We have been told by the living that the idea of a vital world is that of comfort and warmth. Dominic Fox assures us that this is not the case. With an unparalleled militant efficiency, Cold World blackens the lines between poetics and politics, music and negative resistance. It is a haunting sermon from the world of the dead exhorting the living to revolt in the name of a life whose vitality has been disenchanted by coldness and whose sacredness has been profaned by nigredo. – Reza Negarestani, Author of Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials

Dominic Fox’s timely and important Cold World pinpoints the fundamental issue underlying contemporary debate about the possibility of revolutionary politics in a culture suffused by paralysing despondency. Drawing on a remarkable array of sources from Coleridge and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Xasthur and Ulrike Meinhof, Fox explores the necessary yet apparently contradictory link between refusal and revolution. While refusal without revolution perpetuates the very condition it would negate, revolution without refusal quickly lapses into phantasmatic utopianism. The quandaries of this particular dialectic have never been as lucidly charted as they are here. – Ray Brassier, Author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction

Militant Dysphoria

Wednesday September 30th

Room RHB 256, Goldsmiths, University of London 2-6 PM

Featuring:

Dominic Fox

Nathan Brown

Mark Fisher

Nina Power

Nick Srnicek

James Trafford

Alex Williams

An event to discuss some of the issues raised by Domininc Fox’s Cold World: The aesthetics of dejection and the politics of militant dysphoria, due to be published by zer0 at the end of September. What is meant by ‘militant dysphoria’, and in what ways can the concept help us move beyond the impasses of contemporary politics? How might disaffection be converted into militancy? What political potentials are there in dysphoric music such as Black Metal? The event will also explore the relationship between politics and Speculative Realism.

This will not be a formal academic conference. Instead, it will follow the pattern set by the Weird events at Goldsmiths and the recent UEL symposium on the hardcore continuum. There will be short semi-formal presentations by speakers, but the emphasis will be on discussion of concepts rather than on presenting of papers etc.

The event is free but anyone interested in attending should register at (k_punk99[AT]hotmail.com). Places are limited. In addition, if anyone would like to give a semi-formal presentation, please let me know.

Edited by Mark Fisher

Michael Jackson showed that there is no such thing as ‘just’ pop music. The quantitative scale of Jackson’s fame was not only unprecedented, it is unlikely to ever be repeated. Jackson was at the burning core of the major changes in politics, the economy and culture in the last 30 years. It’s not surprising, therefore, that his death induced a spontaneous outpouring, not only of emotion, but of theoretical reflection. Providing an antidote to the mixture of unthinking sentimentality and scurrilous prurience that Jackson usually attracts, this book offers impassioned and informed answers to the urgent questions that Jackson’s death has posed. What was it about Jackson’s music and dancing that appealed to so many people? What does his death mean for popular culture in the era of Web 2.0? And just how resistible was his demise? Was another world ever possible, where the ‘we’ that Jackson brought into being could have stood for something utopian, instead of the consensual sentimentality of a world hooked on debt, consumerism and images?

The essays in The Resistible Demise Of Michael Jackson consummately demonstrate that writing on popular culture can be both thoughtful and heartfelt. The contributors, who include accomplished music critics as well as renowned theorists, are some of the most astute and eloquent writers on pop today. The collection is made up of new essays written in the wake of Jackson’s death, but also includes Barney Hoskyns’ classic NME piece written at the time of Thriller.

Contributors include: Barney Hoskyns, Ian Penman, David Stubbs, Steven Shaviro, Joshua Clover, Ken Hollings, Mark Sinker, Geeta Dayal, Kodwo Eshun, Sam Davies, Tom Ewing, Owen Hatherley, Jeremy Gilbert, Suhail Malik, Marcello Carlin, Alex Williams, Dominic Fox

Mark Fisher is highly respected both as a music journalist and a cultural theorist. His work appears regularly in The Wire, frieze, Sight & Sound and New Statesman. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre For Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London and his site k-punk is one of the most successful and widely read theory weblogs.

Publication date: December 2009 Press enquiries: zerobooks@hotmail.com

Of reviews, interviews and mentions:

James Heartfield reviews Militant Modernism in Art Review; replete with capitalist realist end paragraph and confusion between Leslie and Kingsley Martin, but otherwise impeccable;

Icon reviews Militant Modernism – a ‘sparky, polemical and ferociously learned book’. And from a couple of weeks ago, PD Smith’s review in the Guardian.

In a similar vein: Owen Hatherley defends blogs, against a slagging of the blog-becomes-book format from Stephen Howe – which then received a surprisingly sympathetic response.

David Stubbs on Radio 4′s Today programme, selecting pieces of ‘distressing’ abstract music that go alongside ‘decorative’ abstract art.