Black Box

A Record of the Catastrophe, Volume One

The Black Box Collective The Black Box Collective, The Black Box Collective

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781629631233
• eBook ISBN: 9781629632216
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the serial disasters of capitalism's current crisis—economic, political, environmental—continue to batter the world, Black Box: A Record of the Catastrophe is a device for recording, analyzing, and transmitting events as they happen. But it offers neither dire predictions nor false hopes. Instead, it embraces the mystery of what might transpire. The word "catastrophe" has not always signified "disaster"; during the sixteenth century, especially in theater, it came to mean "a reversal of what is expected." Black Box is ultimately a documentary project, a record of the catastrophe, but it's an open question where the inquiry will take us. It may be a record of the disastrous end. Or it may be a record of the turning.

The first volume contains an eclectic but accessible collection of reportage, interviews, letters, fragments, and theoretical responses from some of the brightest minds in critical theory. Its authors have sent dispatches from American prison yards, the shipping graveyards of India, fatal overseas drone strikes, roads crisscrossing the Mississippi Delta, childhoods in revolutionary Zimbabwe, and kitchens where undocumented workers wash dishes. By taking a broad geographical and aesthetic stance, Black Box will be a constellation of ideas and information that points toward the future—whatever it may hold.

Contributors to Black Box include scholars (Nina Power, Silvia Federici, Sami Khatib, Chris O'Kane, Tanya Erzen), cultural critics (Richard Dyer, Charles Mudede), authors (Ursula K. Le Guin, Miranda Mellis), poets (Emily Abendroth, Cathy Wagner, Alli Warren), and many others.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Weight of All Those Machines (Peter Wieben)
• What is a Life in Angola Prison? (Tanya Erzen)
• The Logic of the Martyr (Stuart Smithers)
• Catheter Enjambment (Caconrad)
• Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint (Silvia Federici)
• Dishwasher (Fernando Fortin)
• Review of the Snail (Miranda Mellis)
• Bergsonism (Jorge Carrera Andrade)
• Which Little Flicker of Facial Recognition Am I? (Emily Abendroth)
• The Difference is Spreading: Sabotage and Aesthetics (Eirik Steinhoff)
• Weimar on the Bay (Patrik Øöd-noir)
• The Politics of “Pure Means”: Walter Benjamin on Divine Violence (Sami Khatib)
• The Necessary Ingredient (Interview with Kshama Sawant)
• After the Revolution (Charles Tonderai Mudede)
• Protect Me From What I Want (Alli Warren)
• Thoughts on Revolutionary Indifference; or, The Thermodynamics of Militancy (Daniel Hartley)
• Fieldbook: Pharsalia (Joel Felix)
• In Defense of Disco (Richard Dyer)
• Native Code (Roberto Harrison)
• Drone on: Scene Five (Stephen Voyce)
• Vergil (David Hadbawnik)
• The Problem of Dido (Tisa Bryant)
• Unknown Race Male (Mitchell Inclãn)
• Hole Poems (Cathy Wagner)
• “The Process of Domination Spews out Tatters of Subjugated Nature”: Critical Theory, Negative Totality, and the State of Extraction (Chris O’kane)
• Parties/Partying/the Party (Olive Blackburn)
• Epigrams by Ernesto Cardenal (Alejandro De Acosta)
• Simplicity (Keston Sutherland)
• The Pigeon and Me (Sergio Hyland)
• The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Ursula K. Le Guin)
• Exiting the One-Dimensional (Nina Power)
• Contributors
• Encyclopedia of the Catastrophe