Next week we’re reading The World War of Small Pastries by Charles Fourier. We’ll discuss pp. 5-52, stopping at “Announcement of the Arrival of the Crusaders”.

I’m assembling an essay on queer death, which has as one of its illuminating points Georges Bataille’s notion of “the community of those who have no community” — the impossibility of presence except as revealed through the death’s intimacy. So I look forward to hearing your thoughts on a remarkable though ephemeral text which treats this incommunicable remainder: Maurice Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community. Let’s consider its first section, “The Negative Community” (pp. 1-26) on Tuesday. Thanks in advance for your indulgence.

We will not be meeting at our usual time and place next Tuesday so that we can attend a book release and presentation being given on Uruguayan anarchism during the Cold War. If you’d like to meet up, we’ll be at Tamarack (1501 Harrison St in downtown Oakland) at 6pm. The book in question is Anarchist Popular Power – Dissident Labor and Armed Struggle in Uruguay, 1956-76 by Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis. It’s not terribly long, though one supposes that the presentation will presuppose little to no knowledge of the subject. So read whatever parts you feel drawn to and we’ll all have a bit of a field trip together. Any discussion of the FAU is compelled to offer commentary on the doctrinaire quasi-Leninist premises of platformism and especifismo (or specifism) so you may also wish to do a bit of reading on those tendencies within anarchism if you’re unfamiliar with them. Until then!

This week, a piece published last year by Ill Will Editions that I found quite striking: Ulysse Carrière’s “Vandalizing the Subject”. Also, a heads up that on July 18th we are considering meeting at 6pm at Tamarack to hear a talk on anarchism in Uruguay. I will confirm whether that is indeed happening after we meet this week. See you Tuesday.

This Tuesday, Étienne de la Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. Comes in a little edition from the Mises Institute (lol) with an intro by Murray Rothbard (ack). If you’re into swamps, feel free to tread into that one. Otherwise just read the Discourse, which begins on pp. 39.

Caveat lector: this week’s reading will be a bit longer than usual so that the contingent we’ve had the last few weeks can read this text together before one of us goes out of town. It comprises about 65 pages, so allow yourself sufficient time to read the entirety of Gustav Landauer’s “Revolution” (pp. 110-175).

Concluding our reading of Flusser: Sections IV and V of Vampyroteuthis Infernalis.

We’ll press forward in Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, this time reading section III: “The World of the Vampyroteuthis”.

Tuesday, another reading delving into how the radically alien can help us discern ourselves: Vilém Flusser’s Vampyroteuthis Infernalis. We’ll discuss sections I & II, “Octopi” and “The Genesis of the Vampyroteuthis”. Hope to see you there.

Tomorrow we’ll finish discussing Fabian Ludueña’s H.P. Lovecraft – The Disjunction in Being by looking at the second half of the book and Alejandro’s “Three Fragments and Three Figures After Ludueña’s Lovecraft”. Since I’m late posting again this week, I’m going to suggest we make  “Appendix: Astrophobos, or In-Harmonia Mundi; Glosses on Lovecraft’s Poetry” optional. If people read the appendix we’ll discuss it, but otherwise we’ll stick to the last two chapters and Alejandro’s interpolation at the end.