Panel held on April 16th, 2012, in Boston, as part of the 3 Rs panel series.

Thanks to Doug Enaa Greene (http://www.youtube.com/user/dwgthed) for the video recording.

“After 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 ‘resistance.’ The notion of resistance, however, says little about the nature of that which is being resisted, or of the politics of the resistance involved.

‘Resistance’ 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. ‘Resistance’ 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 ‘resisters’ do not recognize that that they are a part.”

— Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism” (Public Culture¸ 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.

Panelists:
Jeff Booth (Socialist Alternative)
Gayge (Common Struggle Libertarian Communist Federation)
Joe Ramsey (Kasama Project)
Laura Lee Schmidt (Platypus)
J. Phil Thompson (MIT)

A public forum with students, activists and organizers from across the globe held on April 2nd, 2012.

Transcript in Platypus Review #48 (Click below):

From teach-ins in the UK, occupations in Austria and Germany and protests in the Netherlands and Greece, responses to the economic downturn are international in character. These new developments require coordination across global networks and it is why Platypus at U. Chicago is organizing a series of international panels that we hope can take place in Universities across the world where Platypus student members havebeen able to forge connections.

We hope that this panel will be an opportunity to report on activity and form new connections across international efforts. Panelists will report on the state of the Left in their respected regions and reflect on their experience as organizers while helping formulate what the next steps in organizing and planning could look like in the months ahead.

Panelists:
Haseeb Ahmed(Maastricht)
Valentin Badura(Austria)
Cengiz Kulac (Austria)
Moritz Roeger (Germany)
Jerzy Sobotta (Germany)
Thodoris Velissaris(Greece)

Moderated by Pam C. Nogales C. (Platypus)

Panel held on March 31st, 2012 at the Fourth Annual Platypus International Convention, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Panel questions:

1. What's wrong with the G8/NATO? On what grounds should the G8/NATO be politicized? To what extent is social domination reducible to or expressed by the G8/NATO?
2. If the G8/NATO perpetuates a global status quo, what would a world without these institutions look like? Would global bodies function in an emancipated world? If so, how?
3. How do you assess the necessity and efficacy of activist resistance to the G8/NATO? How would a local repeat of the Battle of Seattle advance the cause of emancipation?
4. What is the relationship between the Occupy movement and the G8/NATO protests? If Occupy adopts the alter-globalization model of regular summit confrontations, does this shift indicate progress or regress compared to last fall's strategy of constant occupation?

Panelists:
Fred Mecklenburg (News and Letters)
John Sargis (Inclusive Democracy Collective)
Bernard Harcourt (University of Chicago)

Panel held on March 31st, 2012 at the Fourth Annual Platypus International Convention, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Transcript in Platypus Review #46 (Click below):

Hegel famously remarked that the task of philosophy was to "comprehend its own time in thought." In a sense, we can extend this as the raison d'etre for artistic production, albeit in a modified way: art's task is to "comprehend its own time in form." Yet only with the revolutionary rise of modernity can this dictum make sense. Beginning in the 18th Century, art sought to register and materialize the way in which social consciousness changed along side the developing material conditions of social life. Thus, in times of great social transformation, we also bear witness to major shifts in artistic production: The French Revolution and David, The Revolutions of 1848 and Courbet, and the Russian Revolution and Suprematism and Constructivism are three major examples.

This panel focuses on the relationship between social and aesthetic transformation. How do shifts in formal processes and approaches towards materiality speak to larger changes in the structures of social life? Is the focus on changes within art's form too confining of vision, and must art also concern itself with intervening into the political and social arena? Is art always reacting to, or tailing after social transformations, or can shifts in Culture prefigure such developments? -- In other words, can there be a cultural lag and a cultural leep? The panelists have been asked to address these questions among others in order to flesh out the uneven and at times obscure relationship that art has with a society that is constantly in flux.

Panelists:
Mary Jane Jacob (School of the Art Institute)
Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois Chicago)
Robert Pippin (University of Chicago)