Topics in debate: central admin and rotating research coordinators
Planned Meetings
17 April 2023
On a metalogical reading of Plato (and Sartre)
Previous Meetings (106)
Discussion of STP's collective draft: Theses on the logic of social worlds
27 March 2023
Collective conversation on the draft of the paper STP members are working on together. For a copy of the draft, please contact a member of the collective.
On Topos Theory, Logic and the Monster Diagram
20 March 2023
Some recent connections between the tripartite logic of the social world and topos theory.
Meeting to discuss some of the open organizational challenges we are working through and our strategic ideas for STP in 2023
planning
Hour at the Zoo: An Introduction to Structures featuring partial and Polycomposition
06 March 2023
In this conversation with Alexander Prahauser we take a quick look at several structures that allow to extend category theory into a framework that can handle time as well as quantity by
introducing several notions of partial and multicomposition that are intricately interrelated between each other. This arc of development culminates
in a notion of generalized cobordism that is powerful enough to describe most processes in the physical universe.
Meeting to discuss organizational matters, such as the planning of our symposium and the recent changes to STP functioning.
Noise and Social Synthesis: reappraising Attali's "Noise: the political economy of music"
13 February 2023
Discussion around Jacques Attali's book "Noise: the political economy of music" and the concept of social synthesis, from Sohn-Rethel's "Intellectual and Manual Labor"
The idea is to start putting together the groundwork for a research project on organizational analysis as a set of practical tools for political composition, using our own theoretical framework as a guideline while also comparing/integrating other approaches into it.
From ologs to cooperatives: A project in experimental politics
14 November 2022
First, we will give an overview of various formalisms that have been helpful in our reconstruction of tektology. Then we will discuss the paper "Ologs: A Categorical Framework for Knowledge Representation" by Spivak and Kent. Finally, we will discuss potential applications of our theory towards worker co-ops and their value as experiments.
Working through political organization, section 3: socially mediated perspectives (part 2)
07 November 2022
Discussion of topics from "Working through political organization: current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022)", with focus on 3: the theory of socially mediated perspectives
Working through political organization, section 3: socially mediated perspectives (part 1)
31 October 2022
Discussion of topics from "Working through political organization: current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022)", with focus on 3: the theory of socially mediated perspectives
Working through political organization, theses 5 and 6: multiplicity and organizational standpoint
24 October 2022
Discussion of topics from "Working through political organization: current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022)", with focus on theses 5 and 6 of section 2: the multiplicity thesis and the thesis of the organizational point of view
Discussion on 'Notes on our Melancholy Present'
17 October 2022
Conversation with Juliano Fiori about his text "Notes on our Melancholy Present"
"Early treatment" ecossystem in Brazil: the "what's to be done" organizing schema for the Brazilian Far-Right
10 October 2022
Victor Silva, journalista and Public Safety bachelor student, will be presenting a case study on the "early treatment" ecology within the anti-lockdown and pandemic political struggles disputing the meaning of health, freedom, life and death. Was it a political movement? A cultural movement? An economic enterprise? Silva defends it was a mix of the three, giving the "early treatment" brand a powerful way to reproduce and amplify its scope to make at least 20% of the population in Brazil still believe that ineffective medication such as chloroquine is effective against Covid-19.
References:
https://blogdolabemus.com/2021/07/27/tratamento-precoce-negacionismo-ou-alt-science-por-leticia-cesarino/
https://cronicasdotitanic.substack.com/p/a-culpa-nao-e-nossa-e-precisamos
https://medium.com/p/511891c5b228
https://negativando.medium.com/protestos-contra-o-lockdown-no-brasil-a-vida-n%C3%A3o-pode-parar-34cf77efe4c9
Working through political organization, theses 3 and 4: saturation and endogenous reproduction
03 October 2022
Discussion of topics from "Working through political organization: current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022)", with focus on theses 3 and 4 of section 2: political saturation and endogenous reproduction.
Working through political organization, theses 1 and 2: peripherization and vulgarization
26 September 2022
Discussion of topics from "Working through political organization: current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022)", with focus on our first two theses about the conjuncture: peripherization and vulgarization.
Types on Types: Towards an Informatic Theory of Organization
19 September 2022
If you thought the type theory fetish was bad so far, wait till you get a load of this abstract nonsense. We're gonna talk linear logic types, domain theory types, constructor types, categorical types, computational types. We're gonna talk about types in Rust and Haskell, and types in Rosen and maybe even Karatani (just as a little treat).
Only one thing is for sure: if I manage to somehow link all these to the STP theory of organization, it'll surely be some type of miracle.
Open Discussion: Real Abstraction and the Communist Hypothesis
15 August 2022
On questions of nationalism
08 August 2022
Open meeting on case-study frameworks
01 August 2022
Discussion about which discursive practices can help us construct case-studies.
Presentation of 'Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization'
25 July 2022
Presentation on the main arguments of Rodrigo Nunes's book 'Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization', in preparation for our discussion with Rodrigo himself, later this year
Presentation on José Arthur Giannotti's approach to identity and equivalence in chapter 1 of "Trabalho e Reflexão" ("Labour and reflection"), and its compatibility with his linguistic turn in "Apresentação do Mundo" ("Presentation of the world"). The presentation deals with the broader issues of the constitution of world-transcendentals and the connection between language and value-form theory
On transcendental affinity and the logic of the gift
04 July 2022
An informal presentation of the current draft of a paper formalizing some crucial ideas from Lévi-Strauss and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Portuguese draft of the paper available upon request.
General Meeting
27 June 2022
A general meeting to discuss common interests and possible collaborations.
