We will explore Linear Logic as a natural system to study how transcendentals are manifested in worlds and objects. We'll briefly cover LL, and then look how it fits with other formalisms STP is using. We'll then consider LL in terms of the Curry-Haskell isomorphism, which was an inspiration for our tripartite theory of social mediation.
Discussion about how to frame some terms as entries for STP's new glossary
Environmental Logic 3: Organizational Base and Transition
22 April 2024
This is the third and last installement in the ongoing research on the concept and logic of social environments. This last presentation will go over the previous results in order to focus on the use of the concept of environment both in order to define the ground of a struggle as well as a new theory of the transition between social formations.
Attempt at an articulation of the atomic logic and conceptual articulation of Mode B, that is, how we define it formally but also how we conceive of it theoretically. I argue that we have yet to define Mode B at the level of abstraction we have with 'affinity' and 'value' and I propose 'protocol' as this notion. I will attempt to use some of our mathematical references to justify this, but I will largely rely on an attempt to construct the current defining notions -- contract, property, state -- from the more fundamental (and logically pure -- part of my issue with at least some of these terms is that they are mixtures of modes) notion of Mode B as protocol (I'll also make a case for why 'protocol' and not 'law'). I am also hoping to explore the particular dialectic of consistency and completeness which provides the lineaments of 'protocolity' (if anyone has a better term please let me know, that's painful to both read and write), but I will likely only begin to sketch out the formal implications of this. So this is also an opening of a conversation to the group. One practical objective is to summarize, condense and systematize my research in Mode B to date as part of collectivizing the research in the newly formed Mode B group.
The militant point of view
25 March 2024
A meeting to discuss the impasses of subjectivization, ideology and militancy within STP's social mediations diagram.
We will discuss the basic tenets of a theory of militant enquiries, revising the history of workers' enquiries, the way the organizational point of view opens the space for enquiries directed at political organizations and how STP's theory might help us define this practice.
Critical presentation of the theses of Mattin's book Social Dissonance, with an eye on the supplementation by Sohn-Rethel's concept of social synthesis.
Meeting to discuss new lottery to CA position and possible solutions to other problems.
internal
Simulating Laws of Chaos and Social Reproduction
23 October 2023
This presentation covers the probabilistic labor theory of value of Farjoun and Machover, as well as an attempt to simulate their results using agent-based modeling. We will also draw connections between this methodology and the framework established in the Primer.
Environmental logic 2: what is a social environment?
16 October 2023
Following our initial discussion of environmental logic, in this second presentation we will focus on Søren Mau's theory of "economic compulsion" as an environmental feature, connecting it to Emanuele Bardone's work on bounded rationality and distributed cognition, offering an epistemological supplement to Mau's theory of capitalist power.
Following previous discussions of the topic in our meetings is useful in understanding this presentation.
This is a recapitulatory meeting to discuss some of the ideas of the first presentation on Environmental Logic, from August. The idea is to go over the basic arguments and prepare the ground for the next presentation, on social environments.
We will discuss some ideas about our symposium project
planning
internal
The Times of Black Diaspora
11 September 2023
We welcome Victor Galdino to talk about his current research project on black archive and the colonial space-time relation.
politics
Organizational meeting: Central Admin and Transition period
04 September 2023
First organizational meeting with new central admin in place
internal
A network of "0"s: does building an audience substitute for political work?
28 August 2023
A discussion on the different ways social networks and other online platforms can function in political processes.
politics
The Politics of Self: Christopher Lasch's Psychoanalytic Approach to Fordist and early neo-liberal politics
21 August 2023
We welcome C. Derick Varn, who will present on Chapter 6 of Christopher Lasch's Minimal Self, where Lasch makes his conceptions of political and psychic alignment clear. We will breakdown Lasch's use of primary and secondary Narcissism in relationship to the end of Fordism, and we also will check in and see what if anything still holds today.
This is a first presentation, of a few, trying to flesh out a theory of the environment that is compatible with STP's current work. In this first approach, we will discuss the section of the Atlas dedicated to the way the transcendental modes constitute different concepts of nature and add some further features to this initial model, such as the distinction, developed in our readings of MES, between landscape, system, environment and world.
Transformative Justice refers to a set of practices for dealing with interpersonal violence and harm, typically within the context of social or political communities. The ideas and practice falling under this concept were largely pioneered and developed by anti-oppression movements and feminist theory, also drawing from historical examples of justice practices within indigenous communities. Transformative justice is increasingly seen as an alternative to excessively punitive and carceral models of justice. As the title indicates, it proposes a more holistic and transformative approach to justice, aiming to secure the necessary level of care and security for the survivor, whilst at the same time aiming to transform rather than isolate the wrongdoer, and by extension transform underlying social relations. The growing popularity of transformative justice also entails greater critical scrutiny, both of its theoretical foundations, and in some cases of practical implementation. Similarly, transformative justice seems significantly limited given its exclusive basis within the context of communities. Whilst proponents of transformative justice often extoll such practices as prefiguring a model of revolutionary justice, their limitation in scope means that this claim can only be sustained as long as one accepts that matters of justice are always resolved at the level of communities. On the other hand, if we contend that there are other modes of sociality to which questions of justice are relevant, it becomes necessary to consider how— if at all— the ethos of transformative justice can be extended to institutions and practices adequate to this scale. This presentation aims to problematise and think through these questions. The goal is ultimately to try and deliver on the revolutionary promise of transformative justice without flattening our conception of sociality to an exclusively communitarian model.
