Nicholas Thoburn
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 290339 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Nicholas Thoburn |
| NOMBRES | Nicholas |
| APELLIDO | Thoburn |
| FIRMA | THOBURN N |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3624-4579 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 70 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2001 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2022 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Salvage Brutalism
In December 2017, amidst much publicity, the Victoria and Albert Museum began salvaging a three-storey section of Robin Hood Gardens, a Brutalist council estate in Poplar, east London, then undergoing demolition in a 600 million regeneration named Blackwall Reach. An unprecedented acquisition, front and back faades of two interlocking apartments, each measuring 8.8 metres high and 5.5 metres wide, are to be reconstructed, potentially as one whole…
Twitter, Book, Riot
This article considers today's 'post-digital' political publishing through the material forms of an experimental book, The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary. Anonymously published and devoid of all editorial text, the book is comprised entirely of some 650 screen-grabbed tweets, tweets posted by black Baltimore youth during the riots that ensued on the police killing of Freddie Gray. It is a crisis-ridden book, bearing the wrenching anti…
Concrete and council housing
It is commonly appreciated that issues of ‘class’ are significant to Brutalist architecture, yet in the two main trends of today’s Brutalist critical revival, the place and features of class are sidelined or obscured. Addressing that problem, this article proposes an original concept of ‘class architecture’ through analysis of the social and aesthetic form of Robin Hood Gardens, the east London council estate designed by ‘New Brutalist’ architect…
Anti-Book
No, Anti-Book is not a book about books. Not exactly. And yet it is a must for anyone interested in the future of the book. Presenting what he terms "a communism of textual matter," Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing, shifting the politics of text from an exclusive concern with content and meaning to the media forms and social relations by which text is produced and consumed. …
The People Are Missing
This article investigates the place of social relations in Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of ‘cramped space’, a figure integral to their ‘minor politics’. Against social and political theories that seek the source of political practice in a collective identity, the theory of cramped space contends that politics arises among those who lack and refuse coherent identity, in their encounter with the impasses, limits, or impossibilities of individual a…
Materialities of Independent Publishing
This text is a conversation among practitioners of independent political media, focusing on the diverse materialities of independent publishing associated with the new media environment. The conversation concentrates on the publishing projects with which the participants are involved: the online archive and conversation platform AAAAARG, the print and digital publications of artist and activist group Chto Delat?, the blog I Cite, and the hybrid p…
The Strangest Cult
This article investigates the complex object of the political book. Mobilising Deleuze and Guattari's typology of the book, the article assesses the material properties of four specific books (or sets of books): Mao Zedong's ‘Little Red Book’, Russian Futurist books, Antonin Artaud's paper ‘spells’, and Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's ‘anti-book’ Mémoires. Highly critical of the dominant mode of the political book, what they call the ‘root-book’, Del…
Do Not Be Afraid, Join Us, Come Back? On the “Idea of Communism” in Our Time
Gi ven the recent history of the organized Left, where even the once mammoth Italian Communist Party had to rebrand itself "Democratic" before folding completely, you might be forgiven for expressing some surprise at the recent Xurry of books on the theme and contemporary relevance of "communism."And yet since 2009 half a dozen books of political philosophy have been published in English with communism or its direct cognates in the title, books t…
War at the Membrane
Howard Slater, Anomie/Bonhomie and Other Writings, London, Mute Books, 2011, 148pp; 9.99[pounds sterling] paperback I first encountered Howard Slater's sharp-witted and inventive writing in the pages of a magazine called Autotoxicity. An unholy mix of artists' book and journal of ultra-left theory, Autotoxicity exemplified a key principle of Slater's work, that political writing is as much an intervention in textual and publishing form as it is t…
Ceci n’est pas un magazine
What are the possibilities for a political magazine in the new media environment? This article addresses that question through a study of the London-based art and politics magazine Mute, an experimental publishing venture that currently exists as a ‘hybrid’ of Web and print platforms. The politics in question resides not only in the magazine’s content, but throughout its media form. For Mute’s coverage of the evolving political and aesthetic capa…
To Conquer the Anonymous
