Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Second Call: Baltic Anarchist Meeting Tallinn 2012

Estonia's capital Tallinn will simultaneously host two international gatherings at the end of May. On the 25th of May, both the spring session of NATO's parliamentary assembly and the first Baltic Anarchist Meeting will start.

The aim of BAM 2012 is to exchange experience and improve co-operation between anarchists from the Baltic Sea region. Although the focus will be on the Baltic area, like-minded people from other places are welcome aswell. The three day event will have a number of lectures, presentations, discussion panels etc. On the 26th of May an anti-NATO demonstration is planned in the city center.

The exact programme is still being worked on, which means there is quite a lot of space for more lectures and workshops for people who want to speak at the event. Also we'd be glad to find more participants for panel discussions, on topics such as fighting neo-nazism in Eastern Europe, opposing NATO in post-Soviet countries, spreading anarchist ideas to a wider public without losing its true face, etc.

Free accommodation and vegan food will be provided to everyone outside Tallinn. More information can be found on the BAM 2012 website ( http://www.bam2012.org ) or via our new e-mail address bam2012[a]http://riseup.net!

#OccupyCriticalTheory: Theory, Resistance and Revolution in the 21st Century

Cyborg Subjects takes great pleasure and active interest in placing these issues at the core of its next project. We invite all interested authors to send full-length articles (3500 words maximum), short commentaries (500-800 words), interviews

or book reviews (1000-1500 words) to submissions@cyborgsubjects.org.

Artworks, videos, performances, etc. related to the topic are also very welcome.


Please send in your work by April 23, 2012. Contributors are free to use any reference style systems (e.g., APA, Harvard etc), as long as they are consistent in how they cite their sources throughout the article, and use endnotes, rather than footnotes, for citations.

Feel free to visit http://journal.cyborgsubjects.org/calls/ to find out more!



One of the main achievements of the Occupy movement has been the opening up of new spaces of transformation, resistance and revolution, breaking the claustrophobic confines of the geography of global capital. The movement itself breaks the boundaries of accepted political terminology, opting to trouble the reigning order by speaking from a position outside of the official political discourse. From the perspective of the ruling ideology, the Occupy movement appears to lack focus and organization since it does not propose any set of ‘demands’ - that is, in the language adopted by the everyday. The point, though, is not to speak in the language of the existing order, but to change the co-ordinates of the existing order so that

what appears as irrational and traumatic from its own perspective becomes, itself, the structuring principle upon which the conditions of possibility for a new politics may be given form. The emerging political-emancipatory subject of the Occupy movement – the so-called “99%” – has itself been created out of the internal limits of the dynamics of capitalist expansion.


The Occupy movement, as well as the wave of resistance movements in North Africa and the Middle East, dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’, has coincided with changing conditions of mediated communication, the advancement of social media, the development of new mobile media technologies, and the significance of ‘whistle blowing’ websites, such as Wikileaks. These conditions are also met by an increase of ‘hacktivism’ by groups such as Anonymous. The year 2011 was also marked as one of significant political resistance and upheaval by the announcement of Time Magazine that its person of the year is non-other

that the (anonymous) ‘protestor’.


But what kind of changes are we witnessing, exactly? Is it really global capitalism collapsing under its own weight? Is it true that it’s a battle of the 99% and the 1% of the world’s population—are we witnessing the long-awaited global revolution of the people that Leftists have been dreaming about for almost two centuries? What will come out of all these revolutions—will it be appropriated by existing politics or will a completely new body of political thought and action come out of it? Naomi Klein dubbed the Occupy movement as “the most important thing happening in the world right now.” But what are the potentials we need to realize and the threats we need to make ourselves aware of regarding this most important thing?



We seek papers that deal with, but are not limited to, the following issues:


- What kind of change are we witnessing with these new exercises of people power? Could it be an ontological change that would redefine the way we perceive the existence of power itself, its structures, and our own roles in global politics?


- What connections are evident between the rise of the occupy movement, new media technologies, and emerging forms of emancipatory subjectivity?


- What kinds of space are created in the occupations? How do occupations and their self-sustained camps structure and change ideological definitions of public vs. private spaces? Why does it bother authorities so much?


- What role does space play in the relationship between political subjectivity and the visual quality of the movement?


- What potential new bodies of politics will emerge stronger after this? Will newfound bodies of technologically-enabled politics such as dynamic P2P democracy to the hacktivists’ potent adhocracy play a more significant role in future societies? Will alternative currencies (bitcoin, etc) and banking systems begin to replace the old ones?

Monday, March 5, 2012

"Burlesk oli nagu kojutulek!" by Dagmar Kase (in Estonian)

"Kui burlesk tähendas 1930ndatel eelkõige striptiisi, kus naise keha ja seksuaalsust vaatasid ja nautisid mehed ning naise keha pidi vastama ühiskonna poolt seadustatud standarditele, siis tänapäeva burlesk esitab nendele stereotüüpidele väljakutse."


Loe Eesti Ekspressi (01.03.2012) artiklit:

http://www.ekspress.ee/news/areen/uudised/burlesk-oli-nagu-kojutulek.d?id=63993851

"Isiklik on poliitiline ja poliitiline on isiklik" by Dagmar Kase (in Estonian)

"Olen veendunud, et nn riskimine on ülioluline vähemalt senikaua, kuni “we wuz pushed”; senikaua, kuni on vaja meenutada paljudele triviaalsena tunduvat, aga siiani asjakohast loosungit “isiklik on poliitiline ja poliitiline on isiklik”."


issuu Müürileht (talv 2012, lk. 18-19)

http://issuu.com/muurileht/docs/muurileht19_talv2012

Thursday, January 5, 2012

It is proud and good to be… by Dagmar Kase. An article about nationhood building and the power of the state (in English).

'Nationhood builders seem to think that danger lurks around. Many Estonians have been found ‘guilty’ of leaving their country and there has been an emphasis on the importance of fertility as a means to preserve the nation.'