Books by Ben Trott
Seit drei Jahrzehnten untersuchen Queer Studies die Macht geschlechtlicher und sexueller Normen -... more Seit drei Jahrzehnten untersuchen Queer Studies die Macht geschlechtlicher und sexueller Normen - und wie diese infrage gestellt werden. Sie erforschen die komplexen Zusammenhänge von Sexualität, Geschlecht, Rassismus, Klasse und Nation. Dieser Band versammelt klassische und neuere Schlüsseltexte der anglophonen Queer Studies in deutscher Sprache, von Judith Butler und Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick bis Cathy Cohen und José Esteban Muñoz. Er führt in die wichtigsten theoretischen Positionen ein, macht mit den zentralen Entwicklungslinien des Diskurses vertraut und präsentiert wegweisende queere Analysen zu Kapitalismus, Migration, Geopolitik, Behinderung, Aktivismus, Kultur und Subkultur.
Mit Beiträge von: Mit: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cathy Cohen, Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, Roderick A Ferguson, Ann Cvetkovich, Gayatri Gopinath, Robert McRuer, Kevin Floyd, Lee Edelman, Karma R Chávez und Petrus Liu.
This definitive 8-volume reference is a comprehensive print resource covering the history of prot... more This definitive 8-volume reference is a comprehensive print resource covering the history of protest and revolution over the past 500 years – throughout the modern era of mass movements.
For more information see: www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com.
*Definitive reference work on the role of popular agency in transforming the world in which we live
*First historical encyclopedia to provide scholars and teachers and students with the information they need to understand the role and significance and origin of protest and revolution from 1500 to the present
*8-volume major reference in A-Z format, with entries ranging from 500 to 14,000 words
*Provides clear, concise explanations of events and larger social movements, and biographies of key people
*Presents major uprisings and protest movements, and the ideas, ideologies and activists that propelled them, chronicles the manner in which they unfolded, traces their roots, goals, tactics, and influence, and evaluates their successes and failures
*Internationally diverse editorial board and contributors
*Includes over 150 photographs, figures, and maps
Journal Special Issues & Symposia by Ben Trott
South Atlantic Quarterly, Oct 2021
CONTENTS
Ben Trott - Introduction: The Political Project of Corbynism
Jeremy Gilbert - The ... more CONTENTS
Ben Trott - Introduction: The Political Project of Corbynism
Jeremy Gilbert - The End of the Road: From Bennism to Corbynism
Keir Milburn - Generation Left after Corbynism: Assets, Age, and the Battle for the Future
Katrina Forrester - By Leaps or by Federation: Two Paths to Left Unity
Paolo Gerbaudo - Momentum vs. Labour’s Bureaucracy: Why Corbyn’s “Assault on the Institutions” Stalled
spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures, 2020
In recent years, a huge number of sizeable and significant social movements and struggles have er... more In recent years, a huge number of sizeable and significant social movements and struggles have erupted in the context of protracted, multi-dimensional crises of social reproduction – crises, in other words, in the practices, relationships, structures, and institutions that ensure the daily, as well as inter-generational, maintenance of life. The origins of this current cycle of movements can be traced back at least as far as the mass protests of 2007-2008, where demonstrations and riots broke out in response to food price rises in at least 30 countries, from Burkina Faso to Yemen. It is a cycle that continued through the events of the Arab Spring, and well beyond; a wave of revolutions that famously brought down entire regimes, and that are widely understood as having been driven, at least in part, by rising unemployment, food and living costs. Job losses, foreclosures, homelessness and dispossession, indebtedness, and rising precarity have shaped the realities of many in the wake of the Great Recession of the late-2000s. Although for many of course, an economic crisis – a crisis in the capacity to meet needs and desires in the context of scarce resources – long predates this point. It is these crises of social reproduction, and the emergence of social movements and struggles from within them, that provides the context in which much recent scholarship on the politics of reproduction has been produced and has circulated. It is also what has given it much of its urgency. This special issue of spheres contributes to a critical engagement with the politics of reproduction, and as this relates to digital cultures in particular.