Is there an Autonomist Model of Political Communication
This article explores the different models of political communication that inhere in Hardt and Negri’s Empire trilogy, models that are explicit and implicit, intended and accidental, dominant and latent. From their existence tangled up in Hardt and Negri’s work, I draw out for consideration the communicative models of the rhizome-book, manifesto, textbook, mass-market book, autonomous language, and political journal. My aim is less to evaluate th…
Weatherman, the Militant Diagram, and the Problem of Political Passion
Mutant' workers in 'veritable wars of subjectivity'; for Flix Guattari, this is what constitutes the history of the workers' movement. 1 He has in mind the events of revolutionary upheaval, the Paris Commune, October 1917, May 1968.But the problematic of revolutionary subjectivity -in its affective, semiotic, organisational, and imaginary registers -is one that pervades modern socialist, communist and anarchist politics.This problematic is that o…
Deleuzian Politics? A Roundtable Discussion
Nick and Jeremy circulated some general questions to think about before the discussion, which particularly focused on the surprising fact that many casual commentators, and indeed, some self-styled 'Deleuzians', seemed to regard Deleuzian philosophy as wholly compatible with an embrace of market capitalism and its tendency to celebrate the ephemeral, the individual, the hyper-mobile, the infantile; while others seemed to think of Deleuze as a who…
Mute
Communist Objects and the Values of Printed Matter
Following recent research in historical and cultural studies of “the book” and the practitioner field of book arts, the book is now approached no longer only as a vehicle for content but as a rich and mutable material entity. But in this materialist framework, is it possible to discern a politics of the book? This article addresses that question from two angles. First, it sets out a figure for the analysis of political material culture: the “comm…
Deleuze and Politics
Deleuze and politics
Against recent critique of Deleuze as a non-political thinker this text explores the specific innovations and interventions that Deleuze's profoundly political concepts bring to political thought and practice.
Patterns of Production
While the concept of hegemony had a central place in the crystallization of 1980s cultural studies, recent developments in cultural economy, information and communication technologies, and globalization suggest a decline in the utility of the frameworks of democracy and the 'logic of equivalence' that lie at the heart of the hegemony thesis and its conception of the social. This article considers how cultural studies is engaging with this situati…
Deleuze, Marx and Politics
A critical and provocative exploration of the political, conceptual and cultural points of resonance between Deleuze's minor politics and Marx's critique of capitalist dynamics, engaging with Deleuze's missing work, The Grandeur of Marx. This book explores the core categories of communism and capital in conjunction with a wealth of contemporary and historical political concepts and movements - from the lumpenproletariat and anarchism, to Italian …
The Hobo Anomalous
This article is an analysis of minority political invention in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Against the tendency in recent social and cultural theory to dichotomize class and difference, it argues that it was in and through the IWW's formulation of class that minority political and cultural invention occurred. Using the framework of Deleuze and Guattari's minor politics, the article shows how the IWW's composition in the simultaneou…
Difference in Marx
This article considers the place of difference in Marx's politics through an exploration of his categories of the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat. Far from a simple set of class subjects or empirical peoples, these two categories are argued to describe particular modes of political composition . Despite the frisson of difference and excess which is usually associated with Marx's lumpenproletariat, it is argued to describe a mode of composit…
Autonomous Production
This article takes the suggestions by Jameson and Žižek that Hardt and Negri's recent Empire is an important 'new theoretical synthesis' and a challenge to a politically complacent Cultural Studies as its starting point to explore Negri's understanding of 'production'. It opens out Negri's apparent synthesis to consider the formative elements of his work: operaismo's 'social factory', Marx's 'Fragment on Machines' and Deleuze's figure of 'control…
Patterns of Production
While the concept of hegemony had a central place in the crystallization of 1980s cultural studies, recent developments in cultural economy, information and communication technologies, and globalization suggest a decline in the utility of the frameworks of democracy and the 'logic of equivalence' that lie at the heart of the hegemony thesis and its conception of the social. This article considers how cultural studies is engaging with this situati…
Difference in Marx
