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Previous Meetings (169)
Questions of organization and revolutionary struggle - conversation with Phil Neel
31 March 2026
This monday (30/03/2026), we were in conversation with the Phil A. Neel. He is a communist geographer and author of the recently released Hellworld (2025). In the book, Neel examines the structure of global capitalism and asks what kind of revolutionary subjectivity might emerge from this context. From there, our meeting will open a discussion on the organizational problems facing the communist struggle today.
Duration: 141m
From mode A to B through the development of Writing (3500-500 BC)
11 November 2025
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores the evolutionary development of writing systems from 3500-500 BC, tracing the progression from clay tokens used for accounting in ancient Mesopotamia through the emergence of cuneiform writing and eventually to the Greek alphabet. Speaker 1 presents archaeological evidence showing how accounting tokens enclosed in clay envelopes gradually transformed into tablets with impressed signs, arguing that this represents a fundamental shift in modes of exchange that parallels modes of production. The discussion draws on the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat and others to demonstrate how the abstraction of commodities as pictographs arose alongside the abstraction of numerical quantities, with references to Hegel's lack of a theory of money and connections drawn to contemporary AI as the next evolutionary stage of writing. The presentation concludes with analysis of proto-Elamite and cuneiform systems, situating these developments within the broader context of state formation and bureaucratic expansion in the ancient Near East.
Duration: 202m
Allan Hillani - The Point of View of the State
21 October 2025
This presentation departs from the frontspice of Hobbes' Leviathan to argue that it functions not only as an allegorical image, but as a perspectival apparatus that helps us understand the "point of view of the State", exploring how the hobbesian image mobilizes the change in perspective that places the spectator both as constitutive and as a subject of the gaze of the State.
Duration: 193m
Coordination Meeting
23 June 2025
internal
The Varieties of Mode B
10 April 2025
The presenter examines master-slave relations as a component of "mode B" through a historical analysis spanning from ancient Greece to the Mongol empire, drawing heavily on Kojin Karatani's theoretical framework. The discussion traces how proto-world economies emerged at the margins of world empires, comparing Athens's position relative to the Persian empire with England's later relationship to continental powers, while referencing Hannah Arendt's work on expansion and imperialism. The argument explores how Athenian democracy developed from earlier Ionian isonomy to manage class conflicts arising from the money economy, ultimately grounding itself in a distinct form of mode B exchange that differed from tribute-based states like Persia. The analysis concludes by contrasting Athenian private slave ownership with Sparta's communal enslavement system, suggesting variations in how different Greek poleis organized state power and slavery.
Duration: 2h 39m
The Popular Communities Movement
31 March 2025
Solidarity Kitchens in the Houseless' Workers Movement
10 March 2025
Back to Work!
20 January 2025
First meeting of the year.
Paintings as Phenomena
19 January 2025
Dennis from SDP demonstrates a 3D simulation app that uses computer graphics to illustrate philosophical concepts from Alain Badiou's "Logics of Worlds," specifically the relationship between phenomena and transcendentals. The presentation connects paintings displayed as digital images to Badiou's logical framework, where the phenomenal object is the painting itself and the transcendental is represented by a color cube containing all possible color subsets that function as logical predicates. Dennis explains how each subset of the color space acts as a filter that can isolate or reveal different aspects of the image, drawing parallels to complete lattices, Boolean algebras, and domain theory in computer science. The app features an "atomic walk" function that cycles through various color filters, demonstrating how different logical predicates interact within what Badiou calls the transcendental structure governing phenomenal appearances.
Duration: 11m
The STP Stack: an introduction
19 January 2025
This is the first video in a series that overviews STP's work through four major thinkers. In this chapter, we discuss how and why we generalize Marx with Kojin Karatani's work.
Duration: 13m
The STP Stack: social worlds and political investigation
19 January 2025
This is the second video in a series that overviews STP's work. This time we discuss how Bogdanov's science of organization led to our work on social worlds and our distinction between social and political.
Duration: 9m
The development of Speech among Primal Nomadic Bands and the development of Writing among Early States
04 November 2024
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines the evolutionary development of speech and writing through a framework combining Freudian psychoanalysis, evolutionary archaeology, and theories of sexual antagonism. The discussion critiques Christopher Boehm's evolutionary account of egalitarian conscience formation and Chomsky's "comic book" mutation theory of language acquisition, instead drawing on Christopher Knight's theory that speech emerged from sexual selection pressures and women's collective organization in primal nomadic bands. Members explore how the "cognitive revolution" involving brain enlargement created new energetic demands, particularly for women, leading to symbolic behaviors like "sham menstruation" using ochre-based cosmetics and ritualized sex strikes that prefigured language and symbolic culture. The analysis connects these prehistoric developments to the later emergence of writing systems in early states, positioning sexual antagonism and collective female resistance as foundational to both speech and symbolic representation.
Social Information: Update on Research (Formal/Mathematical)
21 October 2024
The Web of the Peoples
07 October 2024
STP members analyze TAEIA's "Web of the Peoples," a Latin American autonomous movement with strong territorial ties that emerged from Brazil's landless movement (MST). The discussion examines how Latin American concepts of autonomy differ from European workerist traditions, drawing on Zapatista examples to show that autonomy is defined positively through land relations rather than negatively as opposition to the state. The group explores the concrete history of the Terra Vista settlement in Bahia, tracing how land struggles evolved from MST organizing through permaculture practices informed by expert Anna Primavezi's ecological principles. The conversation connects these territorial movements to broader questions of composition, self-organization, and the relationship between land-based autonomy and food sovereignty.
Social Information: Update on Research (Conceptual/Empirical)
23 September 2024
Karatani's "Power and the Modes of Exchange"
26 August 2024
Note: the first 45 minutes of the recording are missing due to a technical problem
Duration: 2h 15m
Meeting Materials
Chalk Outline.pdf
Discussion of logics and modes
10 June 2024
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines the relationship between different logical modes and social phenomena, particularly focusing on how classical Boolean logic fails to account for the plasticity of state formations and social relations. The discussion centers on developing a framework that uses paraconsistent and intuitionistic logics as foundational tools that combine to produce Boolean logic, rather than starting from global logical consistency and working downward. Participants explore how this "local logic" approach, inspired by category theory and Heyting algebras, can better describe social construction and exchange by building coherence gradually from local conditions rather than assuming universal principles. The conversation connects these logical investigations to contemporary political struggles, including Palestinian liberation, suggesting that certain social positions occupy limit points within capitalist logic.
Duration: 1h 35m
Logic of Social Information Part 2: Linear Logic
27 May 2024
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.
Meeting Materials
Towards a geometry of interaction.pdf
lazy_logicians_guide_to_linear_logic.pdf
linear_logic_girard.pdf
Quick update on the encampments
13 May 2024
Glossary: real, alignment, misalignment, organization
06 May 2024
The Society for Theoretical Practice develops a glossary by exploring three types of "black boxes" or unknowns that any organization faces: dependencies on material conditions it cannot control, uncertainties about environmental responses to its actions, and ambiguities in interpreting feedback from others. The discussion draws on Lacanian concepts, particularly "the real" as an impasse of formalization, to theorize what they term a "logic of the real" or "relative real" that describes how systems encounter limits. Members work through the relationship between systems and organizations, examining how entities function simultaneously as both means and ends while being shaped by and shaping their environments. The conversation weaves together systems theory, psychoanalytic concepts, and organizational analysis to build theoretical tools for understanding collective practice.
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.
Meeting Materials
Environmental logic.pdf
Environmental logic.pdf
STP Book: Book structure and sections 1
15 April 2024
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses the structure and organization of their forthcoming book while awaiting publisher feedback, which has been delayed by an additional month. Members debate whether to adopt a cumulative, axiomatic approach that builds concepts sequentially throughout chapters, or to begin with more accessible political problems that readers can relate to before introducing theoretical infrastructure. The conversation centers on organizing existing STP materials, including their "six theses" on political organization and concepts like "peripheralization" and "vulgarization," with disagreement over whether to start with abstract theory-building or concrete political phenomenology that activists might find more engaging. They emphasize avoiding extensive engagement with other thinkers and commentators to maintain focus on STP's original theoretical contributions while ensuring each section can reference and build upon previous chapters.
Duration: 1h 42m
Logic of Social Information
08 April 2024
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.
Meeting Materials
Subjectivity, militancy and ideology from STP's framework.pdf
A theory of Militant Enquiries
18 March 2024
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.
