Reading Group 2 - The Subject

Quiver: New Weapons for Thought

On February 15th, Quiver convened its second reading group over Zoom. During that session, we explored the concept of “subjects.”

We started with the infamous short excerpt on voluntary servitude and Reichian group fantasy from Anti-Oedipus. Then, we moved to the distinction between post-Althusserian social subjection and Mumford's machinic enslavement.

Our conversation worked through political concepts of the subject, state, and capitalism. But we also wondered, how must we rethink D&G to confront the intolerable anti-blackness of this world.

This led to a truly rhizome of ideas, texts, references and resonances... here some of them:

- (00:15:30) “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Voluntary_Servitude

- (00:18:00) Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (ed.) - ''Who Comes After the Subject'': https://monoskop.org/File:Cadava_Eduardo_Connor_Peter_Nancy_Jean_Luc_Who_Comes_After_the_Subject_1991.pdf

- (00:24:30) The Deleuze dictionary - “molar”: https://deleuze.enacademic.com/110/molar // “molecular”: https://deleuze.enacademic.com/111/molecular

- (01:19:00) Andrew Culp - Draft on Maurizio Lazzarato’s “Signs, machines, subjectivities”: https://anarchistwithoutcontent.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/lazzarato-signs-and-machines-intro-chp-1-chp-2.pdf

- (01:21:30) Jason Read on Sarah Jaffe’s book “Work Won’t Love You Back”: http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2021/02/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it-on-sarah.html

- (01:32:30) Michael Hardt - “The Withering of Civil Society”: https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/466673

- (01:36:00) Michelle Koerner on Deleuze’s missing quotation of Jackson: https://read.dukeupress.edu/genre/article-abstract/44/2/157/5631/Line-of-Escape-Gilles-Deleuze-s-Encounter-with?redirectedFrom=fulltext

- (01:42:30) Fred Moten & Saidiya Hartman at Duke University | The Black Outdoors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_tUZ6dybrc

- (01:44:00) Daniel Colucciello Barber - On Black Negativity: https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/on-black-negativity-or-the-affirmation-of-nothing

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As an experiment in opacity, all voices were modulated. Special thank you to CEER - Quiver

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