This article considers the place of difference in Marx's politics through an exploration of his categories of the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat. Far from a simple set of class subjects or empirical peoples, these two categories are argued to describe particular modes of political composition . Despite the frisson of difference and excess which is usually associated with Marx's lumpenproletariat, it is argued to describe a mode of composit…
Autonomous Production
This article takes the suggestions by Jameson and Žižek that Hardt and Negri's recent Empire is an important 'new theoretical synthesis' and a challenge to a politically complacent Cultural Studies as its starting point to explore Negri's understanding of 'production'. It opens out Negri's apparent synthesis to consider the formative elements of his work: operaismo's 'social factory', Marx's 'Fragment on Machines' and Deleuze's figure of 'control…
Concrete and council housing
It is commonly appreciated that issues of ‘class’ are significant to Brutalist architecture, yet in the two main trends of today’s Brutalist critical revival, the place and features of class are sidelined or obscured. Addressing that problem, this article proposes an original concept of ‘class architecture’ through analysis of the social and aesthetic form of Robin Hood Gardens, the east London council estate designed by ‘New Brutalist’ architect…
The People Are Missing
This article investigates the place of social relations in Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of ‘cramped space’, a figure integral to their ‘minor politics’. Against social and political theories that seek the source of political practice in a collective identity, the theory of cramped space contends that politics arises among those who lack and refuse coherent identity, in their encounter with the impasses, limits, or impossibilities of individual a…
Communist Objects and the Values of Printed Matter
Following recent research in historical and cultural studies of “the book” and the practitioner field of book arts, the book is now approached no longer only as a vehicle for content but as a rich and mutable material entity. But in this materialist framework, is it possible to discern a politics of the book? This article addresses that question from two angles. First, it sets out a figure for the analysis of political material culture: the “comm…
The Hobo Anomalous
This article is an analysis of minority political invention in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Against the tendency in recent social and cultural theory to dichotomize class and difference, it argues that it was in and through the IWW's formulation of class that minority political and cultural invention occurred. Using the framework of Deleuze and Guattari's minor politics, the article shows how the IWW's composition in the simultaneou…
Autonomous Production
This article takes the suggestions by Jameson and Žižek that Hardt and Negri's recent Empire is an important 'new theoretical synthesis' and a challenge to a politically complacent Cultural Studies as its starting point to explore Negri's understanding of 'production'. It opens out Negri's apparent synthesis to consider the formative elements of his work: operaismo's 'social factory', Marx's 'Fragment on Machines' and Deleuze's figure of 'control…
Difference in Marx
This article considers the place of difference in Marx's politics through an exploration of his categories of the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat. Far from a simple set of class subjects or empirical peoples, these two categories are argued to describe particular modes of political composition . Despite the frisson of difference and excess which is usually associated with Marx's lumpenproletariat, it is argued to describe a mode of composit…
Deleuze, Marx and Politics
A critical and provocative exploration of the political, conceptual and cultural points of resonance between Deleuze's minor politics and Marx's critique of capitalist dynamics, engaging with Deleuze's missing work, The Grandeur of Marx. This book explores the core categories of communism and capital in conjunction with a wealth of contemporary and historical political concepts and movements - from the lumpenproletariat and anarchism, to Italian …
The Hobo Anomalous
This article is an analysis of minority political invention in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Against the tendency in recent social and cultural theory to dichotomize class and difference, it argues that it was in and through the IWW's formulation of class that minority political and cultural invention occurred. Using the framework of Deleuze and Guattari's minor politics, the article shows how the IWW's composition in the simultaneou…
Patterns of Production
While the concept of hegemony had a central place in the crystallization of 1980s cultural studies, recent developments in cultural economy, information and communication technologies, and globalization suggest a decline in the utility of the frameworks of democracy and the 'logic of equivalence' that lie at the heart of the hegemony thesis and its conception of the social. This article considers how cultural studies is engaging with this situati…
Deleuze and Politics
Deleuze and politics
Against recent critique of Deleuze as a non-political thinker this text explores the specific innovations and interventions that Deleuze's profoundly political concepts bring to political thought and practice.