Meeting Materials
A history of workers' enquiry.pdf
STP Book Project proposal
19 February 2024
We discuss the strategy and method of working for our book project.
internal
planning
A discussion on practical solidarity with Palestine
05 February 2024
An internal meeting about the requirements of membership within STP.
internal
politics
Discord Launch
29 January 2024
Going over, discussing and launching our new Discord server
internal
Book Project: Skeleton and Strategy
22 January 2024
The STP discusses transitioning from WhatsApp to Discord as their primary communication platform, debating the technical logistics of migration, membership criteria, and moderation structures including automated bot systems for administrator oversight. Members explore the tension between maintaining STP as an internal organization versus creating public-facing spaces, with speakers arguing for developing a stronger "membrane" for the group's interior before engaging with larger environments. The conversation connects platform decisions to broader questions about STP's political import and organizational structure, particularly how having a published book would position members as representatives of STP's work and enable new forms of connection with other organizations. Participants emphasize the need to establish clear internal structures before expanding outward, viewing the communication platform as fundamental to this organizational development.
internal
STP's First Meeting of the Year: 2023 in review and what's ahead of us
15 January 2024
The Society for Theoretical Practice conducts a year-end review covering their 2023 activities, including their recent Brazilian national meeting in Rio where they launched a printed booklet containing their translation of a key text renamed "The Point of View of Political Organization." The group discusses their growing connections with external organizations like the Communist Caucus from the DSA and Vienna Students, who approached them after reading their work in *Praxis and Critique*, particularly finding resonance with concepts like "proletarian disorganization." Members present the successful two-day Rio event held at a printing press, which featured mini-presentations, guest commentary sessions, and the production of 50 copies of their "Working Materials" booklet that sold out. The meeting concludes with discussions about future publishing projects and the recognition that they are closer than expected to producing a comprehensive book that could significantly expand their theoretical influence.
Duration: 1h 51m
internal
Travafeminismo – travestilidade and feminist political struggle
11 December 2023
Eduardo Camargo presents his theoretical framework of "Travafeminismo," which attempts to mediate between psychoanalysis, gender studies, the historicity of travestilidade, and Marxist analysis to understand subjectivity production under late capitalism. He distinguishes his concept of "trava feminism" from existing "trans feminism" by emphasizing the reclaiming of the term "travesti" and drawing from Brazilian social experiences rather than primarily Anglo-American queer studies. The discussion engages with thinkers ranging from Marx, Butler, and Kristeva to Sylvia Wynter, Monique Wittig, and Patricia Hill Collins, exploring how new vocabulary and concepts emerging from specific standpoints can transform cognitive understanding of gender and political struggle. Camargo particularly emphasizes Kristeva's concept of abjection and Wynter's sociogenic principle to analyze how cultural impositions and social norms become internalized through reward systems that reinforce conformity.
Duration: 1h 43m
politics
Discussion about social environment theory
13 November 2023
The discussion centers on developing a theory of "social environment" that examines how nature appears within different social formations. Speaker_0 presents two main theoretical concepts: an "anatomy of social atoms" that defines the material basis of social structures in processual terms, distinguishing between social processes that can be decomposed while remaining intelligible within the social world versus those that cross into purely physical domains and become "black boxed." The second concept explores how the same underlying material processes appear differently—as partner, resource, or raw material—depending on which social "mode" dominates a given formation, with particular attention paid to distinguishing resources (defined by closed property relations) from raw materials (characterized by open, context-dependent boundaries). The conversation draws on Søren Mau's work on "mute compulsion" in capitalism and grapples with methodological questions about how to distinguish environments from mere collections of interacting systems, ultimately framing this as a move from "objective phenomenology" to understanding how particular objects constitute their worlds through asymmetric system-environment divisions.
Meeting References
Environmental Logic, 2: what is a social environment?
tektology
Social Dissonance and Social Synthesis
06 November 2023
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 Materials
Convex portrait in a self-mirror. Social Dissonance and Social Synthesis (CARON).docx
Convex portrait in a self-mirror. Social Dissonance and Social Synthesis (CARON).pdf
politics
philosophy
Organizational meeting on Central Admin structure
30 October 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Simulating Laws of Chaos.pdf
Emmanuel Farjoun, Moshe Machover, David Zachariah - How Labor Powers the Global Economy_ A Labor Theory of Capitalism-Springer (2022).pdf
Meeting References
Ian Wright's review of "How Labour Powers the Global Economy"
Our first meeting on representation of capital
Diane Elson's text on the "value theory of labor"
ABM in Julia using Agents.jl
mathematics
economics
planning
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.
Meeting Materials
Søren Mau - Mute Compulsion A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital-VERSO (2023).pdf
tektology
philosophy
Org Meeting on Research Coordinator
09 October 2023
The Society for Theoretical Practice debates the strategic role and scope of a proposed Research Coordinator (RC) position, particularly its relationship to organizing a planned symposium. Members grapple with fundamental questions about whether the RC should function as someone who performs specific tasks for the group versus someone empowered to take a "bird's eye view" of the collective's research totality and guide its direction. The discussion reveals tension between highlighting STP's internal research developments to engage newcomers and managing the organization's interface with external academic conversations, with participants acknowledging the need to map existing projects and partnerships before determining the symposium's focus. Speaker concerns center on avoiding overburdening the coordinator while ensuring the position meaningfully coordinates rather than merely administers the group's diverse research activities.
Duration: 2h 3m
internal
Why the Assault on Trans Rights?
02 October 2023
Using the Organizational POV and other STP theories to analyze the dangerous reaction against trans people and propose some political responses.
Meeting Materials
Wynter_Unsettling the Coloniality of Being-Power-Truth-Freedom.pdf
politics
Discussion about the social modes of nature
25 September 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Environmental logic.pdf
Meeting References
The previous presentation
tektology
philosophy
Organizational meeting: STP's Symposium
18 September 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Christopher Lasch - The Minimal Self_ Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (1985) pages 1-12,194-220.pdf
politics
psychoanalysis
What does it mean to (and how to) think amerindian thought?
14 August 2023
The speaker examines the systemic exclusion of Amerindian thought from academic philosophy, arguing that this marginalization stems from the discipline's "Franco-German Anglo-centric" rather than truly Eurocentric nature, which overlooks prominent indigenous thinkers like Davi Kopenawa. Drawing on anthropological work by Viveiros de Castro and Lévi-Strauss, the discussion centers on Amerindian perspectivism—illustrated through the parable of jaguars who see themselves as human and perceive blood as cassava beer—as a sophisticated philosophical theory that challenges Western assumptions about humanity, nature, and perspective. The speaker connects the growing visibility of indigenous thought to contemporary struggles over land demarcation and climate issues, while questioning what it means for philosophy to "take seriously" non-Western modes of thinking. The presentation synthesizes discussions of institutional philosophy, the role of anthropological mediation in accessing indigenous concepts, and the fundamental question of how different philosophical traditions can be authentically engaged rather than merely catalogued.
Duration: 2h 17m
Meeting Materials
What does it mean to think Amerindian thinking? (deepl translation).pdf
O que significa pensar o pensamento ameríndio? (versão provisória).pdf
Environmental logic 1: the social modes of nature
07 August 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Chapter 3 of Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism_ Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy-Monthly Review Press (2017) pages 94-132.pdf
Sahlins - On the ontological scheme of Beyond Nature and Culture.pdf
Part 1 of Seeing like a State.pdf
Section VIII of Atlas.pdf
tektology
philosophy
Transformative Justice and Social Metabolism
31 July 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Nomos_and_Narrative.pdf
Proposals for STP Reorganization
24 July 2023
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
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses their concept of "organizational truth terrorism," a theoretical framework that proposes three interconnected perspectives for analyzing any phenomenon organizationally: composition, interaction, and logic. Drawing influences from mathematical computational trinitarianism and the organizational rationalist Alexander Bogdanov, the group explores how collectives can develop enhanced sensory capacities that differ from individual perception, comparing this to how a large boat experiences ocean waves differently than a single person. The discussion examines the framework's philosophical limits and scope, questioning whether it constitutes a general metaphysics or has specific boundaries, while also considering how this organizational lens forces concepts to be grounded in material and spatial contexts rather than remaining purely abstract.
Meeting Materials
Seeing like a subset.jpg
Organizational matters of the STP
26 June 2023
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses the establishment of a central administrative (CA) position and a research coordinator (RC) role to better organize the group's activities and redistribute organizational responsibilities. The speakers debate a "negative lottery" selection process inspired by Plato's Republic, where members would be randomly chosen and could either accept or decline the position, with successful candidates articulating their needs for support (including potential payment or resources) and receiving help from existing group members. They propose the CA position as a one-year trial role focused on making the group's self-reproduction more visible and delegating tasks to reduce mental strain on organizers, while the RC would curate thematic research directions for several months and help circulate organizational skills throughout the membership. The discussion emphasizes democratizing administrative knowledge and avoiding permanent centralization of power, with upcoming presentations by members including Amelia Davenport, John, and Alain scheduled for consideration.
Project Update: Modal Logic-based Social World Simulator
20 June 2023
A programming project to develop a simulator which will build artificial social worlds. The core system will utilize the triple modal logic in conjunction with agent-based and language reasoning models.
We are currently moving from high-level design to proof-of-concept implementation. This is also an invite to collaborate to the group for anyone interested in participating as a developer.
