Shaw, Devin Z.

Summary: "This pamphlet contains two essays on antifascist theory and practice within settler-colonial societies, with a specific focus on Indigenous-settler solidarity praxis (written from an anti-fascist settler perspective) in what is presently called Canada."--From preface.

M.I. Asma is the collective designation for six authors from Canada and the United States, representing a variety of revolutionary anticapitalist theoretical persuasions: J. Moufawad-Paul, Devin Zane Shaw, Mateo Andante, Johannah May Black, Alyson Escalante, and D. W. Fairlane. As the pandemic transitioned from science fiction to reality in early 2020, a number of writers and thinkers in the imperialist metropoles declared the impossibility of writing in the face of a future that is foreclosed. And yet, due to the nightmare that capitalism has been since its beginning, numerous writers and thinkers from the margins have always written in the face of such foreclosure. Meanwhile, other contemporary thinkers sought to conceptualize the unfolding pandemic according to conceptions of bio/necropolitics, forgetting the foundation upon which these conceptions have always existed. The M.I. Asma writing group came together to stake out a different terrain, thinking through the pandemic as events unfolded while also always working to think beyond the capitalist imaginary. Writing between April 2020 and May 2021, the authors set out to produce a serial theoretical­ philosophical project focused on class struggle in the midst of the COVID­-19 pandemic. The authors approached the pandemic as an occasion to think capitalism according to what it always has been, what the pandemic reveals about its current ideological deployment, and how we can think about a communist alternative in the face of exterminism. This book collects, with some revisions and with a new epilogue, the entries from the On Necrocapitalism blog, where M.I. Asma’s interventions first appeared.

Dr. Devin Z. Shaw (Douglas College) writes the book chapter From German communist antifascism to a contemporary united front (2021).

Dr. Devin Z. Shaw (Douglas College) reviews the book <i>How fascism works</i> by J. Stanley (2020).

Dr. Devin Zane Shaw (Douglas College) reviews the book <i>Critiquing Brahmanism: A collection of essays</i> by K. Murali (Ajith) (2020).

Since the publication of his last book-length political polemic, 'Hatred of Democracy' (2005), the work of Jacques Rancière has generally focused on developing the conceptual and historical features of his account of aesthetics. With the recent publication of his 2009 debate with Axel Honneth, 'Recognition or Disagreement?' (2016), we have good reason to return to his political thought as it is outlined in 'Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy' (1995) and related texts such as his “Ten The ses on Politics” (1998). Programmatically speaking, Rancière conceives of politics as a practice of dissensus enacted in the name of equality. But in examining the debate between Rancière and Honneth, Jean-Philippe Deranty and Katia Genel have recently sought to reframe Rancière’s account of dissensus in the terms of Honneth’s theory of recognition. Drawing on the subtitle of Disagreement, it is necessary to critique Deranty and Genel both at the level of politics and how this politics implicates philosophy. Elsewhere, I have already indicated how reframing dissensus as a form of the politics of recognition blunts the radicality of Rancière’s methodological commitments. I will not revisit these claims here. Instead, I would like to dispel the assumption that makes this “recognition” reading—as one variant of a generally liberal reading of Rancière—possible. On this assump tion, Rancière holds that dissensual speech is political action. As Deranty writes, “politics in Disagreement is a battle of justifications, mainly a battle about what counts as justification and who is entitled to proffer and expect justifications.” But Rancière’s work isn’t about how to distribute social goods and allocate duties and entitlements to such a degree that we will willingly accept inequalities in our societies. So I will argue, by contrast, that for Rancière speech functions as a me tonymy for a broader praxis of egalitarian, dissensual politics. More specifically, I will contend that Rancière’s egalitarian politics entails two forms of praxis: the symbolization of equality through dissensus and the subversion or elimination of relationships of command, coercion, or force implemented by regimes of policing.

"Through the existentialism of Simone de Beauvoir, with some reference to Fanon and Sartre, this book identifies the philosophical reasons for the political action being enacted by contemporary antifascists. In addition, using the work of Jacques Rancière, it argues that the alt-right and the far right aren’t a kind of politics at all, but rather forms of parapolitical and paramilitary mobilization aimed at re-entrenching the power of the state and capital. Devin Shaw argues that in order to resist fascist mobilization, contemporary movements find a diversity of tactics more useful than principled nonviolence. Antifascism must focus on the systemic causes of the re-emergence of fascism, and thus must fight capital accumulation and the underlying white supremacism. Providing new, incisive interpretations of Beauvoir, existentialism, and Rancière, he makes the case for organizing a broader militant movement against fascism."--From publisher description.

Drawing on the claim that egalitarian politics persistently appropriates elements from political philosophy to engage new forms of dissensus, Devin Zane Shaw argues that Rancière's work also provides an opportunity to reconsider modern philosophy and aesthetics in light of the question of equality. In Part I, Shaw examines Rancière's philosophical debts to the 'good sense' of Cartesian egalitarianism and the existentialist critique of identity. In Part II, he outlines Rancière's critical analyses of Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg and offers a reinterpretation of Rancière's debate with Alain Badiou in light of the philosophical differences between Schiller and Schelling. From engaging debates about political subjectivity from Descartes to Sartre, to delineating the egalitarian stakes in aesthetics and the philosophy of art from Schiller to Badiou, this book presents a concise tour through a series of egalitarian moments found within the histories of modern philosophy and aesthetics. --From publisher description.