"South Atlantic Quarterly" Volume 115, Issue 2. pp.400-432, Apr 2016
"South Atlantic Quarterly", Volume 112, Issue 3. pp.538-585, Jun 2013
Articles by Ben Trott
Queer Studies: Schlüßeltexte (Suhrkamp), 2013
South Atlantic Quarterly, Oct 2021
Handbook of Marxism, 2021
Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements, 2020
In his 1989 essay "Mourning and Militancy", the critic and curator Douglas Crimp (1989, 11) wrote... more In his 1989 essay "Mourning and Militancy", the critic and curator Douglas Crimp (1989, 11) wrote about how, with the onset of the AIDS crisis, gay men not only came to mourn the loss of friends and lovers but also the loss of pleasures, specifically of "uninhibited and unprotected sex". He noted that to state this openly would "hardly solicit solidarity, even tolerance"; with tolerance itself, he argued, just another albeit more refined form of condemnation, and "[o]ur pleasures were never tolerated anyway; we took them. And now we must mourn them" (Crimp 1989, 11). The current Covid-19 pandemic is not an equivalent to HIV/AIDS, not least, as João Florêncio (2020) reminds us, in terms of the social stigma attached nor the time it has taken governments and scientific bodies to respond. But for many queer and LGBT people, mixed up with a mourning of lives lost to Covid-19 -and a fearful anticipation of those that may still yet be lost to the virus -there is once more a kind of sadness at the loss of certain queer forms of sociality; and a growing anxiety about when, perhaps even whether, they might return. This is not necessarily related to the loss of queer sexual pleasures (at least, not exclusively), but rather to the looming threat of losing ways of encountering others that emerged out of how intolerable their absence was.
spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures, 2020
spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures, 2020
PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft, 2019
Der vorliegende Beitrag fragt, wie queere Lebensweisen heute entstehen und sich reproduzieren. Es... more Der vorliegende Beitrag fragt, wie queere Lebensweisen heute entstehen und sich reproduzieren. Es wird argumentiert, dass viele, die ein queeres Leben in begehrenswerterweise leben wollen, schon lange einem der zentralen Orte der sozialen Reproduktion entkommen müssen, der Familie. Damit verbunden ist die Notwendigkeit, alternative Sorge- und Unterstützungsnetze aufzubauen, was oft nur durch (gegenkulturelle und andere) Räume außerhalb des häuslichen Bereichs ermöglicht wird. Weiter argumentiere ich, dass diese Tatsachen vielleicht überraschend oft in kulturellen (Mainstream-)Darstellungen von queerem Leben vorkommen, beispielsweise in Film und Fernsehen der letzten 30 Jahre. Überraschend deshalb, da dies im Widerspruch zu vielen anderen prominenten kulturellen Darstellungen steht, die verhandeln, wie sich LGBT-Menschen inzwischen innerhalb herrschender Institutionen etabliert haben, insbesondere Ehe und Familie, also – wie viele andere zurecht angemerkt haben – inmitten der Entstehung der völlig entpolitisierten „neuen Normalen“.
Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, 2019
An invited response to Jeremy Gilbert's article "Das Kulturelle in politischen Konjunkturen" publ... more An invited response to Jeremy Gilbert's article "Das Kulturelle in politischen Konjunkturen" published in the same issue.
Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 2018
In the introduction to the English translation of his 1999 book, Réflexions sur la question gay, ... more In the introduction to the English translation of his 1999 book, Réflexions sur la question gay, Didier Eribon describes his engagement with US queer studies – including the writings of Judith Butler, David Halperin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – as an attempt “not only to help these American works become better known in France, but moreover to import an entire field of discussion to where that field was absent and even unknown” (Eribon 2004, p.xix). In 2016, Eribon’s 2009 book, Retour à Reims was translated into German. It has largely been received as if it too were an attempt to import another entire field of discussion – this time around class identity – to a place it has apparently seemed to many absent or even unknown...
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2018
This paper interrogates the ‘Fragment on Machines’ in Marx’s Grundrisse, first widely translated ... more This paper interrogates the ‘Fragment on Machines’ in Marx’s Grundrisse, first widely translated and disseminated in the 1960s at the dawn of post-Fordism. It examines its reception, and its deployment by the Italian Marxian tradition of Operaismo, and the criticisms this has sometimes garnered from other Marxists. I argue that while the ‘Fragment’ has generally been critically evaluated in terms of its contribution to the ‘scientific’ (or wissenschaftlich) critique of political economy—revealing truth through a method seen as objective, rational and methodical—it is in fact better understood in terms of its function as science fiction. In other words, its function as a piece of social commentary and criticism, exploring the social relations caught up with techno-scientific developments that are evidently already imaginable—revealing something about the then present, its dystopian dangers and utopian possibilities—even where these remained (just) beyond the realm of the scientifically possible. I argue that evaluating the ‘Fragment’ as science fiction draws attention to its effects, namely its capacity to pose (on the basis of this scientifically plausible interrogation of emergent futures) important political questions. Foremost among these was the meaning—for our understanding of the possible locations of workers’ resistance—of capital’s increasing reliance on relationships, forms of knowledge and affects that cannot be contained by the times and places of work.
