A collection of historical and theoretical texts on disruption
All
History
Theory
All
Pre-Modern
1700-1830s
1840-1945
1946-1989
1990-2010
2011-Present
I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities (1985)
In 1985, feminist, civil rights activist, and librarian Audre Lorde published “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities”. The essay was centered around organizing black women in the fight against patri…
The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective (1981)
In 1981, Angela Davis Published “Women, Race, and Class”. The book analyzes the women’s liberation movement through the lens and intersection of racism and classism. Chapter 13, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework…
Ahimsa in All Men are Brothers by Mahatma Gandhi (2012)
All Men are Brothers is a selection from the writings of Mahatma Gandhi compiled for UNESCO that contains most of Gandhi’s writings on nonviolence (ahimsa).
The Theory of Sexual Politics (1969)
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics discusses the ways in which the patriarchy infiltrates everyday experiences of women, including sexual relations. This chapter – chapter two – is titled the Theory of Sexual Politics. It di…
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (excerpt) by Saidiya Hartman (1997)
This excerpt explains Hartman’s thesis on the omnipresence of terror experience by enslaved people.
The Fact of Blackness (1952)
Frantz Fanon was a French West Indian political philosopher whose work focused on post-colonial studies, decolonization, critical theory, and Marxism. In this work, Fanon works to theorize the way that different identity…
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (1975)
Traditionally, power was what was seen, what was shown, and what was manifested…Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a prin…
Feminism is for Everybody (2000)
bell hooks is a feminist, professor, and activist. In 2000, she published “Feminism is for Everybody”. Key to her politics and feminist philosophy is that the overarching “enemy”/structure to dismantle is the “white supr…
Choke Points: Mapping an Anticapitalist Counter-Logistics – Degenerate Communism (2014)
Essay arguing for the material and theoretical logic behind the disruption of the circulation of capital. A mapping of the logistical infrastructure of California with assessment of its major choke points
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom by Frantz Fanon (1961)
This PDF is an excerpt from The Wretched of the Earth, a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary theorist of colonialism and race. This book discusses the dehumanizaing effect of colonialism and the i…
The Catastrophe of Liberation by Herbert Marcuse (1964)
an excerpt from Marcuse’s 1964 book, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Marcuse critiques both capitalism and Soviet communism for social repression. This chapter is dedicated to…
Are Prisons Obsolete? Angela Davis (2003)
In 2003, Angela Davis published “Are Prisons Obsolete?”. Barely over 100 pages, the book is broken into six chapters, arguing for the abolition of prisons. The first chapter outlines the differences between prison reform…
The Pitfalls of National Consciousness by Frantz Fanon (1961)
This PDF is an excerpt from The Wretched of the Earth, a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary theorist of colonialism and race. This book discusses the dehumanizaing effect of colonialism and the i…
The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States by Winthrop D. Jordan (1974)
Professor Jordan uses anecdotes from a multidue of sources to answer the question of: what were the attitude of white men toward black people during the first two centuries of European and African settlement in what beca…
Civil Modalities of Refugee Trauma, death and necrological transport by Joseph Pugliese (2009)
“In this essay, I focus on seemingly benign and innocuous civil sites, spaces and technologies — such as hotel rooms, demountables and shipping containers — and proceed to argue that, once these civil sites and techolo…
Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weakness by Frantz Fanon (1961)
This PDF is an excerpt from The Wretched of the Earth, a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary theorist of colonialism and race. This book discusses the dehumanizaing effect of colonialism and the i…
Human Rights and Refugee Protest against Immigration Detention: Refugees’ Struggle for Recognition as Human by Lucy Fiske (2016)
The fact of protest was a rejection of a powerless state, a way for detained refugees to experience their own agency and, with it, restoration of some of the “essential characteristics of human life” and a means to use t…
The Coming Insurrection – The Invisible Committee (2009)
Now classic text by French collective – The Invisible Committee describing the present impasse through seven circles of hell and the way out through the insurrectionary commune
Dying to Cross: The Worst Immigrant Tradgedy in American History by Jorge Ramos (2006)
Journalist Jorge Ramos tells the story of 19 people who died while trying to cross the Mexico-U.S. border.
