Richard Gilman-Opalsky – författare

This book is about the public sphere and the various ways it has been theorized as a driving mechanism for social and political change. Public spheres are the places where people come together to actively engage in new ideas and arguments, where collective interests and a collective political will are formed, and where social movements and rebellions get their start. Conventionally, the public sphere has been understood nationally_as a body made up of citizens who gather in particular places and times and who speak to the governments that claim to represent them. But increasingly, in light of debates about globalization, theorists are considering the political possibilities for transnational public spheres. The public sphere is generally discussed in either a national or transnational context. Unbounded Publics argues that there has been and can be a different kind of sphere, atransgressive public sphere, one that exists in both contexts at once. Power, politics, and people do not always abide by imagined or legally enforced boundaries. Throughout history, various publics have struggled to hold sway_to wield political influence_and often, these public spheres have been simultaneously national and transnational in important ways. The most self-consciously transgressive public spheres have been formed by structurally disadvantaged people_by those excluded from participation, by those with unstable or partial citizenship, and by those who are neglected or marginalized. Gilman-Opalsky's guiding illustration of the transgressive public sphere in the book is found in the case of the Mexican Zapatistas. This book is a valuable resource for those interested in political theories of the public sphere, globalization, cosmopolitanism, social movements, and political identity. Moreover, the author argues for a vital new way to think about, discuss, and participate in public spheres today. Without transgressive public spheres, Gilman-Opalsky contends, institutions that function both within and beyond national boudaries grow increasingly unaccountable and elude the democratic steering of the people.

This book is about the public sphere and the various ways it has been theorized as a driving mechanism for social and political change. Public spheres are the places where people come together to actively engage in new ideas and arguments, where collective interests and a collective political will are formed, and where social movements and rebellions get their start. Conventionally, the public sphere has been understood nationally_as a body made up of citizens who gather in particular places and times and who speak to the governments that claim to represent them. But increasingly, in light of debates about globalization, theorists are considering the political possibilities for transnational public spheres. The public sphere is generally discussed in either a national or transnational context. Unbounded Publics argues that there has been and can be a different kind of sphere, atransgressive public sphere, one that exists in both contexts at once. Power, politics, and people do not always abide by imagined or legally enforced boundaries. Throughout history, various publics have struggled to hold sway_to wield political influence_and often, these public spheres have been simultaneously national and transnational in important ways. The most self-consciously transgressive public spheres have been formed by structurally disadvantaged people_by those excluded from participation, by those with unstable or partial citizenship, and by those who are neglected or marginalized. Gilman-Opalsky's guiding illustration of the transgressive public sphere in the book is found in the case of the Mexican Zapatistas. This book is a valuable resource for those interested in political theories of the public sphere, globalization, cosmopolitanism, social movements, and political identity. Moreover, the author argues for a vital new way to think about, discuss, and participate in public spheres today. Without transgressive public spheres, Gilman-Opalsky contends, institutions that function both within and beyond national boudaries grow increasingly unaccountable and elude the democratic steering of the people.

The problems of capitalism have been studied from Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty. The latter has recently confirmed that the system of capital is deeply bound up in ever-growing inequality without challenging the continuance of that system. Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century presents a diversity of analyses and visions opposed to the idea that capital should have yet another century to govern human and non-human resources in the interest of profit and accumulation. The editors and contributors to this timely volume present alternatives to the whole liberal litany of administered economies, tax policy recommendations, and half-measures. They undermine and reject the logic of capital, and the foregone conclusion that the twenty-first century should be given over to capital just as the previous two centuries were.Providing a deep critique of capitalism, based on assessment from a wide range of cultural, social, political, and ecological thinking, Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century insists that transformative, revolutionary, and abolitionist responses to capital are even more necessary in the twenty-first century than they ever were.

With all appropriate modesties and heresies, Bruno Gulli and Richard Gilman-Opalsky think together in the ways of other kindred spirits like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, bell hooks and Cornel West, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Stefano Harney and Fred Moten. Gulli and Gilman- Opalsky undertake a philosophical and political inquiry into capitalist forms of life and communist ontologies. From a deep, dialectical study of each other's work, they aim at a new synthesis of theory about possible and desirable beings-in-the-world. Rejecting capitalist conceptions of labor, politics, sovereignty, economy, (neo)liberalism, community, the individual, art, revolution, social change, and even the human person, Gulli and Gilman-Opalsky propose new ways of thinking and being antagonistic to the existing world (such as it is). They consider the prospects for new forms of life realized by way of the emancipatory dreams and struggles of everyday people.

Exploring the meanings and powers of love from ancient Greece to the present day, Richard Gilman-Opalsky argues that what is called 'love' by the best thinkers who have approached the subject is in fact the beating heart of communism - understood as a way of living, not as a form of government. Along the way, he reveals with clarity that the capitalist way of assigning value to things is incapable of appreciating what humans value most. Capitalism cannot value the experiences and relationships that make our lives worth living and can only destroy love by turning it into a commodity.

Political theorist and philosopher Richard Gilman-Opalsky's Imaginary Power, Real Horizons is a tribute to the imagination and to its necessity for liberatory struggle. 'Impractical' is the name given to anyone who imagines something radically other than what exists,' he writes. However, many things-such as the abolition of slavery-were dismissed as impractical before they came to be. In a warm, plainspoken manner, these essays chart the affects of creativity and utopianism through topics as varied as the cyclical nature of popular movements; the international history of May Day; the experience of teaching political theory and Marxism in contemporary China; and the revolutionary aspirations of Free Jazz. The human imagination is a real, world-creating power, and those who would declare otherwise have a poor understanding of history.

In 1848, Karl Marx declared that a communist specter was haunting Europe. In 1994, Jacques Derrida considered how the spectre of Marx would haunt the post-Cold War world. In Specters of Revolt, Gilman-Opalsky argues that the world is haunted by revolt, by the possibility of events that interrupt and disrupt the world, that throw its reality and justice into question. But recent revolt is neither decisively communist nor decisively Marxist. Gilman-Opalsky develops a theory of revolt that accounts for its diverse critical content about autonomy, everyday life, anxiety, experience, knowledge, and possibility. The 1994 uprising of the Mexican Zapatistas set the stage for new forms of revolt against a newly expanded power of capital. In the 20 years since, including the recent phase of global uprisings that began in 2008 with the Greek revolts, insurrection has spoken in the "Arab Spring" in Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and in the U.S. in Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, and Baltimore, among other places. In light of recent global uprisings, Gilman-Opalsky aims to move beyond the critical theory of revolt to an understanding of revolt as theory itself. Making use of diverse sources from Raoul Vaneigem and Félix Guattari to Julia Kristeva and Raya Dunayevskaya, Spectres of Revolt explores upheaval as thinking, the intellect of insurrection, and philosophy from below.From the Trade Paperback edition.