The Journal of Labor and Society, 2017
The “problem of organization” has long been a core preoccupation of the Marxist tradition and lab... more The “problem of organization” has long been a core preoccupation of the Marxist tradition and labour movements. This article argues it is best understood as what some social planners call a “wicked problem,” one that cannot ultimately be “solved,” only “re-solved—over and over again.” It identifies a set of hallmark theoretical tools developed by the Italian Marxian tradition of operaismo (sometimes referred to as “autonomist Marxism”) with which it can nevertheless be productively approached. First, a “Copernican inversion” of “orthodox”—specifically, “dialectical materialist”—Marxism, focusing on the primacy of labour struggles in driving capitalist development. Second, an attention to “class composition” and the shifts in the political expression of labour movements as the technical make-up of labour changes. Third, accounting for these shifts through an analysis of “cycles of struggle.” And finally, approaching the (wicked) problem of organization in terms of an effort to increase labour's “autonomy” from capital.
Emotion, Space & Society, 2017
This paper examines the alienation entailed in contemporary emotional and affective labour and th... more This paper examines the alienation entailed in contemporary emotional and affective labour and the ways this might be overcome. I identify the shifts in the nature and function of this labour since it first received attention by feminist and other scholars in the 1970s and '80s. And I point towards the emergence of contemporary struggles to limit the emotional intensity of the working day, similar in some ways to those Karl Marx once described around its length. My primary wager is that overcoming the forms of alienation at stake in the putting to work of personality, subjectivity, and self, need not be understood as a largely idealist question of ‘de-alienation’ or ‘de-reification’. Rather, drawing on Benedict de Spinoza's work on the body, mind, and affects, I suggest it is one of organising material encounters between bodies and their joining together through the construction of ‘common notions’, reason, and a more ‘real’ understanding of the social world as well as one’s location within it. I argue that, in approaching such a project, feminist and other methods of ‘consciousness-raising’ may prove of greater use than many traditional approaches to developing and delivering ‘class consciousness’.
"South Atlantic Quarterly" Volume 115, Issue 2. pp.411-423, Apr 2016
In many liberal polities, there is an emerging “common sense” that it is unjust to deny same-sex ... more In many liberal polities, there is an emerging “common sense” that it is unjust to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, if they so choose. This popular conception of things could certainly claim support in the liberal political philosophy of John Rawls and others. Yet, as many queer critics have noted, the rights won through “marriage equality” are also caught up with significant dangers and difficulties, including the displacement of what, drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière, I call a queer politics of “dissensus” by a new “homonormative” consensus. In itself, however, a straightforward rejection of same-sex marriage, along with the norms and normativities it doubtless helps reproduce, would do little to contest the operations of power that animate them, as even marriage's most trenchant queer critics recognize. I argue that the recent rapid rise in support for same-sex couples' access to the rights marriage confers partly derives from the precariousness experienced in these times of political economic crisis, which follow the widespread elimination of less privatized forms of security by decades of neoliberalism. As such, a queer politics of dissensus today would need to entail processes of “de-individualization” and the production of new collective political subjects capable of demanding rights shareable in ways that create space for queer forms of life, including those illegible to the institution of marriage.
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Books by Ben Trott
Mit Beiträge von: Mit: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cathy Cohen, Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, Roderick A Ferguson, Ann Cvetkovich, Gayatri Gopinath, Robert McRuer, Kevin Floyd, Lee Edelman, Karma R Chávez und Petrus Liu.
For more information see: www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com.
