From Pseudo-rationalism to Rationality as a quality of thought

By Yavor Tarinski

We are no more nature rendered self-conscious than we are humanity rendered self-conscious. Reason may give us the capacity to play this role, but we and our society are still totally irrational – indeed, we are cunningly dangerous to ourselves and all that lives around us

~Murray Bookchin[1]

The dominant narrative today tells a story of linear progress, in which humanity is gradually becoming more reasonable and rational.[2] We are told that we travel from ages of darkness toward times of enlightenment. And, supposedly, this tendency can be delayed, but cannot be stopped. Or so the narrative goes…

Beyond Self-Help and Esotericism: Freedom as Political Action

By Yavor Tarinski

Without action, all pleasure, all feeling, all knowledge is nothing but a postponed death.

~Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz[1]

Futureless Present, Time and Social Transformation

The following is the introduction of the new book “Common Futures: Social Transformation and Political Ecology” by Yavor Tarinski and Alexandros Schismenos.

Political Organizing in the 21st Century

By Yavor Tarinski

« Concern with the problem of organization has meaning only for people convinced that they can and must struggle together (hence, by organizing) and who do not, from the very beginning, assume their own defeat is inevitable. »

~ Cornelius Castoriadis

Narrow Anti-Imperialism as Ideological Cover for Authoritarianism

By Yavor Tarinski

It is absolutely necessary to rebuild an intellectual and political foundation for criticism and seeking change in the world, but metropolitan anti-imperialism is totally unfit for this job. It has absorbed subordinating imperialistic tendencies, and it is fraught with eurocentrism and void of any true democratic content.

-Yassin al-Haj Saleh[1]

Ideology and the Saturation of Time and Space

By Yavor Tarinski

“Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live”
Albert Einstein[1]

A coffee with Jacques Rancière beneath the Acropolis

Yavor Tarinski, Yannis Ktenas, Alexandros Schismenos, Nikos Ioannou, Nikos Katsiaounis and Ioanna Maravelidi, from the editorial team of Babylonia, in conversation with Jacques Ranciere, during B-Fest 6, 2017.

 

On Anti-Authority, Cooperation and Utopia

Interview with Yavor Tarinski

Excerpts from an interview given at the end of May 2016 for an activist group from Freiburg (Germany), aired on radio dreyeckland and freie-radios.

The Project of Autonomy in the 21st Century

By Yavor Tarinski

During the fifth edition of the international anti-authoritarian festival ‘B-Fest’ (2016) was held a panel, entitled ‘The Project of Autonomy in the 21^st Century’. Speakers were David Ames Curtis, Alexandros Sxismenos and Yavor Tarinski. Here is transcribed version of Tarinski’s speech.

Radical Organizing for the 21st Century

By Yavor Tarinski

Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.

Guy Debord[1]

Towards Autonomy

Towards Autonomy: Participatory politics of the 21st century

By Yavor Tarinski

Pages: 124

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Collectanea of articles, examining the modern efforts at establishing autonomy in different spheres of human life: the resources we share, the cities we live in, the products we produce, the decisions we take etc.

Beyond Ideology: Rethinking contextuality

By Yavor Tarinski

We are indeed conditioned by the contexts in which we live, but we are also the creators of our political and social constructions and we can change them if we are so determined.
Mary Dietz[1]

In the debate[2] between Simon Springer and David Harvey on what ideological frame the radical geography should adopt, Harvey’s proposal for letting radical geography free of any particular “ism” seems to make a lot of sense. And although their polemical texts discuss, at first sight, the matter of radical geography, in my opinion, they have also a wider importance for the whole question of the role of ideology in the project for social liberation and emancipation. With small exceptions, the proposal of freeing ourselves from ideology seems highly neglected from the movements for social emancipation, and I think this is a big mistake if we want to actually involve more people in them and act constructively.