Platypus@NYU presents a roundtable discussion following the May 1st General Strike. Held on May 2nd, 2012, at New York University.
Since November of 2011, and with the help of working groups and organizers of OWS, Platypus has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions reflecting on the obstacles and possibilities, political content, and potential future of the #Occupy movement. These have taken place in New York, Chicago, Boston, Halifax (Canada), London (UK). We welcome any and all who would like to be a part of this project of self-education and potential rebuilding of the Left to join us in advancing this critical moment.
05.02 Wednesday, 7PM Kimmel Center NYU, room 907
60 Washington Sq. South, NYC
WHAT IS THE #OCCUPY MOVEMENT? pt. 3
Platypus at NYU presents a roundtable discussion on the MAY 1st General Strike.
Since November of 2011, and with the help of working groups and organizers of OWS, Platypus has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions reflecting on the obstacles and possibilities, political content, and potential future of the #Occupy movement. These have taken place in New York, Chicago, Boston, Halifax (Canada), London (UK). We welcome any and all who would like to be a part of this project of self-education and potential rebuilding of the Left to join us in advancing this critical moment.
The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the āOldā (1920s-30s), āNewā (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. newyork.platypus1917.org | www.platypus1917.org
Panel held on April 26th, 2012 at New York University, as part of the 3 Rs panel series.
āAfter the failure of the 1960s New Left, the underlying despair with regard to the real efficacy of political will, of political agency, in a historical situation of heightened helplessness, became a self-constitution as outsider, as other, rather than an instrument of transformation. Focused on the bureaucratic stasis of the Fordist, late 20th Century world, the Left echoed the destruction of that world by the dynamics of capital: neoliberalism and globalization.
The idea of a fundamental transformation became bracketed and, instead, was replaced by the more ambiguous notion of āresistance.ā The notion of resistance, however, says little about the nature of that which is being resisted, or of the politics of the resistance involved.
āResistanceā is rarely based on a reflexive analysis of possibilities for fundamental change that are both generated and suppressed by the dynamic heteronomous order of capital. āResistanceā is an undialectical category that does not grasp its own conditions of possibility; it fails to grasp the dynamic historical context of capital and its reconstitution of possibilities for both domination and emancipation, of which the āresistersā do not recognize that that they are a part.ā
ā Moishe Postone, āHistory and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalismā (Public CultureĀø 18.1: 2006)
Reform, revolution, resistance: what kind of weight do these categories hold for the Left today? How are they used, to where do they point, and what is their history? Join the Platypus Affiliated Society for a discussion concerning a question that has renewed immediacy in light of the #Occupy movement.
Speakers:
John Asimakopoulos (Institute for Transformative Studies)
Todd Gitlin (Columbia University)
Tom Trottier (Workersā International Committee)
Ross Wolfe (Platypus Affiliated Society)
On Monday, May 7th, Richard Wolin, distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, sat down with us to discuss his recent book The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s.
The single-payer insurance model is the basis of the health care systems of other advanced industrial nations such as the United Kingdom and Canada, so what accounts for the apparent impracticality of achieving this reform in the United States? If the single-payer system is so much more rational and humane than the alternatives, why does it play such a marginal role in American politics? And if one is seriously committed to this reform, how might the situation change? Joining us on Radical Minds to discuss these questions and more is Helen Redmond, a medical social worker, independent journalist and a member of the Chicago Single Payer Action Network and the International Socialist Organization.
Interview conducted on April 24th, 2012 on the Radical Minds radio show.
