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Reposted from Fantastic Metropolis, author China Mieville lays out a list of 50 science fiction and fantasy works he feels every socialist ought to read.

When I became a socialist I was also studying Sociology and Philosophy academically. I experienced something that seems to be a trend...

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Hail to the king, baby.

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It seems to me that the numerous discourses on historical memory and its representation often overlook the complementary relationship that exists between reality and museum. The museum is not secondary to “real” history, nor is it merely a refl ection and documentation of what “really” happened outside its walls according to the autonomous laws of historical development. The contrary is true: “reality” itself is secondary in relation to the museum— the “real” can be defi ned only in comparison with the museum collection. This means that any change in the museum collection brings about a change in our perception of reality itself—after all, reality can be defi ned in this context as the sum of all things not yet being collected. So history cannot be understood as a ully autonomous process which takes place outside the museum’s walls. Our image of reality is dependent on our knowledge of the museum.

Boris Groys; "Art power"

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Despite all that is devaluing the word democracy day after day and in front of our eyes, there is no doubt that this word remains the dominant emblem of contemporary political society An emblem is the "untouchable" in a symbolic system, a third rail. You can say what you like about political society display unprecedented "critical" zeal, denounce the "economic horror," you'll always earn pardon as long as you do so in the name of democracy. The correct tone is something like: "How can a society that claims to be democratic be guilty of this or that?" Ultimately you will be seen to have judged society in the name of its emblem and therefore itself You haven't gone beyond the pale, you still deserve the appellation of citizen rather than barbarian, you're standing by at your democratically assigned place. Be seeing you at the next election.

Alain Badiou; "The Democratic emblem"

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People like to simplify the question by returning it to the opposition between direct democracy and representative democracy. One can then simply play on the difference between times, and the opposition between reality and utopia. So, one says that direct democracy was good for Ancient Greek cities or Swiss cantons of the Middle Ages, where the whole population of free men could gather in a single place. But for our vast nations and our modern societies only representative democracy is suitable. The argument is not as probative as it is hoped to be. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, French representatives saw no difficulty in assembling all the electors of the canton in one administrative centre. All that was required was to keep the number of voters low, which was easily done by reserving the right to vote to those who could afford a poll tax of 300 francs. 'Direct elections constitute the only true representative government' Benjamin Constant said at the time.And Hannah Arendt in 1963 could still see the real power of the people in the form of revolutionary councils, where the only effective political elite was constituted the eliteself-selected on the ground of those who took pleasure in concernlllg themselves with public matters.

Otherwise said, representation was never a system invented to compensate for the growth of popUlations. It is not a form in which democracy has been adapted to modern times and vast space. It is, by rights, an oligarchic form, a representation of mmontles who are entitled to take charge of public affairs.

Jacques Ranciere; "Hatred of Democracy" 

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It is thus not only that our brain is socialized, society itself is naturalized in the brain.

Slavoj Žižek

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exclusive album stream of OUR CEASING VOICE's new album "That Day Last November" - out Jan 16 via Revolvermann Records (vinyl) & Frontal Noize (CD) - nbhap.com/

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Where the political state has attained its full degree of development man leads a double life, a life in heaven and a life on earth, not only in his mind, in his consciousness, but in reality. He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society, where he is active as a private individual, regards other men as means, debases himself to a means and becomes a plaything of alien powers. The relationship of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relationship of heaven to earth. The state stands in the same opposition to civil society and overcomes it in the same way as religion overcomes the restrictions of the profane world, i.e. it has to acknowledge it again, reinstate it and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real individual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary member of a fictitious sovereignty, he is divested of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality

Karl Marx; "On the jewish question"

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It has always seemed paradoxical to me that philosophical historiography has oriented the alternatives towards the past: it is not a discovery of the future, as science always is. Neither is the liberation of a cumbersome past worth anything if it is not carried through to the benefit of the present and to the production of the future.

Antonio Negri, "The Savage Anomaly"

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David Bowie: Where Are We Now? (by SparkyHughes33)

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I would say, if you like, that the party is like an out-moded mathematics...that is to say, the mathematics of Euclid. We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline.

 Alain Badiou; "The Concept of Model"

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Thought as such is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it; this is what thought has inherited from its archetype, the relation between labor and material. Today, when ideologues tend more and more than ever to encourage thought to be positive, they cleverly note that positivity runs precisely counter to thought, and that it takes friendly persuasion by social authority to accustom thought to positivity.

Theodor W. Adorno; "Negative Dialectics"   

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Death Grips "COME UP AND GET ME" (by deathgrippin)

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Off-Key Sessions

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Track taken from Tape Loop Orchestra's upcoming album 'In A Lonely Place'...

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Some concepts call for archaisms, and others for neologisms, shot through with almost crazy etymological exercises: etymology is like a specifically philosophical athleticism. In each case there must be a strange necessity for these words and for their choice, like an element of style. The concept's baptism calls for a specifically philosophical taste that proceeds with violence or by insinuation and constitutes a philosophical language within language-not just a vocabulary but a syntax that attains the sublime or a great beauty.

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari; "What is Philosophy"