Seeing like a Subset: mapping our ideas, projects and publications
19 June 2023
The Society for Theoretical Practice engages in a collaborative mapping exercise to organize and visualize their theoretical frameworks, diagrams, and conceptual tools developed over time. Participants discuss the relationships between their various diagrams, including "org Trinitarianism," "the monster," and a "social mediation" diagram, debating how these conceptual frameworks connect and transform into one another. The group grapples with methodological questions about how to present their work externally while working through issues of naming conventions, hierarchical relationships between concepts, and the progression from general to specific theoretical tools. Speaker discussions reveal an ongoing tension between experimental research positions and more hands-on administrative approaches, as they attempt to create a coherent exposition of their collaborative theoretical practice.
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.
Meeting Materials
GELL, Alfred. Art and agency - an anthropological theory.pdf
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
Meeting Materials
Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox - The Goal_ A Process of Ongoing Improvement-North River Press (2004).pdf
(The Systems Inquiry Series) Alexander Bogdanov, George Gorelik (trans.) - Essays in Tektology_ The General Science of Organization-Intersystems Publications (1984).pdf
tektology
Two short presentations
22 May 2023
Two presentations by STP newcomers!
Organizational matters of the STP
15 May 2023
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses implementing two new organizational positions: a Central Administrator (CA) and a Research Coordinator (RC), with extensive deliberation on selection processes and responsibilities. The group explores a "negative lottery" system inspired by Plato's Republic, where individuals would be randomly selected and could either accept or decline the CA position, with accepted candidates then presenting their needs and vision for the role. The CA position involves overseeing group operations, delegating tasks, and providing organizational oversight to make the group's self-reproduction more visible and distribute administrative burdens more equitably. The RC position would function as a rotating research coordinator who curates themes for several months, allowing members to develop organizational skills and explore topics the group hasn't previously examined.
philosophy
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.
Meeting Materials
AUB- Social Worlds and the Logic of Perpherization.pdf
Social Atoms and Social Worlds
01 May 2023
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores fundamental questions about "social atoms" and the logical structures of social worlds, investigating their spatial and temporal dimensions to develop a philosophy of history. The discussion centers on a four-quadrant theoretical framework analyzing the relationship between domination and emancipation, examining how these concepts operate through both structural and conjunctural dynamics. Speaker_0 distinguishes between different political positions—including references to Jacobin enlightenment approaches, Negrianism, and world-systems theory (mentioning Wallerstein)—arguing that some viewpoints treat domination and emancipation as concrete entities while others approach them relationally. The group debates whether their analytical framework should be understood ontologically or epistemologically, with particular attention to how different quadrants reveal either homogeneous or heterogeneous relationships between the terms of domination and emancipation.
Meeting Materials
AUB- Social Worlds and the Logic of Perpherization.pdf
Value-form theory in the reading of José Arthur Giannotti and its consequences for the concept of the social
24 April 2023
Lika Kareva presents Giannotti's thinking on "Contra Althusser" in connection to value-form theory.
Meeting Materials
Contra Althusser ENGLISH translation in progress.pdf
Plant for STP.pdf
arthur-gianotti-contra-althusser-exercicios-de-filosofia-ok.pdf
philosophy
economics
politics
On a metalogical reading of Plato (and Sartre)
17 April 2023
A discussion about Plato and metalogic!
Meeting Materials
Minimal_Sartre_Diagonalization_and_Pure.pdf
Organizational matters of the STP
03 April 2023
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 Materials
presentation-logic-topos-md.pdf
Vickers - 2007 - Locales and Toposes as Spaces.pdf
mathematics
Strategic matters of the STP
13 March 2023
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 Materials
Hour at the Zoo.pdf
mathematics
The Contagion of Reality: Video Games and the End of Art
27 February 2023
STP invites Conrad Hamilton to speak about a marxist reading of the gaming culture.
Meeting Materials
The-Contagion-of-Reality_jpcaron.docx
Organizational matters of the STP
20 February 2023
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"
Meeting Materials
J.-P. Caron e Bruno Trchmnn - Gato Tosco - Gato Tosco (Eng).pdf
Karatani- SWH Introduction.pdf
Attali- Noise chapter 1.pdf
A. Kiarina Kordela's thought: real abstraction, historical blocks, meta-phenomenology
06 February 2023
A. Kiarina Kordela's thought offers a critique of Sohn-Rethel's distinction between manual and intellectual labor, arguing instead that the unconscious emerges within capitalist exchange as a structural system of differential relations of value that provides the blueprint for abstract thought. The discussion explores Kordela's theory of historical blocks, which draws on Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge (imagination, reason, and intuition) and differs from Karatani's focus on exchange by examining how diachronic structures deal with social surplus through both exchange and production as mediated through discourse. Kordela's framework employs a tripartite schema where imagination corresponds to diachrony (homogenizing linear time), reason to synchrony (unconscious structure), and intuition to eternity, with particular attention to how this relates to shifts from ideology to fetishism as analyzed by Balibar. The speaker suggests this approach may be more compatible with STP's attempt to shift from exchange specifically to "intercourse" in their theoretical work on real abstraction and world systems.
Meeting Materials
EpistemontologyIntroduction.pdf
BeingTimeBiosPreface.pdf
philosophy
First Musings on Organizational Analysis
30 January 2023
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.
Meeting Materials
Organizational Analysis.pdf
Presentation on the text "O Trampo da Treta" (part 2)
23 January 2023
The group analyzes "O Trampo da Treta" through the lens of social movement dynamics, exploring the distinction between external defeats imposed by enemies versus internal failures that undermine movements from within. The discussion examines how defeat produces melancholy and impotence toward the external world, while failure generates internal splits and blame within organizations, both leading to cynical responses of either preservation or purification. Drawing on Marx's concept of the proletariat's "double freedom," the presenter connects these movement dynamics to broader questions about the autonomous condition of workers caught between formal labor markets and dispossession. The session concludes by situating these theoretical insights within the group's own experiences of movement decline and the development of militant investigation as a response to defeat.
Meeting Materials
The hustle of struggle (for sharing).pdf
politics
Presentation on the text "O Trampo da Treta" (part 1)
16 January 2023
Presentation and discussion of the text "The hustle of the struggle", written by members of STP
politics
First meeting of 2023
09 January 2023
General discussion and preparation for the year!
Last meeting of 2022
12 December 2022
Meeting to discuss plans for 2023
Plans for 2023
21 November 2022
Closed meeting to discuss our plans for 2023.
Meeting Materials
STP Diagram.jpg
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.
Meeting Materials
Spivak and Kent - 2012 - Ologs A Categorical Framework for Knowledge Repre.pdf
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"
Meeting Materials
Amidst the Debris-FINAL-Watermarked pages 167-195.pdf
"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
Meeting Materials
The covid-19 “early treatment” ecosystem in Brazil (1).pdf
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.
Meeting Materials
Working through political organization_ current results of the Subset of Theoretical Practice (2021-2022) (RE-FORMATTED 01 09 2022)_Redact.pdf
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.
Meeting Materials
the-theory-of-topos-theoretic-bridges-a-conceptual-introduction_en.pdf
Lenin_ A Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks.pdf
Encontro de apresentação de pesquisas brasileiras no STP 1
13 September 2022
Brazilian researchers present their work to the STP, with discussions centered on the complex relationship between individual and collective perspectives within political organizations. One speaker examines how organizations function as political experiments that act upon social forms, drawing on Sérgio Ferro's work on art and free labor and Robert Lynch's account of Maoist organizing in factories to explore how political practices can transform understanding without reducing participants to cynicism. The conversation incorporates Platonic concepts of participation and the Socratic method, discussing how the abdication of individual certainty can lead to greater cosmic order and how political engagement involves navigating between social transmission of existing conditions versus transformative political action. The researchers explore pedagogical questions about how political consciousness develops through collective interaction while maintaining the tension between individual finitude and broader organizational goals.
On Memory Evolutive Systems (part 3)
12 September 2022
The discussion examines Memory Evolutive Systems (MES) theory in its third installment, focusing on three key concepts that distinguish MES from second-order cybernetics: the multiplicity principle, landscape theory, and admissible procedures. Participants explore how the multiplicity principle—where systems lack singular perspectives as each co-regulator maintains its own viewpoint—relates to phenomenology and creates productive gaps between different system landscapes. The conversation draws connections between MES and cybernetic concepts like Ashby's law of requisite variety, with speakers referencing thinkers including Graham Priest's paraconsistent logic, Karatani and Sichita's ecological systems theory, and dialectical approaches from Hegelian and Marxist traditions. The group emphasizes MES's qualitative approach to complexity over cybernetics' quantitative methods, particularly regarding how procedural memory enables the development and complexification of action spaces.
Meeting Materials
STP - MES.pdf
On Memory Evolutive Systems (part 2)
05 September 2022
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines Memory Evolutive Systems through a categorical lens, building on Robert Rosen's distinction between mechanistic and living systems to explore how formalism can capture teleological aspects. The discussion centers on categorical concepts like patterns, cones, and colimits, using examples such as train stations to illustrate how structural relationships emerge from graph-theoretic analysis. Participants analyze the Multiplicity Principle, which posits that the same object can participate in multiple patterns simultaneously—illustrated through examples of legal texts with different interpretations and workplace dynamics operating on both personal and hierarchical levels. The conversation concludes with an examination of co-regulators as systems that decode information from receptors and memory to form landscapes, make procedural decisions, and encode results back into memory through learning cycles.
Meeting Materials
STP - MES.pdf
On Memory Evolutive Systems (part 1)
29 August 2022
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines memory evolutive systems through a mathematical framework developed by an unnamed mathematician, focusing on how formal tools can capture structural similarities between biological, social, and economic systems beyond mere metaphor. The discussion centers on the concept of "patterns," which consist of sketches (directed graphs) and implementations (graphs projected into specific categories), with participants exploring how these abstract structures can be instantiated in concrete situations like factory workflows or urban transportation networks. The group analyzes the formal concept of "cones" - nodes that can connect to all objects within a pattern implementation - and examines how multiple cones create "operating fields" that abstract away from underlying patterns to focus on higher-level interactions. The presentation builds toward understanding how simple links between system components can compose into complex, emergent phenomena that cannot be reduced to their underlying clusters, providing a mathematical basis for analyzing emergence in complex systems.
Meeting Materials
STP - MES.pdf
(Studies in Multidisciplinarity) A C Ehresmann, J.P. Vanbremeersch - Memory Evolutive Systems_ Hierarchy, Emergence, Cognition-Elsevier, Academic Press (2007).pdf
Readings for Memory Evolutive Systems.pdf
ehresmann2006.pdf
Discussion with Rodrigo Nunes about "Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization"
22 August 2022
A conversation with Rodrigo about his book, continuing our ongoing engagement with his work.
Meeting Materials
Questions about NVNH.pdf
Open Discussion: Real Abstraction and the Communist Hypothesis
15 August 2022
The discussion centers on STP's formulation of the "communist hypothesis" as the claim that organizational space (org) is larger than the existing social world (k), provable only through concrete political practice. Members debate whether this hypothesis should be understood as deferring to future practice versus representing a theoretical interpretation where descriptive frameworks exceed capitalism's own self-description. The conversation examines tensions between programmatic approaches (associated with Leninism) and communization theory (linked to post-1968 currents advocating immediate self-abolition rather than liberation of work), questioning how practice can provide answers without theoretical models and exploring real abstraction's role in conceptualizing expanded organizational possibilities beyond capitalist constraints.
Duration: 2h 39m
On questions of nationalism
08 August 2022
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines the complex relationships between populism, nationalism, democracy, and state power, drawing on Eric Hobsbawm's analysis of how revolutionary, democratic, and nationalist concepts merged during the "age of revolutions." The discussion explores how populist movements seek to convert popular power into sovereign power by claiming to represent the nation, often positioning themselves against existing state structures that appear as foreign establishments serving enemy interests. Key theoretical frameworks include Benedict Anderson's concept of nations as "imagined communities" and analyses of how fascism emerged as a corrupted form of national socialism that attempted to transcend both capitalism and the state through nationalist appeals. The conversation also incorporates insights from Ernst Bloch on Marxism's failure to counter Nazi mobilization and psychoanalytic perspectives on the inside/outside dynamics that structure national identity, emphasizing how nations are constructed atop existing state and capital structures rather than emerging from organic communities.
Duration: 2h 14m
Open meeting on case-study frameworks
01 August 2022
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores a "Trinitarian organizational framework" for analyzing case-study methodologies, examining the blind spots and productive elements across psychoanalytical discourse (from Freud to Lacan), ethnographic practices, and political militant analysis. The discussion applies this framework to Marx's works, categorizing texts like *The Eighteenth Brumaire*, *The Communist Manifesto*, and *Capital* according to their approaches to composition, intelligibility, and transmission, while drawing on insights from Renzo's earlier presentation on political economy of social struggles. Participants debate the transmission problem of communist practice, referencing Lenin and Maoist organizational principles, and consider how psychoanalysis struggles with questions of suffering, personal experience, and universal laws of the subject. The group emphasizes developing impersonal frameworks and methods to institutionalize analytical work and avoid the pitfalls of subjective critique in organizational analysis.
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
Meeting Materials
Rodrigo Nunes STP Slides.pdf
Discussion with Marcelo Hoffman about "Militant Acts"
18 July 2022
The group invites Marcelo Hoffman to present his book "Militant Acts: The Role of Investigations in Radical Political Struggles"
Meeting Materials
(SUNY series in New Political Science) Marcelo Hoffman - Militant Acts_ The Role of Investigations in Radical Political Struggles-State University of New York Press (201.pdf
J. A. Giannotti on the operational scheme
11 July 2022
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
Meeting Materials
GIANNOTTI, J. A. Trabalho e Reflexão (1984).pdf
politics
Giannotti on the operational scheme
11 July 2022
Presentation of Giannotti's approach 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"). This connects to the broader issue of the role of language in the constitution of world transcendentals, and possible connections with value form theory.
Meeting Materials
GIANNOTTI, J. A. Trabalho e Reflexão (1984).pdf
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.
Meeting Materials
How does class matter (slides of presentation).pdf
Two logics of collective action.pdf
Structural Domination in the Labor Market.pdf
Why_Does_Class_Matter.pdf
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.).
Meeting Materials
internal-language-2.pdf
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10258.pdf
mathematics
Thinking Through Political Organization: Militant Practice and Theory from the Organizational Point of View
12 May 2022
Event at the New School of Social Research, where we presented a summary of our research project, with comments by Bruno Bosteels.
Meeting Materials
Thinking Through Political Organization (Finall).pdf
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.
Meeting Materials
Elements for a Logic of Struggles_compressed.pdf
Open discussion about new publication
02 May 2022
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.
Meeting Materials
Elements for a Logic of Struggles_compressed.pdf
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.
Meeting Materials
internal-language.pdf
Otani - Capital and Surplus-value.pdf
John L Bell - NOTES ON TOPOSES AND LOCAL SET THEORIES.pdf
Otani - Reproduction of Capital.pdf
mathematics
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".
Meeting Materials
STP Extended Mind 28 03 2022.pdf
Shimojima and Barwise - surrogate reasoning.pdf
Socially Extended Mind reading package.pdf
Shimojima - On the Efficacy of Representation.pdf
Five theses of the STP
21 March 2022
In this meeting we will discuss the last steps in our collective research and try to identify common theses and threads of enquiry.
Meeting Materials
Five theses.pdf
the institutional bonds of philosophical activity
14 March 2022
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.
Meeting Materials
the institutional bonds of philosophy.pdf
Meeting with the Extimate collective
21 February 2022
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
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses logistical plans for expanding their group in 2022, focusing primarily on migrating from WhatsApp to Zulip for better organization as membership grows to 15-20 people. Members debate implementing a requirement for newcomers to present their research to the group, with discussions around whether these presentations should be private (hosted on Zulip) rather than public YouTube videos, and whether existing members should also participate in this format. The conversation touches on creating both brief written introductions as "calling cards" and more substantial research presentations to help connect different members' work, while maintaining some exclusivity around access to the group's Zulip workspace. The meeting concludes with jokes about creating clickbait-style academic content, referencing fake magazine covers that parody revolutionary texts.
