RG's poster
Each week we will meet to discuss a part of Mau's book. The previous reading does not have to be very deep, the hour and a half of the session are for this work. Each work Mau's chapter's will be framed around an specific theme and also put in converstation with other authors, but always the economic power of capital will be our starting point of discussion.
Here is the link for the Praxis website where you can find the information and the dates and location: Praxis Website . In this website I share a personal overview of group and each session.
Aside from link to texts, you will find the reasons for each other-text, and a small preview of the theme of each session. Organizing and running a reading group is a challenge. I hope to be able to successfully carry out the task for myself and the people involved. (For now the language is English)
The idea is for each session to be thematized, following Mau's book and a accompanying text of a relatively similar size, allowing us to dive into or confront the book. The idea of an additional text adds a different flavor each week, the door being open to any proposal from any participant.
| Session | Chapters | Side text | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27/3 | Introduction | - | Even though we evidenced the need to go further in the book to be able to use it properly, the session was very fruitful to begin understanding the book's objectives, crimes, and misdemeanors, and to set the pace and the opening of the next sessions. For example, we commented on the very difficulty Mau faces in attempting to refer to his analysis as "tripartite" when in truth, "economic power", as a "form of power", would only appear when the other two main forms of power, violence and ideology, are "absent". There were more comments related to the form of the subject in our society, the concept of reproduction, the possibility of an "essence" of capitalism or of "human nature" beyond history, or on the very term "compulsion". Nevertheless, like Mau himself, our session was also introductory. Beijinhos! |
| 3/4 | Part 1. Chapter 1 + 2 (+ 3, if you have time) | La verite et les formes juridiques (mainly conferences 4 and 5) | An analysis of forms of power, them being violence, ideology, and an emergent form linked of european capitalist mode of production. This new form comes from previous Marxist failed attempts to understand capital's domination as obligatory maintainance of specific social relations in favour of capital's interests and without direct intervention of individuals, drawing then the relation between the formal economy and the life-making activities. The sessions will be add some spice with Foucault's text where he develops a form of power that is link the emergence to the capitalist mode of production and its surplus profit. |
and thanks co-organizer Mariana and Praxis!