Weatherman, the Militant Diagram, and the Problem of Political Passion
Mutant' workers in 'veritable wars of subjectivity'; for Flix Guattari, this is what constitutes the history of the workers' movement. 1 He has in mind the events of revolutionary upheaval, the Paris Commune, October 1917, May 1968.But the problematic of revolutionary subjectivity -in its affective, semiotic, organisational, and imaginary registers -is one that pervades modern socialist, communist and anarchist politics.This problematic is that o…
Deleuzian Politics? A Roundtable Discussion
Nick and Jeremy circulated some general questions to think about before the discussion, which particularly focused on the surprising fact that many casual commentators, and indeed, some self-styled 'Deleuzians', seemed to regard Deleuzian philosophy as wholly compatible with an embrace of market capitalism and its tendency to celebrate the ephemeral, the individual, the hyper-mobile, the infantile; while others seemed to think of Deleuze as a who…
Mute
Communist Objects and the Values of Printed Matter
Following recent research in historical and cultural studies of “the book” and the practitioner field of book arts, the book is now approached no longer only as a vehicle for content but as a rich and mutable material entity. But in this materialist framework, is it possible to discern a politics of the book? This article addresses that question from two angles. First, it sets out a figure for the analysis of political material culture: the “comm…
Ceci n’est pas un magazine
What are the possibilities for a political magazine in the new media environment? This article addresses that question through a study of the London-based art and politics magazine Mute, an experimental publishing venture that currently exists as a ‘hybrid’ of Web and print platforms. The politics in question resides not only in the magazine’s content, but throughout its media form. For Mute’s coverage of the evolving political and aesthetic capa…
To Conquer the Anonymous
Is there an Autonomist Model of Political Communication
This article explores the different models of political communication that inhere in Hardt and Negri’s Empire trilogy, models that are explicit and implicit, intended and accidental, dominant and latent. From their existence tangled up in Hardt and Negri’s work, I draw out for consideration the communicative models of the rhizome-book, manifesto, textbook, mass-market book, autonomous language, and political journal. My aim is less to evaluate th…
War at the Membrane
Howard Slater, Anomie/Bonhomie and Other Writings, London, Mute Books, 2011, 148pp; 9.99[pounds sterling] paperback I first encountered Howard Slater's sharp-witted and inventive writing in the pages of a magazine called Autotoxicity. An unholy mix of artists' book and journal of ultra-left theory, Autotoxicity exemplified a key principle of Slater's work, that political writing is as much an intervention in textual and publishing form as it is t…
Materialities of Independent Publishing
This text is a conversation among practitioners of independent political media, focusing on the diverse materialities of independent publishing associated with the new media environment. The conversation concentrates on the publishing projects with which the participants are involved: the online archive and conversation platform AAAAARG, the print and digital publications of artist and activist group Chto Delat?, the blog I Cite, and the hybrid p…
The Strangest Cult
This article investigates the complex object of the political book. Mobilising Deleuze and Guattari's typology of the book, the article assesses the material properties of four specific books (or sets of books): Mao Zedong's ‘Little Red Book’, Russian Futurist books, Antonin Artaud's paper ‘spells’, and Guy Debord and Asger Jorn's ‘anti-book’ Mémoires. Highly critical of the dominant mode of the political book, what they call the ‘root-book’, Del…
Do Not Be Afraid, Join Us, Come Back? On the “Idea of Communism” in Our Time
Gi ven the recent history of the organized Left, where even the once mammoth Italian Communist Party had to rebrand itself "Democratic" before folding completely, you might be forgiven for expressing some surprise at the recent Xurry of books on the theme and contemporary relevance of "communism."And yet since 2009 half a dozen books of political philosophy have been published in English with communism or its direct cognates in the title, books t…
Anti-Book
No, Anti-Book is not a book about books. Not exactly. And yet it is a must for anyone interested in the future of the book. Presenting what he terms "a communism of textual matter," Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing, shifting the politics of text from an exclusive concern with content and meaning to the media forms and social relations by which text is produced and consumed. …
The People Are Missing
This article investigates the place of social relations in Deleuze and Guattari’s figure of ‘cramped space’, a figure integral to their ‘minor politics’. Against social and political theories that seek the source of political practice in a collective identity, the theory of cramped space contends that politics arises among those who lack and refuse coherent identity, in their encounter with the impasses, limits, or impossibilities of individual a…
Concrete and council housing
It is commonly appreciated that issues of ‘class’ are significant to Brutalist architecture, yet in the two main trends of today’s Brutalist critical revival, the place and features of class are sidelined or obscured. Addressing that problem, this article proposes an original concept of ‘class architecture’ through analysis of the social and aesthetic form of Robin Hood Gardens, the east London council estate designed by ‘New Brutalist’ architect…
Twitter, Book, Riot
This article considers today's 'post-digital' political publishing through the material forms of an experimental book, The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary. Anonymously published and devoid of all editorial text, the book is comprised entirely of some 650 screen-grabbed tweets, tweets posted by black Baltimore youth during the riots that ensued on the police killing of Freddie Gray. It is a crisis-ridden book, bearing the wrenching anti…
Salvage Brutalism
In December 2017, amidst much publicity, the Victoria and Albert Museum began salvaging a three-storey section of Robin Hood Gardens, a Brutalist council estate in Poplar, east London, then undergoing demolition in a 600 million regeneration named Blackwall Reach. An unprecedented acquisition, front and back faades of two interlocking apartments, each measuring 8.8 metres high and 5.5 metres wide, are to be reconstructed, potentially as one whole…
Political science (18 obras) · Sociology (17 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Philosophy (9 obras) · Art (8 obras) · Epistemology (8 obras) · Philosophy (7 obras) · Political theory and Gramsci (7 obras)