General Meeting about Further Steps
06 December 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses strategies for expanding their research group while addressing barriers to participation and inclusion. Members debate the challenges of bridging different academic audiences - particularly those familiar with category theory versus those versed in commodity logic and critical theory - noting that potential collaborators from applied category theory and the journal Endnotes have expressed enthusiasm about joining. The conversation centers on structural problems with their current informal approach, with participants acknowledging that their all-male composition reflects how unstructured "open" environments can inadvertently exclude people who lack the confidence to navigate specialized academic discourse. They propose more formalized presentation formats and collaborative projects as ways to create meaningful entry points for new members, moving beyond passive participation toward active engagement through shared research tasks.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 30m
Building the text for ŠUM
08 November 2021
STP members work on developing a theoretical text for ŠUM using a central diagram to map different "social logics" (commodity, state, and communitarian relations), with the project organized around three core concepts: "seeing" (shifting perspectives to understand how objects within each logic view each other rather than how external subjects view them), "slicing" (analyzing how infinite worlds can be decomposed and recomposed in non-trivial ways), and "scaling" (determining minimum admissible resolutions in different contexts). The discussion explores how to frame politics as experimental intervention rather than science, where experiments involve constructing objects that can "see" within specific economic or political worlds to enable meaningful intervention. Members debate whether to ground the framework in foundational metaphysical commitments or to start from operational principles, with some arguing that the three core concepts already provide sufficient basis for understanding political experimentation without requiring deeper philosophical justification.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 7m
Further Planning for ŠUM (plus TV guide)
01 November 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses planning for their collaborative ŠUM project, focusing on developing a theory of "objective phenomenology" that examines different modes of social organization and their corresponding forms of fetishism. The members explore how commodity fetishism in capitalism (mode c) forces everything into the position of objects, power fetishism in state formations (mode b) treats everything as subjects with juridical status, and a third form of fetishism in reciprocal gift economies (mode a) reduces all relations to personal connections. Drawing on thinkers like Marilyn Strathern and concepts from Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism, they argue that each mode has both an internal logic and an external fetishistic appearance that obscures how the system actually operates. The discussion connects these theoretical frameworks to contemporary political phenomena like Trumpism and conspiracy theories, which they analyze as mystical manifestations of mode a fetishism where everything appears interconnected through personal relations.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 1h 33m
Planning for ŠUM
25 October 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice discusses their collaborative contribution to ŠUM, focusing on developing a theoretical framework that combines Karatani's three modes of exchange (reciprocity, redistribution, and commodity exchange) with mathematical concepts from category theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The speakers work through diagrams that move beyond Karatani's Borromean knot metaphor to create a more precise logical structure, drawing on the work of mathematician Renegitat to model the interlocking relationships between capital, nation, and state. They explore how this framework can ground a communist politics that recognizes different anti-capitalist struggles as part of a broader transformative project, with references to the Communist Manifesto and discussions of revolutionary practice. The conversation reveals tensions about whether their diagrammatic approach assumes a particular perspective (such as capital's standpoint) and how to represent multiple viewpoints within their theoretical model.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 1h 37m
The generic in Badiou's theory of bodies
18 October 2021
Reza examines Badiou's complex mathematical framework for naming generic filters, working through the technical apparatus of name hierarchies where names at each rank are constructed from names at lower ranks paired with conditions. The presentation analyzes how referential values connect names to the indiscernible generic filter g, demonstrating that inhabitants of a situation can conceptually grasp their situation as part of a larger universe through this naming schema. The discussion reveals how the indiscernible functions as an "ontological schema of an artificial operator" that serves as the "intraontological trace of the foreclosed event," positioning the generic as a bridge between the situation and its broader mathematical universe. Through canonical names and referential values, Badiou's system shows how situations can be extended beyond their original bounds while maintaining their internal coherence.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 12m
Sheaves, Forcing and Other Consequences of an Inaccessibly Infinite World
04 October 2021
The discussion explores connections between topology and phenomenology, examining how topological concepts like open sets provide new ways to understand classical philosophical problems such as the Ship of Theseus paradox. The speakers argue that topology offers a context-dependent approach where the structure of which parts count in a situation determines the logic of the entire situation, contrasting an "ontologist" perspective (viewing from outside) with an "inhabitant" perspective (viewing from within). Drawing on Aristotle's Physics, Badiou's atomic logic, and mathematical concepts including Heyting algebras, forcing, and sheaves, they demonstrate how both topological spaces and logical propositions share lattice structures that allow shifts between geometric and logical reasoning. The conversation culminates in examining how topology splits open sets from measure in ways analogous to how set theory separates typically unified mathematical concepts, suggesting that these counterintuitive separations become particularly significant when dealing with infinite structures.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 9m
The technique of forcing in Being and Event
27 September 2021
Speaker_1 examines Badiou's use of the mathematical technique of forcing from set theory to address fundamental ontological questions about being. The discussion centers on how forcing, developed by mathematicians like Gödel and Cohen to resolve questions about cardinal numbers and the continuum hypothesis, allows Badiou to shift philosophical focus from qualitative questions of "what is being" (dominant from Aristotle through Heidegger) to quantitative approaches that can measure being mathematically. The speakers work through technical details of constructible universes, exploring how the difference between ω₀ (omega naught) and its power set relates to what Badiou sees as a core enigma in ontology, with particular attention to the operations of definability and the distinction between successor and limit ordinals. The conversation reveals tensions around whether mathematical operations like forcing require an "outside" perspective to observe the construction of new universes and truth conditions.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 48m
On use and exchange maps in the Primer on Political Phenomenology
13 September 2021
The discussion centers on methodological concerns regarding the formal definition of commodities through use and exchange sets in the Primer on Political Phenomenology. Participants debate whether commodities should be initially defined by their "non-MTUs and exchange sets" or whether this represents a problematic "original sin" that treats as preliminary what should be a conclusion. The group explores the relationship between use sets and exchange sets through category theory, discussing isomorphisms, functors, and the distinction between constructive exchange operations versus transcendental use possibilities. Drawing on Marx's analysis of commodity metamorphosis, they argue that the apparent movement in markets fundamentally stems from consumption rather than mere exchange, questioning whether their formal approach properly captures this dynamic.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 30m
Reading 'Genericity as Information'
30 August 2021
The discussion centers on Robert Rosen's concept of genericity and its implications for understanding the relationship between mathematics, biology, and physics. Participants examine Rosen's critique of mechanistic approaches to science, exploring his argument that biological systems cannot be fully reduced to physical states and require functional rather than structural analysis. The conversation touches on connections between genericity and mathematical concepts like dense sets, as well as Rosen's broader philosophical challenge to the objective/subjective divide in scientific practice. Speakers debate Rosen's claim that there is an "ineluctable semantic component to objectivity" and his positioning of genericity as both an inferential principle and a way to understand semantic information without absolute separation between observer and observed system.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 30m
Meeting Materials
Robert Rosen - Essays on Life Itself (1999).pdf
Treating the Commons
16 August 2021
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.
Meeting Materials
Ostrom.pdf
Mapping out a possible research direction, part 2
09 August 2021
STP members explore a theoretical framework they call "objective phenomenology" that reconceptualizes how different social positions enable perception of capitalist relations, arguing against traditional notions of commodity fetishism by claiming that certain objects like commodities actually provide the most intelligible perspective on social structures. The discussion centers on their collaborative text "Primer on Political Phenomenology" which draws on Badiou's work to develop what they argue is a more comprehensive approach than Marx's analysis, capable of reconstructing concepts of novelty, strategy, and political commons. The group examines how different social positions (commodity, sovereign, citizen, family) each carry epistemic costs and afford distinct ways of sensing the world, with particular attention to how political organization might create new forms of perception beyond those available through market relations. Their research direction aims to theorize organization as experimental processes that combine composition, information, and interaction to make previously imperceptible differences politically relevant, synthesizing what they term capitalist, state, and community "transcendentals."
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 27m
Meeting Materials
Mapping out a possible research direction.pdf
Mapping out a possible research direction, part 1
19 July 2021
The discussion centers on mapping three potential research directions for expanding the Society for Theoretical Practice's theoretical framework, with particular focus on moving beyond their previous work on political phenomenology and Marx's Capital. Speaker_0 outlines how their current approach describes capitalist social formations through "objective phenomenology" - analyzing the social world from the standpoint of specific objects like money, capital, and competition rather than from universal theories. The group explores questions of how material composition constrains what differences matter to organizational systems, drawing on concepts from Badiou's "Logics of Worlds" and examining multilayered transcendental logics that inform objects in capitalist social formations. The conversation concludes with theoretical questions about experimental processes of composition and recomposition, with Speaker_2 offering an analogy about how an agent's brain composition determines their sensory capacities.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 1h 51m
Meeting Materials
Mapping out a possible research direction.pdf
Open research questions
05 July 2021
The discussion centers on distinguishing between two different mechanisms for how wholes can be more than the sum of their parts: synergistic emergence (where cooperation creates genuine surplus, as in social labor producing surplus value) versus what they call "veiling" (where properties appear different at different scales of resolution, like color emerging from microscopic light interactions). The participants debate whether Badiou's concept of "world" functions as an epistemological category representing arbitrary sets of chosen resolutions, with one speaker arguing instead that it should be understood phenomenologically—as the interface between systems where one system can sense or interact with another, drawing on cybernetic theory and distinguishing between knowing about large-scale phenomena like capitalism versus actually sensing them. The conversation explores how this phenomenological approach to worlds might bridge methodological concerns about finding common parts across systems with questions about what it means experientially to look for these commonalities.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 20m
Introduction to Behavioral Mereology
14 June 2021
Here we discuss the work of Fong, Jaz-Myers and Spivak on determining parts and wholes using entirely constraint-based and functorial language.
Meeting Materials
behavioral-mereology.pdf
Meeting References
Behavioral Mereology: A Modal Logic for Passing Constraints
Discussion on politics and optics
31 May 2021
The group explores how different social standpoints—particularly commodity forms and money—provide superior perspectives for understanding social reality compared to individual experience, drawing on theories of fetishism and capitalism as totality. Speaker_0 presents a "theory of social measure" that examines how various entities (commodities, the state, communities) "see" the world differently, using perception rather than knowledge as the organizing metaphor and referencing collaborative work on a "primer" with Dennis. The discussion incorporates psychoanalytic concepts, particularly Freud's notion of transference as a "mass of two" that enables new forms of social intervention, while also engaging with critiques of political movements that reduce politics to representation and discourse. Technical discussions of cybernetics, machine learning, and mathematical concepts like forcing and open games appear to inform the group's broader theoretical framework about social intelligibility and collective organization.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 29m
A rough account of what we've been up to, for the benefit of others
17 May 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice outlines an ambitious research project aimed at overcoming the conceptual schism between political economy and political organization that currently fragments emancipatory political thinking. The primary speaker argues that existing frameworks either rely on overly abstract philosophical generalizations that float "outside of the world" or fail to provide adequate tools for connecting structural analysis of capitalism with concrete organizational strategies. The group advocates for a theoretical approach grounded in experimental practice rather than ideological abstraction, critiquing both current Marxist political economy and existing organizational frameworks as insufficient for contemporary political challenges. Through detailed diagrams and extensive discussion, they explore how their framework might address practical questions about scale, state interaction, and the tension between personal and impersonal forms of domination and emancipation.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 20m
Meeting Materials
Overview 17 05 2021.pdf
Discussion on method, language and ludics
10 May 2021
The discussion centers on Reza Negarestani's approach to intelligence and language, examining his attempt to provide transcendental conditions for self-developing intelligence through what participants call "ludic linear logic." Speakers debate whether Negarestani's philosophical framework, which draws on thinkers like Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Sellars, successfully avoids human-centric assumptions or inadvertently elevates specifically human capacities as universal standards of intelligence. The conversation explores key distinctions between pattern-governed and rule-following behavior, causes versus reasons, and the relationship between formalism and dialectics, with participants questioning how these concepts relate to broader questions of sociality and material organization. One speaker critiques Negarestani for turning "specific human exception into a transcendental argument" while others defend his project as offering genuine insights into the emergence of conceptual behavior and the "space of reasons."
