Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

by McKenzie Wark
Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

by McKenzie Wark

eBook

$9.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other.

Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov.

The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway’s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781781688298
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 04/21/2015
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 494 KB

About the Author

McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, The Beach Beneath the Street and The Spectacle of Disintegration, among other books. He is Professor of Media and Culture at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xxiii

Part I Labor and Nature

1 Alexander Bogdanov: Workings of the World

Lenin's Rival 3

Red Mars 8

The Philosophy of Living Experience 13

Toward a Comradely Poetics of Knowledge and Labor 25

Red Hamlet: From Shakespeare to Marx 30

From Marx to Proletkuft 34

From Dialectical Materialism to Tektology 40

Tektology as Metaphoric Machine 49

Blood Exchange 57

2 Andrey Platonov: A Proletarian Writing

Son of Proletkult 62

Chevengur as Historical Novel 69

Chevengur as Utopia 76

Foundation Pit Impossibe Infrastructure 83

Happy Moscow. Superstructural People 89

The Soul of Man Under Communism 97

Socialist Tragedy 103

The Factory of Literature 107

Part II Science and Utopia

3 Cyborg Donna Haraway: Techno-science Worlds and Beings

The California Ideology 117

From Mach to Feyerabend 123

From Marx to Haraway 132

From Bogdanov to Barad 152

Climate Science as Tekfology 166

4 Kim Stanley Robinson: The Necessity of Creation

Return to Red Mars 183

Green Mars: Tektology as Revolution 195

Blue Mars: After Utopia 204

Conclusion 213

Notes 227

Index 271

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews