Capitalism, Crisis and the Limits of Representation with Alberto Toscano

CAN CAPITAL BE SEEN?

with Alberto Toscano

Room 4, Mill Lane Lecture Theatre, Cambridge
Tuesday, 19 May, 2015 @ 5-7PM

Can Capital be seen? In this talk, Alberto Toscano discusses his latest book "Cartographies of the Absolute", which surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zooms in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new visions and artefacts that wrestle with the vastness, invisibility and complexity of the abstractions that rule our lives. This work not only develops new methods for tracing the complex geography of global capitalism, but also engages with the challenge of producing a politics that can transcend the limits imposed by Capital.

Alberto Toscano is a reader in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is also a member of the editorial board of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory. Alberto Toscano's work is both an investigation of the persistence of the idea of communism in contemporary thought and a genealogical inquiry into the concept of fanaticism. He is author of The Theatre of Production (2006), Fanaticism: The Uses of an Idea (2010), and his latest book, Cartographies of the Absolute (2015).

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Organised by Cambridge Defend Education (CDE), the aim of these talks is to integrate contemporary radical theory with political practice and activism. Each talk will consist of a presentation followed by an open-ended Q&A session (and a trip to the pub).

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