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 57m
Game semantics, ludics and a little bit of everything
03 May 2021
The speaker explores how game semantics, dialogical logic, and ludics can reconcile Sellarsian insights about the "game of giving and asking for reasons" with computational approaches to mind and meaning. Drawing primarily on Jean-Yves Girard's work, they argue that normative structures of thought emerge not from transcendental psychology but from the logical structure of language itself, presenting ludics as a synthesis of linear logic and game semantics that addresses what Girard calls the "blind spot" of traditional logic. The discussion traces developments from linear logic and sequent calculus through game semantics, emphasizing how these frameworks provide a processual understanding of computational structure that arises from pragmatic instantiation rather than internal mental architecture. The speaker positions this work as connected to previous STP discussions on inferentialism while offering a unified picture of how logical operations can be understood through interactive, game-theoretic moves rather than static truth preservation.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 4m
Meeting Materials
GAME_SEMANTICS_LUDICS_ETC.pdf
Logic, Logistics, States and almost a bunch of case studies
26 April 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines the state beyond traditional critiques by developing a theoretical framework that maps three levels of spatial organization through which states operate. Drawing primarily on Lefebvre's "Space and the State" (1977) and incorporating insights from Badiou's analysis of the Battle of Gaugamela in "Logics of Worlds," the discussion identifies how states manage national territory, social spaces (including ideological apparatuses like schools), and mental space (the internal representations citizens have of state functioning). The group explores how state capitalism creates constant tensions between competing capital demands, relations of production, and relations of domination, with particular attention to how state homogenization processes paradoxically generate spaces of fragmentation and catastrophe. The theoretical approach attempts to move beyond simple state critique toward understanding possibilities for experimentation within state-organized spatial relations.
Duration: 3h 6m
Meeting Materials
Logistics.pdf
Scale relativity in the work of Mark Wilson
19 April 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines Mark Wilson's approach to scale relativity through his investigation of applied mathematical work, particularly as presented in "Wandering Significance." The discussion focuses on Wilson's critique of unrestricted semantic holism and his argument that meaning emerges through dynamic, multi-directional processes rather than simple top-down or bottom-up approaches. Participants explore Wilson's use of musical metaphors (like "pedal register compressions") to describe reasoning strategies and connect his work to broader philosophical traditions, including Wittgensteinian language games, inferentialism, and the work of Brazilian philosopher Gianotti who bridged Marxism and Wittgensteinian philosophy of language. The seminar emphasizes how Wilson's analysis of mathematical modeling techniques illuminates natural language philosophy and offers insights for situated approaches to philosophy of mind.
Duration: 2h 53m
Scale spacetime: Laurent Nottale's theory of scale relativity
12 April 2021
The STP examines Laurent Nottale's scale relativity theory, exploring how the principle of relativity functions not merely as a specific physical theory but as a fundamental philosophical method for generating scientific theories. Participants debate three different approaches to understanding "resolutions" - conceptualized as endofunctors, transcendental filters, and categorical structures - while grappling with how scale changes can constitute entirely different worlds rather than simply different perspectives on the same world. The discussion connects Nottale's framework to broader questions about transcendental structures, with speakers arguing that genuine scale changes in resolution can lead to material syntheses that produce fundamentally different physical realities, as exemplified by the distinction between classical mechanical and quantum worlds. The conversation ultimately positions the principle of relativity as potentially foundational to all scientific inquiry, since without it, the very notion of natural laws becomes incoherent.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 18m
Meeting Materials
Laurent Nottale and Scale Relativity Theory.pdf
The compositional point of view: labour time, partial worker, cooperation, part 2
05 April 2021
The discussion explores how category theory and formal mathematical structures can model capitalist reproduction cycles, with participants examining how individual relations gain meaning only through their compositional organization with other relations. Speakers analyze Marx's concept of capital reproduction using categorical diagrams, arguing that single capital cannot exist in isolation since expanded reproduction requires multiple capitals to provide the increased commodities needed for growth. The conversation references Badiou's "universal exposition" and connects category theory's emphasis on morphisms and compositional logic to understanding labor as partial components within larger production processes rather than discrete units. Throughout, the group demonstrates how mathematical formalism necessarily reveals structural dependencies in capitalist systems, moving from local to systemic perspectives through the logic of relational composition itself.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 19m
Meeting Materials
Labour time, Partial Workers and Cooperation.pdf
The compositional point of view - Labour time, Partial Worker, Cooperation, part 1
29 March 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores what they term the "compositional point of view" as a formal approach to understanding capitalist production, drawing on category theory and Marx's analysis of commodities. Speakers develop a mathematical framework treating commodities as composed of other commodities through operations that preserve their commodity structure, using concepts like monads and endofunctors to model how capital imposes particular "resolutions" on productive processes. The discussion examines labor power as a special type of productive commodity within this compositional structure, connecting abstract labor to value preservation through what they call "transcendental" logics of exchange. The presentation builds on previous STP readings of thinkers like Karatani and aims to bridge formal categorical methods with organizational and political analysis of capitalist valorization.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 47m
Meeting Materials
Labour time, Partial Workers and Cooperation.pdf
On algorithmic socialism
22 March 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines Stefan Heidenreich's proposal for algorithmic socialism, which envisions replacing money-based economies with algorithmically-supported distribution systems that eliminate value storage and accumulation. Heidenreich argues that current algorithmic price-setting mechanisms (like those used in airline booking) already demonstrate the technological foundation for a "non-money economy" that could achieve more equal distribution by leveraging data rather than traditional market information. The discussion critically evaluates several problematic assumptions in this vision, including the conflation of optimization techniques with price determination and the failure to address how training datasets inevitably encode existing structural inequalities. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow," participants note research showing that even simple algorithms can outperform expert human judgment, while questioning whether algorithmic systems can meaningfully account for the distortions present in real-world data used to train them.
Duration: 2h 28m
Previous research and next steps
15 March 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice conducts a comprehensive review of their year-long research trajectory, examining connections between diverse presentations spanning topics from Dennis's work on open games and game semantics to readings of Bogdanov, discussions of Evans's "space of reasons" text, and explorations of Nicaristani's "labor of being human." Members debate whether their expanding network of research—which they metaphorically describe as resembling "Cthulhu, the monster" with spreading tentacles—should remain centered on their original manifesto's focus on political phenomenology or continue developing multiple interconnected lines of inquiry. The discussion reveals ongoing work on formalizing Marx's concept of organic composition of capital while drawing methodological frameworks from thinkers like Bogdanov, Karatani, and Marx to develop what they describe as a "general theory of worlds" that moves from abstract social formations to specific analyses of capitalism. Participants express concern about the growing complexity and specialization of their research while seeking ways to synthesize their various theoretical threads and establish clearer priorities for future work.