*Definitive reference work on the role of popular agency in transforming the world in which we live
*First historical encyclopedia to provide scholars and teachers and students with the information they need to understand the role and significance and origin of protest and revolution from 1500 to the present
*8-volume major reference in A-Z format, with entries ranging from 500 to 14,000 words
*Provides clear, concise explanations of events and larger social movements, and biographies of key people
*Presents major uprisings and protest movements, and the ideas, ideologies and activists that propelled them, chronicles the manner in which they unfolded, traces their roots, goals, tactics, and influence, and evaluates their successes and failures
*Internationally diverse editorial board and contributors
*Includes over 150 photographs, figures, and maps
Journal Special Issues & Symposia by Ben Trott
Ben Trott - Introduction: The Political Project of Corbynism
Jeremy Gilbert - The End of the Road: From Bennism to Corbynism
Keir Milburn - Generation Left after Corbynism: Assets, Age, and the Battle for the Future
Katrina Forrester - By Leaps or by Federation: Two Paths to Left Unity
Paolo Gerbaudo - Momentum vs. Labour’s Bureaucracy: Why Corbyn’s “Assault on the Institutions” Stalled
Articles by Ben Trott
Mit Beiträge von: Mit: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Cathy Cohen, Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, Roderick A Ferguson, Ann Cvetkovich, Gayatri Gopinath, Robert McRuer, Kevin Floyd, Lee Edelman, Karma R Chávez und Petrus Liu.
For more information see: www.revolutionprotestencyclopedia.com.
*Definitive reference work on the role of popular agency in transforming the world in which we live
*First historical encyclopedia to provide scholars and teachers and students with the information they need to understand the role and significance and origin of protest and revolution from 1500 to the present
*8-volume major reference in A-Z format, with entries ranging from 500 to 14,000 words
*Provides clear, concise explanations of events and larger social movements, and biographies of key people
*Presents major uprisings and protest movements, and the ideas, ideologies and activists that propelled them, chronicles the manner in which they unfolded, traces their roots, goals, tactics, and influence, and evaluates their successes and failures
*Internationally diverse editorial board and contributors
*Includes over 150 photographs, figures, and maps
Ben Trott - Introduction: The Political Project of Corbynism
Jeremy Gilbert - The End of the Road: From Bennism to Corbynism
Keir Milburn - Generation Left after Corbynism: Assets, Age, and the Battle for the Future
Katrina Forrester - By Leaps or by Federation: Two Paths to Left Unity
Paolo Gerbaudo - Momentum vs. Labour’s Bureaucracy: Why Corbyn’s “Assault on the Institutions” Stalled
Näsström, S., and S. Kalm. 2014. “A democratic critique of precarity.” Global Discourse. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.992119.
This paper situates Guy Standing’s recent work on ‘the precariat’ within a broader body of literature exploring processes of ‘precarisation’, at work and across the social field. It sets out the differential distribution of ‘precarity’ (including on the basis of gender, geography, status and sector) resulting from transformations in labour and the political economy, the rollback of social democracy and of ‘industrial citizenship’ (where these existed), as well as from processes of globalisation. The paper argues that, like many other works, Standing’s book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, de-couples its discussion of precarious, neoliberal labour and life from the explicitly utopian agenda of radical reform it ultimately proposes. Drawing on Kathi Weeks’ engagement with Ernst Bloch’s work, the paper suggest Standing’s utopianism remains abstract, detached from an analysis of the social forces, movements and struggles that might bring it into being. It makes use of Antonio Negri’s distinctive, heterodox interpretation of V.I. Lenin to provide a framework for theorising how concrete utopian projects of radical political transformation – which is to say, ‘realist’ or materialist ones – are extrapolated out of spontaneous struggles; the predominant ‘will’, ethics and structures of which are always largely determined by the social, political and economic context from which they emerge. It is shown how, on the basis of this approach, Negri (in his collaboration with Michael Hardt) has constructed the notion of ‘multitude’ as a potential model for political organisation today – apposite to the precarious reality described by Standing and others. They draw on Baruch Spinoza’s political philosophy – often counterposing it to that of Thomas Hobbes – to affirm the capacity for common political action and decision despite heterogeneity, and to ground political organisation in social conflict rather than contract. Finally, drawing on Alain Badiou’s distinction between ‘immediate’ and ‘historical uprisings’, the paper explores the degree to which a number of contemporary movements and struggles might have tentatively achieved what he calls ‘qualitative extension’ – establishing connections and a ground for common action across social spaces and strata – potentially setting in motion enduring projects of political organisation and constitution that resemble the multitude model.""