Just got the best kind of delivery in the mail. The Agamben is for the next meeting of my reading group. The Vaneigem unfortunately has to go to the library because I lost their copy, but I am hoping the Situationist anthology can pick up the slack.
Situationist International
Situationists on free time
A useful return to some older arguments about free time and leisure in this piece just posted on libcom. I particularly liked the suggestion that “when the revolutionary proletariat manifests itself as such, it will not be as a new audience for some new spectacle, but as people actively participating in every aspect of their lives.” Free time as active engagement with the world and with others. I wonder if the tension between free time and leisure could be fruitfully taken in new directions using Aristotle’s notion of schole. It is usually translated as “leisure,” but if we give it just a slight young-Marxist nudge it means something more like the serious effort we engage in to fulfill our species-being. I haven’t worked this out yet, but I am pretty sure there is something there, something that would speak quite effectively to Debord’s concerns about passivity, as well as Ranciere’s critique of Debord, not to mention Lefebvre’s engagement (or lack thereof) with the question of people becoming active…
Path to the Possible 