Duration: 2h 56m
Organization, Force and Conjuncture
08 March 2021
The STP discusses questions of organization, imperialism, and geopolitics through an engagement with Lenin, Karatani, and contemporary technological systems. The primary speaker draws connections between Lenin's organizational principles from "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," Karatani's analysis of exchange modes and state forms, and modern internet infrastructure as potential models for non-hierarchical coordination. They critique reductionist approaches that explain all political phenomena through capitalism alone, instead proposing Karatani's multi-modal framework to understand the complex relationships between kinship, state, nation, and capital across different historical periods. The discussion includes analysis of Wikipedia's knowledge organization, Google's PageRank algorithm, and attempts to theorize alternative forms of the "worker state" as logistical rather than despotic systems.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 56m
Essays in Tektology: Basic Organizational Mechanisms
01 March 2021
The STP group examines Alexander Bogdanov's tektology, focusing on his fundamental claim that all human activity is organizational activity and that organizational problems constitute the only real problems facing humanity. The discussion centers on Bogdanov's dialectical relationship between nature and labor, where nature is defined negatively as "that which resists labor," yet human organization both mimics natural structures and exists in parallel with natural organizational forms. Participants analyze Bogdanov's critique of the supposed distinction between spontaneous natural action and conscious human planning—a debate central to early 20th century Marxist thought, particularly the Lenin-Luxemburg controversy over spontaneity versus organization. The group explores Bogdanov's argument that complete disorganization equals non-being, since resistance and connection are prerequisites for existence, leading to his perspective-dependent concept of organization where any complex system defines everything external to it as spontaneous resistance.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 50m
On the equality of all minds, part 2
22 February 2021
The STP examines Reza Negarestani's concept of "equality of all minds" from "Intelligence and Spirit," exploring how his framework connects philosophical commitment to humanity with the artificialization of intelligence in a deontic sense. The discussion pivots to engage with Gabriel Tupinambá's Marxist critique, analyzing how Marx's account of commodity form reveals social forms that "think" independently of individual thinking subjects—a "form of thought that is distinct from thought." The conversation draws connections between Negarestani's Pittsburghian-Hegelian interpretation, Marx's analysis of value as inherently relational and social, and questions about how abstraction emerges from social practice rather than individual cognition. Speakers debate the relationship between consciousness, thinking, and language, particularly focusing on how social forms like the commodity form constitute subjects rather than being constituted by them.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 52m
On the equality of all minds, part 1
15 February 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores the relationship between capitalism and rationality through a synthesis of Marx, Wittgenstein, and the Pittsburgh school philosophers like Sellars and Brandom. The speaker argues that capitalism creates a contradictory "space of reasons" where the very normative structure that should enable freedom actually denies it, with capital functioning as an "automatic subject" that mocks Hegelian notions of genuine subjectivity. The discussion centers on how reasoning operates simultaneously within causal and normative spaces, critiquing traditional foundationalist approaches while examining how social practices under capitalism generate abstract normative compulsions. A participant raises the classic Marxist critique of Kantian freedom, pointing to the wage contract as an example of the "freedom to sell your freedom," illustrating the fundamental contradiction between formal rational commitment and material coercion.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 50m
A Primer on Political Phenomenology, part 3
01 February 2021
The study group continues their work on what they call "objective phenomenology" as applied to Marx's theory of capital, focusing particularly on "the greater logic of capitalist accumulation." The discussion centers on how labor only becomes conceptually visible and significant within the capitalist system itself—arguing that while Marx introduces labor in Capital's first chapter, it only truly "makes a difference" from the perspective of capital rather than simple commodity exchange. The group employs what they term "atomic logic" as a general framework to analyze how different forms of social organization (money, money capital, socially necessary labor time) develop the capacity to "sense new differences," with particular attention to the qualitative distinction between money commodities and other commodities in their relationship to totality. They draw on concepts from thinkers like Badiou while developing their formal approach to understanding how economic relations create new predicates and measurement criteria that emerge from comparison itself rather than being fixed in advance.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 7m
Meeting Materials
Primer_on_Phenomenological_Political_Economy (07 04 2021).pdf
A Primer on Political Phenomenology, part 2
25 January 2021
The discussion centers on developing a method called "objective phenomenology" by inverting the traditional reading of Marx's Capital, arguing that the fetishistic appearance of commodities represents the subjective perspective while Marx's structural analysis in sections 1-3 provides an objective phenomenological method. The speakers explore how this approach, drawing connections to Badiou's methodology, focuses on operations that make differences within a given space (like the commodity world) rather than differences that matter to human subjects. They examine how concepts like abstract labor can only be introduced once an "observing object" (such as the money form) exists within the system that can sense or register those distinctions, suggesting that theoretical constructs must be grounded in immanent operations rather than external analytical impositions.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 40m
Meeting Materials
Primer_on_Phenomenological_Political_Economy (07 04 2021).pdf
A Primer on Political Phenomenology, part 1
18 January 2021
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines the development of an "objective phenomenology" that reframes Marx's theory of commodity fetishism by adopting the perspective internal to commodities themselves rather than focusing on individual subjects who are deceived by appearances. The speakers discuss their attempt to formalize capitalist political economy through category theory and mathematical structures, arguing that to understand capitalism one must describe how commodities appear to one another rather than how they appear to human subjects. They reference thinkers including Marx, Badiou, and someone named Dennis, while working through technical definitions of commodity spaces, exchange relations, and production processes. The discussion reveals tensions between their formal theoretical approach and traditional Marxist critiques, as they seek to develop what they call a "theory in the element of fetishism" that treats fetishistic appearances as a necessary analytical perspective rather than an obstacle to knowledge.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 48m
Meeting Materials
Primer_on_Phenomenological_Political_Economy (07 04 2021).pdf
Essays in Tektology - Basic Concepts and Methods
16 December 2020
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores Alexander Bogdanov's tektology as an organizational science, examining how it challenges traditional approaches to social theory and economic coordination. The discussion centers on the limitations of both centralized planning and market-based coordination, with participants arguing that money functions as a paradoxically "decentralized centralization" - spread everywhere yet still constituting a single coordinating mechanism. They develop the concept of "ultrafilters" as an alternative model for social organization that would allow different parts of society to connect without requiring a single overarching system or totality. The conversation traces a historical trajectory from classical social theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau, who offered unified theories of responsibility and complexity, through the modern split between socialist responsibility and liberal complexity, toward Bogdanov's practical logic that transcends formal logical constraints.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 24m
Tektologic Spaces - Ideas for Organizational Platform
07 December 2020
The Society for Theoretical Practice explores the concept of "tektologic spaces" as principles for designing organizational platforms, drawing from a Soviet theorist who proposed finding general organizational principles across physics, economics, and social networks under the heading of "tektology." The discussion contrasts capitalist organizational forms (assembly lines, government queues, newsfeeds) that extract data while providing poor visibility to participants, with alternative organizational principles including free association, perspectivism, and "objective phenomenology" inspired by Badiou. Participants debate whether perspectivism—the idea that system views depend on one's position within it—serves security purposes by preventing centralized control, while examining how organizational structures intrinsically shape what can be seen and accomplished within a given space. The conversation references the Xenofeminist Manifesto and touches on how platforms can formalize and legitimize events rather than merely represent external realities.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 2h 50m
Capital as a Space of Reasons
04 December 2020
The STP seminar examines Justin Evans' paper "Capital as a Space of Reasons," which attempts to bridge Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelianism (associated with philosophers like Sellars, Brandom, and McDowell) with Marxist economic analysis. The discussion centers on how Evans employs the concept of the "space of reasons" from Pittsburgh philosophy to analyze capital, while also exploring Sellars' critique of the "myth of the given" and its implications for foundationalist epistemology. Participants raise concerns about Evans' superficial treatment of Pittsburgh Hegelianism and question whether his approach adequately engages with the critical dimensions of both philosophical traditions. The seminar appears to use Evans' paper as a vehicle for introducing Pittsburgh philosophical concepts to the study group while maintaining skepticism about the paper's theoretical rigor.
www.theoreticalpractice.com
Duration: 3h 24m
Meeting Materials
Caron-Pedro Capital as space of reasons.pdf
Open Games, Sheaves and Prices
23 November 2020
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.
Meeting Materials
5fbc60c7b9daf1c119e4ad28_open-games-sheaves-prices.pdf
economics
Reading Essays in Tektology - What is Organizational Science?
16 November 2020
The group examines Bogdanov's Essays in Tektology and his conception of organizational science, exploring his distinction between the "labor point of view" (which defines nature as what resists labor) and the more developed "organizational point of view." Participants discuss how Bogdanov's background as a physician-turned-Marxist theorist influenced his systematic approach, noting his claim that World War I and the Soviet Revolution served as catalysts for developing organizational thinking. The conversation traces Bogdanov's argument about the historical shift from unified philosophical systems to specialized domains of knowledge, with participants debating his proposal that a communist perspective must synthesize both systematic understanding and specialized detail. References are made to Lacan, McKenzie Wark's work on Bogdanov, and connections to pre-Turing ideas about the relationship between laborers and machines in organizational contexts.