We've decided upon starting the selection process for the Central Admin. This person will be responsible for taking on a series of admin duties that have been previously outlined in previous meetings and that have been written down on a collectively vetted document. We have, however, decided that aside from those duties, it would be interesting for any group member to make suggestion on how admins could work. Thus, there would be a space for proposals, strategic ideas and any point of emphasis that they think the admin should take on his tenure.
internal
Popular Movement for Housing: 12 years of experience in organizing the working class in the suburbs of Curitiba, Brazil
17 July 2023
The Popular Movement for Housing was founded in 2011 in a big city of southern Brazil (Curitiba) by 5 left-wing militants who were already organized in a Party-like Organization. However, being discontent with the lack of colective political experiencce with the working class within the party, these militants felt encouraged to create new conceptios and organizing forms. The movement initiated with a thorough critique of left-wing preconceptions on how and specially where a colective class organization should start. The perspective shifted, from organizing the workers in their place of work to organizing them in their place of living, and this boosted the movement with new conditions to act having the homeless as its main popular base.
Being both na anthropological experience of coexistence with the workers and a political experience on strategic methods for obtaining victory, the movement is now a successful example of a political and spiritual laboratory. It has certainly suffered from the political wave of neo-fascism awakened by Bolsonaro’s politics. For nearly 2 years the movement has been strongly on the defensive side, struggling to maintain what is has concquered suffering from police abuse, political harassment, etc. but it survived thanks to its faithfulness to the political experience. After 12 years, the movement has now more than 3000 people spread through 7 ocupations who benefited from these victories, not to mention the significant growth in the number of cadres and local leaders formed by the movement over the years. With a new Lula government and the reestructuring of Brazil’s state, there opens up a new hope for further strenghning of the colective and more material victories appear on the horizon.
politics
Seeing like a Subset (2): mapping our ideas, projects and publications
10 July 2023
Continuing to map our work thus far, now with focus on open research problems
Organizational discussion of STP plans and structure
Seeing like a Subset: mapping our ideas, projects and publications
19 June 2023
A mapping exercise to visualize our ideas and published texts.
Power Trouble
12 June 2023
The idea that someone “has” power is fundamentally paradoxical. To have power entails not having to use it (when someone has to use their power it is because their power is already failing in some way), but when someone “uses” their power, it is always the actions of others, and not one’s own, that really matter. Why then the idea that people have power is so seductive to us? If power is never the cause of others’ action, then why do we act in determinate ways when facing what we think are powerful agents? If power is simply an effect, then why do we act as if it was the cause of our own actions? This is the mystery of power, what makes it so puzzling as a social phenomenon: power only exists because of the composite action of the ones over whom power is exercised, but, nonetheless, power is still attributed to—and, more than that, becomes an attribute of—powerful people. It is precisely this fetishistic character of power, that turns an effect into a cause and a relation into an attribute, that I propose to discuss.
When the Wild Things Are: Political Organizing after the Monster
05 June 2023
Tektology, the organizational perspective and the triple modal logic we call the Monster provide a new framework within which to rethink political problems.
I lay out a few of my own long-term projects and analyses which were profoundly transformed by STP work, which include research work on US imperialism and the US state, analysis of the Occupy movement and its ramifications, and ongoing community defense projects. Beyond the scope of my own work, I hope to motivate STP research from an activist perspective, in so far as I believe it capable of offering deep and effective insights into the work anyone is already doing, as well as new ways to approach buildings links between different groups, organizations or movements.
Organization Science: Bourgeois and Proletarian
29 May 2023
Amelia Davenport discusses the ways in which Bogdanov's Tektology (universal organization science) prefigure key scientific insights in Bourgeois organization theory including Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, Conway's Law, and Mary Parker Follett's theory of integration
Social worlds and the logic of peripherization (AUB Presentation)
04 May 2023
World-systems theory remains an incredibly useful approach when describing international geopolitical dynamics, especially when it comes to the relations between center and peripheries in capitalist world-economies. A collateral effect of the way it defines some of its central concepts is that one tends to associate "abstractness" to the social dynamics of capital in the advanced center while supposing that capitalist domination in the peripheries is more "concrete" or direct, due to the needs of extractivism and overexploitation of labor. In this lecture, we will propose to invert this view on two accounts. First, by providing a twist to the idea that the relation between centers and peripheries is one of either expansion of central conditions towards the periphery or one of stability between the two, rather defending that there is a tendency for the peripheral form of life to expand towards the center of capitalism. Secondly, we will argue that this is associated with the fact that it is in the hybrid and conflict-ridden regions of the periphery that the abstract forms of capitalist domination are most at home.
Topics in debate: central admin and rotating research coordinators
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.