Reading Groups

Reading group meetings will be held virtually, though many groups have scheduled in-person social meet ups. Some groups are topic-driven and read a series of articles, while others are focused on a specific book. All meetings will be held in the evenings except where specified. No experience or knowledge is necessary before entering any group and all readings and materials will be made available online for free! Sign up here! 

Anti-Capitalist Music Criticism: Mark Fisher’s Writings on Pop Music Reading Group: The Anti-Capitalist Music Criticism Reading Group will center on the music criticism of famed British left-wing cultural critic Mark Fisher. Fisher was a staple of British left-wing-oriented writing and pop culture criticism for two decades. We will be reading pieces taken mostly from the 2018 Mark Fisher anthology K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher. We will also be listening to the artists, albums, and songs dealt with in each piece. The goal of the Anti-Capitalist Music Criticism Reading Group is to critically engage with Fisher’s music criticism in an attempt to (1) understand how Fisher viewed contemporary Anglophone popular music as a product of capitalist mass culture (2) come to conclusions regarding our own thoughts on the pros and cons of his approach. More information available here.

Murray Bookchin’s ‘Post-Scarcity Anarchism’ Reading Group: The Post-Scarcity Anarchism Reading Club be reading a collection of essays by Murray Bookchin, the founder of social ecology and an influential theorist for libertarian municipalism and libertarian socialism. The goal of our reading group will be to read Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Listen Marxist!, and The May–June Events in France, and discuss their theoretical and practical application today. What does capital accumulation under capitalism mean in a post-scarcity, automated society? Are there limitations to the extent that we can use Marxist class analysis in late stage capitalism? Can the mass student movement and labor unrest of May 68 be seen as a better alternative to electoralism and vanguardism? More information available here.

Silvia Federici’s ‘Caliban and the Witch’ Reading Group: TBA.