“Capitalism defeated traditional societies because it was more exciting than they were. But now there is something more exciting than capitalism: its destruction.” In the face of things with true power (capitalism, the law, public opinion, etc.), philosophy is not provisioned to battle them head-on. But it can wage “a guerrilla campaign against them,” writes Andrew Culp (referencing Deleuze) in his new book A GUERRILLA GUIDE TO REFUSAL. Harnessing critical theory, this book takes us on a journey through a subterranean network of communiques, military documents, contemporary art, political slogans, adversarial blogs, and captive media. This conversation among scholars traces a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know it.

Andrew Culp is professor of media history and theory in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. He is author of A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal (2022) and Dark Deleuze (2016).

Will Conway is a PhD candidate whose research centers around disability, biopolitics, and theories of resistance.

Jose Rosales is an independent researcher. With Claire Fontaine and Iman Ganji, they are co-author of Foreigners Everywhere and the author of 'Communism as the Riddle Posed to History' in The Double Binds of Neoliberalism (Rowan & Littlefield, 2022), as well as various other texts that can be found online. Currently, they are co-editor (alongside Andreas Petrossiants) of the multi-volume series, Diversity of Aesthetics. 

Violet is a queer independent researcher based in India working on theories of resistance, biopolitics, and destituent communism.

References:

Gilles Deleuze

Michel Foucault

Arlette Farge

May 68

Jean Genet

Guy Hocquenghem

Johann Most

Lucy Parsons

Friedrich Engels

Paul B. Preciado (and “Marcos”)

Christopher Chitty (Sexual Hegemony)

Karl Marx

Jacques Derrida

Roberto Esposito

Antonio Negri

Félix Guattari

Bernadette Corporation’s Get Rid of Yourself (film)

Edward Said

Eqbal Ahmad (Confronting Empire)

Frantz Fanon

Robin D. G. Kelley (Race Rebels)

Homi Bhabha

Fred Moten

Nahum Dimitri Chandler (paraontology)

Claire Fontaine

Tiqqun

Saidiya Hartman

Kwame Ture

Nanni Balestrini (The Unseen)

     

Keywords: archive, power, surveillance, cybernetics, refusal, political, political control, philosophy, anarchy, class, class war, transformation