SPECTACLE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The Bulgaria Essays (2016) - Eduardo Subirats, Christopher Britt & Paul Fenn
Original Photographs by Anita Pantin

Authors  and Artist

  • PAUL DOUGLAS FENN
    The Localist Platform, 2017
    This is Not a Theory
    , 2010
    California CCA law AB117, 2002
    City of San Francisco Solar Bond Charter Section 9.107.8, 2001
    Oakland Measure X, 1998
    Massachusetts Senate Bill 447, 1995

    Fenn is the leader of the Community Choice Energy movement to locally democratize energy in the United States, authoring several landmark U.S. laws and plans to localize energy . In addition, Fenn is author of numerous published articles on diverse subjects from theory to engineering, including "The Vanity of Resistance" (2015), "The Municipalist Intellectual" (2014) "Imperial Populism, Failed Resistance & Positive Dialectics"(2013) and "Positive Dialectics: a Localist Manifesto" (2012). Fenn is the publisher of America in Decline (1993), Deep Style (1995), Why Are We Losing Our Freedom? (1997) and The Local Organon (local.org and KWMR FM West Marin, California).

  • CHRISTOPHER BRITT ARREDONDO
    Imperial Idiocy, 2017
    Quixotism, 2005
     Britt is the author of over twenty-five essays written in Spanish, Spanglish, and English and published in journals in the United States, Spain, Colombia, and Mexico. His focus is tyranny. He studies the role of the intellectual in the formation of nationalist and pan-nationalist cultural movements in Spain, the United States, and Latin America and considers their ties to fascism, imperialism, and postcoloniality. He is Associate Professor of Spanish at The George Washington University, in Washington, DC, where he has taught since 1998. available.
  • ANITA PANTIN

    Anita Pantin is a Venezuelan painter, scenographer and digital artist. In the 70s and 80s she exhibited in galleries and museums, & designed stage & costumes for opera & theater (“Madame Butterfly”, “Tosca”, “Ne blâmez jamais les bédouins”, etc.) in Caracas & Montreal. In the 90s she collaborated with the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory, at the University of Texas, Austin. (1993-2004), & started working with digital media. Since 2005, she lives in New York where she continues to explore different media & techniques, always integrating into her digital work.
  • EDUARDO SUBIRATS
    Linterna Mágica. 1997.
    El continente vacío, 1994
    América o la memoria histórica, 1994.
    Da vanguarda ao pós-moderno, 1984.
    El alma y la muerte,1983.
    La ilustración insuficiente, 1981.
    Subirats is the author of some forty books in Spanish, as well as many articles in Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English. His main books deal with topics of aesthetics, cultural theory, colonialism, and literary theory: He has been professor of philosophy, literature, and art theory at universities in Madrid, Sao Paulo, Caracas, México, ad Princeton. Since 1997 he is Professor of Spanish literature and culture at New York University.

In this pamphlet, which we publish in anticipation of the book Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction, we challenge the self-defeating notion that intellectuals should settle for resistance and urge them to accomplish much more.

Totalitarianism is on the rise today and democracy is in peril. Sounds like some kind of WWII redux. But it ain't. At issue is a new philosophical blindness and a fanatical naïveté.

ENLIGHTENMENT IN AN AGE OF DESTRUCTION

Rather than liberate humanity from tyranny, modern enlightenment has wound up subjecting us to a new servitude imposed by systems of mass manipulation, electronic vigilance, compulsive consumerism, and the horrors of a seemingly unending global war on terror. Our national democracies are an imperial farce and the most that intellectuals either know or dare to do in the face of all this destruction is to blithely recommend resistance. In this pamphlet, which we publish in anticipation of the book Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction, we challenge the self-defeating notion that intellectuals should settle for resistance and urge them to accomplish much more. With this aim in mind, we construct a cosmology of enlightenment that regards it as an unstable epiphenomenon, we critique the limits of the enlightenment of Pax Americana, and we provide an epistemological theory and demonstration of intellectual participation in civil society. As such, we promote a reflexive challenge to the spectacle that defines our reality today. Spectacle assigns to the intellectual the role of the critic, on the one hand, and on the other, that of the soothsayer of princes. In opposition to both and on the basis of this radical critique, we propose a trespassive tradition of cultural leadership.

ACCOUNTABLE PUBLISHING

Independent Publisher Since 1993

Contact US

editor@accountablepublishing.com

editor (202) 730-6218
publisher (415) 316-6580

1314 East Capitol NE
Washington DC 20003