Reading Groups

^{curated by Steve Bachelor, Simona Ferlini, Nika Dubrovsky, Mark Fuller, Vassily Pigounides and many others}

HOW TO MAKE A READING GROUP

We read and discuss David Graeber’s texts and related material. Please do feel free to get in touch if you are interested in presenting a particular text. All voices are welcome.

Current reading groups

• Roy Bhaskar’s ‘Enlightened Common Sense’ and ‘From Science to Emancipation’
• Debt in Discussion with Michael Hudson and Barry Gills
• Andrew Johnson’s ‘Bureaucrats with guns: Or, how we can abolish the police if we just stop believing in them’, May 25.

Past reading groups:

• Ayça Çubukçu’s ‘David Graeber’s Anthropology of Human Possibilities,‘ February 23
• 13 October, 2022 – David Graeber Philosophical Series: Pierce with Federico Montanari
• 15 May, 2022 and 15 September 2022 – Critique of Violence by Walter Benjamin
• June and Julym 2022 – There Never Was a West by David Graeber in 5 parts
• 13 January, 2022 – Political Treatise, Chap. 1 to 5 by Baruch Spinoza. Facilitator for this session: Simona Ferlini.
• 18 November, 2021 – KARAOKE Reading Group. Theme: Debt. For more information and to sign up, see here. DJ for this session: Vassily.
• 19 November, 2021 – LSE Anthropology David Graeber Tribute Seminar series: Fragments of an anarchist anthropology (2004) (video available here).
• 22 October, 2021 – David Graeber Tribute Friday Seminar Series: Lost People, with Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry. Register here.
• 14 October, 2021 – KARAOKE Reading Group. For more information and to sign up, see here. Facilitator or DJ for this session: Vassily.
• 30 September, 2021 – ‘Why are there so few anarchists in the academy’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Simona.
• 9 September, 2021 – ‘Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions’ by Baruch Spinoza (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Simona Ferlini.
• 27 August, 2021 – Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions by Friedrich Nietzsche (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Vittoria & Andris.
• 19 August, 2021 – ‘Culture as Creative Refusal’. Facilitator(s) for this session: Vassily and Steven.
• 18 August, 2021 – Reading group: ‘The Dawn of Everything’ by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Facilitator: Steven
• 5 August, 2021 – ‘Going in and out of each other’s bodies’ by Maurice Bloch (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Steven.
• 15 July, 2021 – ‘Beyond the Monastic Self’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Sevda & Steven.
• 17 June, 2021 – Discussion with Stephen Snelders, author of The Devil’s Anarchy.
• 28 May, 2021 – David Graeber The Utopia of Rules, chapter 3, 5:00pm to 6:30pm.
• 13 May, 2021 – ‘Communist Proteins,’ with Alexei Yurchak.
• 29 April, 2021 – ‘Manners, Deference, and Private Property’ in Possibilities, pp. 24-30 (available here) and Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘Introduction’ in Rabelais and His World, pp. 1-12 (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Simona.
• 22 April 2021– General Assembly.
• 15 April, 2021 – Chapters 3 and 4 on the spiritual violence of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Greg. 

• 8 April, 2021 – ‘What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Elizabeth, Nika, Oihane. Watch it here.
• 1 April, 2021 – Carnival and April Fools day!! Come and have fun with us!
• 26 March, 2021 – Chapters 1, 4 and 7 of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Ayça Çubukçu (hosted by LSE Sociology). Register here. 
• 18 March, 2021 –150th anniversary of the Paris Commune: a party, a celebration and a day of memories.
• 5 March, 2021 – ‘Communism’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Yash, Steve & Vassily.
• 19 February, 2021 – ‘Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Steve. 

• 5 February, 2021 – The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Ayça Çubukçu (hosted by LSE Sociology). Register here.
• 22 January, 2021 – ‘How Change Happens’ in The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, pp. 181-200 (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Marisa. 
• 8 January, 2021 – ‘Another Art World, Part II: Utopia of Freedom as a Market Value’ with Nika Dubrovksy (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Mitya & Vassily.
• 11 December, 2020 – ‘Another Art World, Part I: Art Communism and Artificial Scarcity’ with Nika Dubrovsky (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Dennis. 
• 27 November, 2020 – Introduction, Chapter 5 and 10 of Direct Action: An Ethnography (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Ayça Çubukçu (hosted by LSE Sociology). 
• 13 November, 2020 – ‘Dead Zones of the Imagination: On Violence, Bureaucracy, and Interpretive Labor’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Mitya & Vassily.

Some ideas for our future reading groups:

• Jo Freeman’s essay ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’ facilitated by Scott Thompson
• To Our Friends (available here)
• Marcel Mauss Techniques, Technology and Civilization Oxford: Berghahn Books Year: 2006 ed. by Nathan Schlanger ISBN: 1-57181-662-3 “Les civilisations. Éléments et formes.” (1929) Facilitator – Vassily
• Max Weber’s “Against Judaism” and the Origins of Capitalism facilitated by Simona Ferlini
• The Care Manifesto
• ‘Army of Altruists’ (available here)
• A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life by Paolo Virno

• David Graeber against Michel Foucault: a fight club
• ‘The Bully’s Pulpit’
• David Graeber about Roy Bhaskar
• ‘Revolutionary Prospects and Critical Realism’
• From Managerial Feudalism to the Revolt of the Caring Classes
• The Divine Artificial Intelligence ‘Anarchy–In a Manner of Speaking – Conversations with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Nika Dubrovsky, and Assia Turquier–Zauberman’
• ‘Another Art World, Part III: Policing and Symbolic Order’ with Nika Dubrovsky (available here)
• ‘The Meaning of Money’
• Pierre Clastres, Archeology of Violence

Here is our Library of Care.