Reading Group 06.17.02 -- New (untitled) Series -- Responses to Empire

Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. Suggested Readings
3. Original 9.11 Series Description
4. New (Untitled) Series Description

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1. About this Monday

This week we introduce a new series, as of yet untitled.
For more info, visit the bottom of this page

when: Monday at 7:00 pm
where: 16 beaver street.
See end of this mail for location details

In our 9.11 series following September 11th (and subsequently October 7th), we invited different people to suggest texts, screenings/events that would initiate different discussions and readings of the events, the responses, and the counter-responses. Negri and Hardt's Empire was a core text within those discussions.

This Monday we work with texts we put online last week, suggested by Yates Mckee. If you downloaded the texts last week, no need to download again, if you did not have the chance to, they are available below.

please note that there is also a link to efax.com, you will need download a free program which allows read all of the readings we post online

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2. Suggested Readings

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e-fax Note:

For this and future readings you will need to have a version
of the efax messenger on your computer.

You do not need to open an account but you will have to give
an e-mail address to get your free version for MAC or WIN.
just visit

http://www.efax.com/need/
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The texts try to re-evaluate Empire from today's position. Readings are short (Neil Smith, David Harvey, Fareed Zakaria) and you can download them below.

Hardt & Negri -- A short excerpt from 'Empire'
Fareed Zakaria -- The Return of History -- What September 11th Hath
Wrought
Neil Smith -- Scales of Terror -- The Manufacturing of Nationalism and
the War for U.S. Globalism
David Harvey -- Cracks in the Edifice of the Empire State

DOWNLOAD

for PC's with some sort of unzipping software (e.g., winzip):
http://www.16beavergroup.org/empirestate.zip

for MAC's with stuffit expander:
http://www.16beavergroup.org/empirestate.sit

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3. Our Original 9.11 Series Description

The recent attacks on 9.11 and the global response to them have caused a tremendous upheaval in ___________________ . The impacts, the responses, and counter-responses to those attacks will set the course for what is coming, on the way, already here.

Since its inception, the Reading Group has been organizing discussions, events, presentations, readings, panels, and screenings that have at times directly or indirectly touched on timely or pertinent political/cultural matters/events.

In this Series, an individual or a group of individuals will be invited to choose a text, a series of texts, or organize another sort of event to address, consider, or deal with a specific set of questions that have been raised around the 9.11 attacks and the innumerous responses that have and will follow.

Our conversations related to 9-11 AND AFTER have included readings from the RAND Corporation ("The Advent of Netwar"), Edward Said ("The Clash of Ignorance"), Giorgio Agamben ("Sovereign Police" & "On Security and Terror"), Jean-Luc Nancy ("War, Right, Sovereignty -- Techne"), and Eqbal Ahmad ("On Distorted Histories"), Hannah Arendt ( "The Perplexities of the Rights of Man"), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri ("Empire")....

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4. New (Untitled) Series Description

This series will invite a variety of guests/speakers/presentations and combine them with readings to attempt to locate different strategies and ideas for answering some of these questions. Questions will be added as the series continues:

What the heck does it mean to be living/working in New York City (and we can substitute a great number of cities depending on the reading or presentation) today? Is this the center of the mechanisms of Empire or of the State? How do citizens/non-citizens living here fit into this discussion? How and where are the multiplicities of voices representing this city? What strategies are out there in giving voice to these multiplicities? What strategies are out there in resisting, deflecting, countering the prevailing discourses about this city, its people, the united and the we (in the United We Stand)? What questions should we be asking today?