE
£3 redeemable against any purchase on the night
David Rosenberg brings to life the history of social movements in the capital, telling the story of protest and struggle in London from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. From the suffragettes to the socialists, from the Chartists to the trade unionists, Rosenberg invites us to step into the footprints of a diverse cast of dedicated fighters for social justice.
David Rosenberg is an educator, writer and tour guide, and author of Rebel Footprints (Pluto, 2015) and Battle for the East End (Five Leaves, 2011). Since 2008, he has led tours of key sites in London's social and political history.
‘Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956’ with Evan Smith, Matthew Worley and Professor John Kelly
Wednesday 26th June, 7pm - tickets in advance from HERE
£3 redeemable against any purchase on the night
SPEAKERS Evan Smith (Author, Editor), Matthew Worley (Editor)
Professor John Kelly (Birkbeck)
Waiting for the revolution is a volume of essays examining the diverse currents of British left-wing politics from 1956 to the present day. The book is designed to complement the previous volume, Against the grain: The far left in Britain from 1956, bringing together young and established academics and writers to discuss the realignments and fissures that maintain leftist politics into the twenty-first century.
The two books endeavour to historicise the British left, detailing but also seeking to understand the diverse currents that comprise 'the far left'. Their objective is less to intervene in ongoing issues relevant to the left and politics more generally, than to uncover and explore the traditions and issues that have preoccupied leftist groups, activists and struggles. To this end, the book will appeal to scholars and anyone interested in British politics.
Evan Smith is a Visiting Adjunct Fellow in the School of History and International Relations at Flinders University, South Australia
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