How does class matter? On class and social constraints
20 June 2022
In this meeting we will present some of the main arguments in Lillian Cicerchia's text "Why Does Class Matter?" and try to connect her ideas to the conceptual framework we have been developing. Special attention is given to the issue of how to connect structural and normative constraints, the relation between class, cooperation and competition and the issue of single-system x multi-system descriptions of opression and domination.
Sérgio Ferro and the problem of "misplaced free work".
13 June 2022
In this meeting we will try and show how Sérgio Ferro's analysis of the renaissance painters shows their labor as an attempt to escape the harsh conditions of the artisanal labor done in guilds and corporations in the end of feudalism/beginning of modernity.
Planning next steps
06 June 2022
Meeting dedicated to discussions about (1) STP/SGPP connections, (2) creation of "Immanence of Truths" reading group, (3) new proposals for contribution to Crisis and Critique and (4) other organizational issues of the collective.
The Internal Language of Commodities pt. 2
23 May 2022
We continue our exploration of the logic of commodities in terms of formal languages (type theory, toposes, etc.).
Elements for a Logic of Struggles: political economy of social conflict (part 2)
09 May 2022
In this presentation we will propose a formal framework to model the logic of social and political interactions in an attempt to treat three ideas: (i) that of means of production and reproduction of political bodies; (ii) that of boundaries of political bodies through which political interiorities and the social world interact; (iii) that of residues by which political experimentation and investigation can occur. Before introducing the framework, we will discuss the 2015-2016 school occupation movement in Brazil, which will serve both as a motivation and as a test case for the concepts developed.
Discussion about a future collective publication and our plans for the next meetings
Elements for a Logic of Struggles: political economy of social conflict (part 1)
25 April 2022
In this presentation we will propose a formal framework to model the logic of social and political interactions in an attempt to treat three ideas: (i) that of means of production and reproduction of political bodies; (ii) that of boundaries of political bodies through which political interiorities and the social world interact; (iii) that of residues by which political experimentation and investigation can occur. Before introducing the framework, we will discuss the 2015-2016 school occupation movement in Brazil, which will serve both as a motivation and as a test case for the concepts developed.
Why Lacan Abandons the Concept of Quilting Point: Toward a New Theory of Ideology
18 April 2022
Lacan’s concept of quilting point point de capiton is an important, albeit highly contested concept in the wider Lacanian vocabulary. Its valence in Lacan’s thought undergoes important changes from its first emergence in the Seminar III on the Psychoses (1950) up to Encore (1974) where Lacan abandons, if not fundamentally alters, the concept. In this paper I want to argue the concept remains central to any critique of ideology that utilizes the Lacanian point of view, and applying the notion to social and political phenomena opens a bigger debate about the epistemological status of political truths. The paper also presents an alternative model for thinking ideology critique that is critical of the Lacanian view, but informed by psychoanalysis in the thought of Edmund Bergler.
Marx, Ecology and Technology in the Anthropocene
11 April 2022
Trying to grasp the Anthropocene and its political challenges makes Ecology and Technology some of the essential discourses around which a Critique of Political Economy has to locate itself.
Reading Marx demands neither enshrining the master nor quickly dismissing his work as a mere relic of a past in which these questions never existed.
Refusing both of these, I want to entertain the hypothesis that by reading these two recessive traits of Marx's work together, his interest in technology as a diagram of social domination and his casting of the social organization of production as embedded within a metabolic interaction with nature. Along this path, we might find an important theoretical reconstruction and a clue about the organizational challenge of inscribing together environmental and economic issues within the matrix of capitalist value-relations.
The Internal Language of Commodities pt. 1
04 April 2022
A discussion of the relation between toposes, Heyting algebra, Marx's law of value and logic.
Surrogate Reasoning and the Socially Extended Mind Thesis
28 March 2022
In this meeting we introduce the "extended mind" thesis, its connections to our research project and the contributions of Barwise and Shimojima to the theory of "surrogate reasoning".
In this presentation we will try and develop how philosophy organizes itself institutionally and what the implications of this structure in a world where universities monopolize the production of philosophy.
A meeting with the Extimate collective to talk about the situation in Turkey, the crisis of university and their project for a transdisciplinary organization.
Short Presentations III
14 February 2022
A meeting dedicated to a participant's individual research.
Short Presentations II
31 January 2022
A meeting dedicated to the presentation of a new participant's research.
Short Presentations
24 January 2022
We continue general discussions and give time for participants to give a short presentation on what they're working on.
Ideas for 2022
17 January 2022
A general meeting to discuss our plans for 2022
General Meeting about Further Steps
06 December 2021
Building the text for ŠUM
08 November 2021
Further Planning for ŠUM (plus TV guide)
01 November 2021
Planning for ŠUM
25 October 2021
The generic in Badiou's theory of bodies
18 October 2021
Sheaves, Forcing and Other Consequences of an Inaccessibly Infinite World
04 October 2021
The technique of forcing in Being and Event
27 September 2021
What is a revolutionary organization?
21 September 2021
How can we use science, specifically the science of organization, to inform political practice? This is a recorded talk given at the Revolution in Philosophy series held at Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Palestine.
We discuss the work of E. Ostrom from a phenomenological standpoint, including common pool resources (CPR), design principles for CPR governance and the appearance of costs.
We explore the work of J. Hedges et. al. in defining open games, a compositional approach to game theory, and try to find connections with equilibrium theory and sheaf theory.
Here we discuss the work of E. Adam in a cohomological and categorical description of generativity. We try to connect aspects of this to phenomenology and political practice.