Duration: 3h 1m
Sketch of a Model for Thinking Political Organizations
10 November 2020
The speaker analyzes how capitalism's evolution from market to monopoly to contemporary forms has transformed social organization and political strategy. Drawing on Rosa Luxemburg's theory of dependency and referencing thinkers like Laclau, Jameson, and Mike Davis, they argue that capitalism now creates hybrid forms of sociality combining wage labor with informal economies, making traditional political organizing models obsolete. The discussion critiques both populist and autonomist approaches for assuming homogeneity among diverse forms of resistance, using examples ranging from Siberian mining communities to Moscow to illustrate how different groups experience capitalism incompatibly. The speaker concludes by proposing the need for new organizational models that don't assume unified social reality, connecting this to broader questions about the relationship between formal systems and political experimentation.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 3h 36m
Discussion of further steps
02 November 2020
The STP group explores organizational experiments and platform development, with participants discussing an automated platform concept that would formalize rules for collective study groups through digital infrastructure rather than human administration. The conversation examines how different organizational forms—from study circles to cooperative movements like the Venezuelan collective Secosia—might share common structural elements that could be programmed into such a platform. Participants reference various theoretical frameworks, including Lautman's work on mathematical structures, questions of aesthetic sensibility and temporal experience in music, and Marxist analysis of labor and surplus value. The discussion reveals tensions between maintaining organizational transparency versus privacy, and between formal rule-following systems and the heterogeneous nature of collaborative intellectual work.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 2h 22m
Badiou and Marx, part 2
20 October 2020
The group examines how Marx's concepts can be reorganized through Badiou's theoretical framework, specifically exploring the transition from transcendental logic to atomic logic and the connection between structure and novelty. Participants discuss Marx's notion of "objective phenomenology," particularly the idea that commodity value appears not to subjects but to other commodities within the economic system itself. The conversation centers on developing a multilayered transcendental model that maps different modes of exchange (family relations, commodity relations, etc.) as subsets of a world's transcendental structure, drawing parallels to multilayer network theory. The discussion involves technical questions about phenomenological identity, maximal values in exchange relations, and how parts and wholes are defined relationally rather than ontologically, with particular attention to how the "atom of money" functions to measure all commodities.
https://stp.ideaandideology.com/
Duration: 3h 19m
Meeting Materials
Badiou & Marx.pdf
Badiou and Marx, part 1
14 October 2020
The discussion explores theoretical connections between Alain Badiou's philosophy and Marx's critique of political economy, focusing on how both thinkers analyze specific "worlds" rather than abstract theoretical frameworks. Participants examine tensions within contemporary Marxism, particularly the debate over whether labor should be understood as ontologically grounded versus a category specific to capitalism, and consider how Badiou's "objective phenomenology" offers tools for addressing problems of political organization that structural approaches may miss. The conversation draws on Marx's analysis of commodity exchange and value in *Capital* as an example of phenomenological strategy, arguing that Marx moves from surface appearances to underlying structural relations in ways that parallel Badiou's method. Speakers also discuss how both thinkers prioritize understanding existing conditions (capitalism for Marx, specific social worlds for Badiou) as necessary groundwork for identifying genuine alternatives or "novelty."
https://stp.ideaandideology.com/
Duration: 2h 46m
Meeting Materials
Badiou & Marx.pdf
Space and Logic, part 2
12 October 2020
The discussion centers on the Yoneda Lemma and its applications for understanding mathematical objects through their morphisms rather than their internal structure. Speaker_1 explains how the lemma demonstrates that objects can be completely characterized by examining all maps going in and out of them, using representable functors and presheaves as probing tools for different types of spaces. The presentation covers concrete mathematical examples, including how mapping single points into sets reveals cardinality, and how mapping circles (S¹) into spaces captures topological information through fundamental groups and homotopy theory. The conversation touches on the Poincaré conjecture and explores both the power and limitations of this morphism-based approach to understanding spatial and logical structures.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 2h 36m
Discussion and revision of previous material
28 September 2020
The discussion centers on Eli Adams' doctoral thesis on compositionality and generative effects, particularly examining the concept of "veiling" as a mechanism that transforms complex structures into simpler ones while losing information in the process. Participants debate whether generative effects represent genuine emergence or are better understood as "effects without a cause" whose origins have been occluded through veiling processes, drawing on cohomology theory to formalize these relationships. The conversation weaves together Marx's analysis of value, surplus, and profit rates with Hayek's price theory, exploring how universal equivalence functions as what one speaker identifies with Badiou's "universally exposed relation." The group also engages with thermodynamic metaphors and Lacanian theory, questioning whether veils hide deeper structures (as in Hegelian thinking) or constitute the essence themselves, using magic tricks as an analogy for how apparent effects can emerge from concealed causal processes.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 3h 34m
Space and Logic, part 1
21 September 2020
The speaker explores fundamental connections between topology and logic through the lens of category theory and set theory, examining how spatial structures characterize logical predicates. Beginning with Russell's paradox and debates over axioms like the axiom of choice (which implies paradoxes like Banach-Tarski), the discussion traces how category theory emerged from foundational crises to suggest a "multitude of mathematical worlds" rather than one unified mathematics. The presentation covers the historical development of category theory from Eilenberg and Mac Lane through Lawvere's work on toposes, emphasizing key concepts like functors, natural transformations, and universal constructions as tools for understanding equivalences between different mathematical contexts. Central to the argument is the idea that category theory offers a "deontologization of concepts" where objects can be fully determined by their relations to other objects, connecting this relational approach to broader questions about space, logic, and mathematical foundations.
Duration: 2h 9m
Causal Powers, Scale and Consciousness - An introduction to IIT, part 2
14 September 2020
The discussion centers on Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as a framework for understanding consciousness, examining how perturbation and coherent network responses differentiate conscious from non-conscious systems. Speakers explore the theory's core principle that consciousness emerges from integrated information processing, using analogies like magnetic brain stimulation (TMS) and architectural acoustics to illustrate how complex systems respond to perturbations in ways that reveal their underlying structure. The conversation extends beyond neuroscience to speculative questions about whether economic systems might exhibit consciousness-like properties, while also engaging with philosophical concepts like the supervenience principle that links experiential differences to physical substrate changes. Critical challenges are raised regarding IIT's assumptions, including the temporal boundaries of conscious states, the reduction of brain activity to neuronal activation patterns, and tensions with traditional neuroscientific approaches that typically don't attribute consciousness to inactive brain states.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 3h 22m
Meeting Materials
Introduction to Integrated Information Theory 7_9_2020.pdf
Causal Powers, Scale and Consciousness - An introduction to IIT, part 1
07 September 2020
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by Giulio Tononi, as a leading candidate for understanding consciousness that differs from cognitive approaches like global workspace theory. The discussion explores clinical challenges in diagnosing consciousness in brain-injured patients and reviews experimental methods for identifying neural correlates of consciousness, including studies of cortical reactivity during wakefulness versus sleep states and dream research. The speaker critiques traditional neuroscientific approaches for their inability to explain why certain brain architectures (like the cortex) support consciousness while others (like the cerebellum) do not, despite similar complexity. IIT is presented as offering an alternative methodology that begins with the phenomenology of consciousness itself rather than starting with neural mechanisms, proposing an identity between causal power structures and subjective experience.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 3h 7m
Meeting Materials
Introduction to Integrated Information Theory 7_9_2020.pdf
The Logics of Historical Worlds
24 August 2020
The discussion examines the concept of "worlds" as distinct from universal totality, drawing on Badiou's framework of transcendental, atomic, and worldly logics to understand different forms of social organization including capitalism. Speaker_0 traces the philosophical trajectory from pre-modern notions of cosmos through Kant's critique of world as totality in the Critique of Pure Reason, arguing that post-Kantian thought splits between objective approaches (Kant to Hegel) that maintain world-concepts and subjective phenomenological traditions that center individual experience. The conversation engages with thinkers including Marx on world economy versus "world-economy" (citing historian Braudel's distinction), Uexküll's biological theory of animal environments, and develops what the speaker calls "objective phenomenology" - the idea that spaces can be more intelligible from perspectives other than individual standpoint. The framework aims to provide a materialist account of multiple worlds that avoids both cosmological totalization and purely subjective approaches, offering tools to analyze social formations without granting capitalism teleological necessity.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 3h 29m
Meeting Materials
What is a historical world.pdf
Compositionality and Generative Effects
17 August 2020
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.
Meeting Materials
eadam_PhDThesis.pdf
The transformation problem and the representation of capital
12 August 2020
The Society for Theoretical Practice examines Marx's transformation problem, focusing on how surplus value converts to profit and the role of fetishism in capitalist representation. Participants analyze the distinction between surplus rate (a "bottom-up concept" tied to labor exploitation) and profit rate (how surplus is redistributed among the capitalist class through competition), drawing analogies to thermodynamics where individual molecular behavior cannot be known but systemic averages can be calculated. The discussion explores how both workers and capitalists experience different forms of fetishism - while workers don't perceive the social relations connecting production units, capitalists remain blind to the totality and navigate only through local profit signals, ascribing supernatural characteristics to their own risk-taking abilities. The group reconceptualizes fetishism as a "scaling problem" and potential navigation technology, suggesting that Marx's critique of relations between people appearing as relations between things should be understood more precisely as relations between millions of people appearing as relations between two things.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 2h 33m
Outline of a Research Project
27 July 2020
The discussion centers on developing a unified research project that explores the relationship between political economy and political organization through a novel approach to phenomenology drawn from Badiou. The speakers examine how "synthetic perspectives" - viewpoints that transcend individual subjectivity - can both reveal previously invisible aspects of political economy and serve as foundations for organizational forms that possess epistemological value. They critique traditional Marxist approaches that treat economic and organizational tools as incommensurable, proposing instead a formal apparatus that maintains the distinction between knowledge (which structures the existing world) and truth (which can transform it) while using homogeneous methods. The conversation culminates in considering interventions as forms of knowing, where organizations function as experimental means of understanding complex social structures that exceed individual comprehension, similar to how price mechanisms compress social information into manageable forms.
https://www.theoreticalpractice.com/
Duration: 2h 35m