The Laugh of the Medusa (1975)
In her 1975 feminist critique, French author Helen Cixous offers women an ultimatum which demands that they either interpret and utilize the bodily expressions that society has accepted for them and remain trapped in the…
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
This 1968 book by Brazilian author Paulo Friere is considered one of the pillars of the critical pedagogy movement, which aimed to apply critical theory to the study of culture. The methodology in the text aims to empowe…
The Negro and Language – Frantz Fanon (1952)
In this chapter of one of his most important works, Frantz Fanon establishes the way that identity is manifested through language, and the way that language is perceived by others in a way that enables them to push ident…
Corpse Polemics: The Third World and the Politics of Gore in 1960s West Germany by Quin Slobodian (2011)
This essay analyzes how graphic violence was used in service of subversive movements as a call to action.
Lesbians in Revolt (1972)
In 1972, author Charlotte Bunch articulated lesbianism was a political choice that fundamentally threatened male supremacy by challenging the idea that men were crucial to the existence of women. In her essay “Lesbians i…
A Critical Phenomonology of Solitary Confinement by Lisa Guenther (2013)
In this introduction to her book Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, Guenther defines soiltary confinement as a kind of social death, looking at the experience of prisoners in the early nineteenth cent…
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)
One of the most influential documents of all time, the Communist Manifesto is an 1848 pamphlet that was written to explain class struggle and capitalism, and to summarize Marx and Engels’ theories on society and politics…
The Woman Identified Woman
The Radicalesbians identified lesbianism as the result of a woman acting on natural impulses to deviate from society and instead pursue a more liberated form of existence. Lesbianism is the product of rage. Most importan…
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (excerpt) by James C. Scott (2017)
In these excerpts, Scott tries to undermine the “standard civilization narrative” by suggesting that the early states were the result of domestication at different levels, which was also a way to control reproduction of…
The Furies- Lesbian/Feminist Monthly (1972)
In this first volume of the monthly publication by the Furies, the group introduces themselves and and their ideology, which is based on reforming the avenues taken by women in their liberation so that do not fall prey t…
Radical Feminism as Social Arrest: A Kinetic Analysis – Audrey Love (2016)
Thesis examining U.S. radical feminism as the arrest of patriarchal order, gaze, and time
The Kinetics of Our Discontent – Mehmet Dosemeci (2020)
Why do we think of social struggles as movements? Has struggle been thought/practiced otherwise? Not as movement but as disruption, arrest, stasis? If so, what are struggles trying to stop?
Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement (2006)
Anuradha Ghandy was a founding member of the Indian Communist Party, and strongly contributed to and drafted policy regarding the caste system in India, and the intersection between feminism and Marxism. As a salient par…
Concerning Violence by Frantz Fanon (1961)
This PDF is an excerpt from The Wretched of the Earth, a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary theorist of colonialism and race. This book discusses the dehumanizaing effect of colonialism and the i…
The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (1887)
This book by Nietzsche consists of a preface and three treatises that trace the evolution of morality, specifically with a view towards Christianity and Judiasm.
Don’t Move, Occupy! (2013)
Mehmet Döşemeci analyzes global uprisings of 2011 and the occupation of public space in order to outline a theory of social arrest.
Temporary Autonomous Zone – Hakim Bey (1985)
Anarchist text by Hakim Bey about creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. From Pirate Utopias to Nomadic Bands, Poetic Terrorism to Ontological Anarchy, Hakim Bey draws on history and philosoph…
Self-Management and Hierarchy +1 – Cornelius Castoriadis (1974-6)
Two short articles that argue for the disruption of workplace hierarchy through worker self-management turning to the often overlooked 1956 Hungarian Uprising as example.
Throwing Like A Girl by Iris Marion Young (1980)
This feminist essay by Iris Marion Young draws on works from Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to look at differences in feminine and masculine movement and how that movement is embodied and how it affects the…
The Wretched of the Earth – Conclusion (1961)
Frantz Fanon – who was born in the French colony Martinique – extensively wrote about decolonization. According to Fanon, decolonization is always a violent process. The violence involved in decolonization for Fanon is a…
Disruption – Ben Harper (2018)
Ben Harper weaves together Weil, Agamben, and Badiou’s thought to discuss disruption in the Age of Trump. Interesting take on use of disruption by the right and its capture by the status quo.
Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (2002)
“Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant” is the autobiography of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin. Though Dworkin also wrote short stories and novels, she was best known for her non-fiction feminist writi…
Essay on Liberation by Herbert Marcuse (1969)
In 1969, German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote “The Essay on Liberation”, an essay in which he expressed his support for liberation movements such as that in Vietnam. Marcuse drew inspiration from Marxism and…