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Публикувана на 07 Февруари 2015

We can now offer for free download our new edition
Raia Apostolova, Neda Deneva and Tsvetelina Hristova. Situating Migration in Transition: Temporal, Structural, and Conceptual Transformations of Migrations. Sketches from Bulgaria. Sofia: KOI Books, 2014.
Situating Migration in Transition is a follow-up publication under the project New Left Perspectives with the financial support of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – Southeast Europe, and is part of a one-year project which included the international workshop “Migrating in, migrating out: how to (re)think ‘migrants' struggles’" which took place in May 2014. The authors Raia Apostolova, Neda Deneva and Tsvetelina Hristova are moving against the established definition of the Transition in post-socialist Bulgaria. The Transition is treated as a transformation without telos (Mezzadra). In these three texts migration is seen as one of the fundamental features which are at the center of, and are catalyzed by, the socio-economic processes, and the transition is deconstructed as a series of transitions – temporal ones and in-between categories which frame migrations.
Download the file:
- pdf version, online edition, 102 pages (download here)
The print edition can be obtained by contacting New Left Perspectives or can be found in Social Center Haspel.
New Left Perspectives and Collective for Social Interventions wish you a nice read!
Lecture by Marko Stamenkovic: Is Europe mentally ill? ‘Economic Suicides’, Eurozone Crisis, and Life/Death Matters under Austerity Regime
от Marko Stamenković-
Публикувана на 04 Декември 2014
15.12.2014, 19.00 at the fridge & xaspel
Sofia, 8 Madrid blvd.
“An economic suicide” – what is that? This peculiar social phenomenon has been haunting Europe since around the year 2008. It has become an ongoing landmark of the Eurozone financial crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis characterized by two related though not identical phenomena: the economic recession and the economic austerity regime, the latter being “imposed by the troika of the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank” (Stuckler and McKee, 2012). Moreover, numerous studies about the 2008 recession and its public health consequences have been accompanied in 2012 by the European Parliaments’ alarming statements promoting “the detrimental effects of the economic crisis on the mental health of European citizens”. It is true that such views could be (partially) explained in relation to the rise of citizens’ unemployment, impoverishment and general dispossession. However, the current trend of “increased suicidality amid economic crisis” (Economou et al., 2011) puts forward one pressing claim: that “every 1% increase in unemployment correlates to a 0.8% rise in suicides” (European Parliament 2012): this has led public health experts to conclude that “Europe is facing a mental health crisis” (European Parliament 2012). Thus, my question: Is Europe mentally ill? Given this framework, I argue that so-called economic suicides do not exist: what exists instead is the politico-juridical system of ongoing death-production through which it becomes possible to examine the current neoliberal matrix of necropower - and the political pseudo-suicides committed on behalf of it.
Marko Stamenkovic (1977, Vranje) is art historian and curator born and raised in the south of Serbia. He graduated in Art History from the University of Belgrade (2003) and received his M.A. degree in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies from the University of Arts in Belgrade (2005). In 2014 he earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy from the University of Ghent (Belgium) with the thesis “Suicide Cultures. Theories and Practices of Radical Withdrawal”. His PhD research was realized at the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences under Prof. Dr. Tom Claes (CEVI-Center for Ethics and Value Inquiry), supported by Basileus Scholarship, an Erasmus Mundus Action 2 project for academic exchange between EU and Western Balkans funded by the European Commission.
Jelena Petrović: Woman today
от New Left Perspectives-
Публикувана на 16 Ноември 2014

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Публикувана на 10 Октомври 2014

We can now offer for free download the catalogue we created after Sofia Queer Forum 2014 took place.
The edition marks also the establishing of New Left Perspectives’ publishing leg called Collective for Social Interventions.
Work of mass destruction
от Jana Tsoneva, Madlen Nikolova-
Публикувана на 04 Октомври 2014
On 1st of October the village of Gorni Lom in Northwestern Bulgaria was shaken by a huge explosion in a run-down arms disposal factory. This seems to be amongst the worst of a rising trend of industrial accidents in the country’s recent history. Fifteen people lost their lives in Gorni Lom. The blast was so intensive that nothing remains from the bodies of the victims, while there is only a huge crater left from what was once the premises of the factory. This factory is the only industry in the village, employing some 50 people. This blast was the sixth (!) to have occurred there in the past 12 years. According to Capital Weekly, in 2002 there were two blasts which tore down the trinitrotoluene workshop of the factory. In 2006 a fire broke out that killed Mr. Iliya Simov, one of the company engineers. In 2007 an explosion killed a 28-year old worker and hurt two others. In the same year another blast occurred, this time around without casualties. In 2010 a series of explosions there caused a fire. After the accident, 70 workers were sacked, forcing the 50 remaining workers to step up their efforts to dispose of an ever-increasing number of obsolete ammo and arms. This is aggravated by the piece-rate remuneration policy of the factory. As one worker explains, “If you scrap 1200 pieces, you will earn 17 euro cents per piece. If you can’t reach this level - you get only 13.5 cents.” This obviously worsens the risk of accidents since workers are racing under constant pressure to exceed the quota. Those 17 cents constitute only half of what the factory gets paid to dispose of the latest bunch of landmines that had arrived from Greece. The other half is pocketed by the owners. Пълният текст ...
Elections in an exhausted Bulgaria: another challenge on the European front
от Raia Apostolova-
Публикувана на 30 Септември 2014
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Публикувана на 22 Септември 2014

Sofia Queer Forum 2012 took place in the period 20-25 November 2012 on various locations in Sofia. More info here.
Sofia Queer Forum 2014
от New Left Perspectives-
Публикувана на 21 Май 2014

Cristofer Scarboro: Sisyphus Revisited: Consumption and Collapse in Late Socialist Bulgaria
от Cristofer Scarboro-
Публикувана на 26 Април 2014

Sofia, 8 Madrid. blvd
Cristofer Scarboro is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at King's College (USA). His first book: "The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria: Meaning and Living in a Permanent Present Tense" was published in 2011 by Lexington Books. Currently, Dr. Scarboro is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the American Research Center in Sofia.
The collapse of the socialist system in Bulgaria and elsewhere in Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989 was on its most basic level a failure of embourgeoisment—reflecting a deep sense of disappointment in the late socialist good life—the somewhat oxymoronic “middle class socialism.” On important levels, and in the classical accounts of the collapse of communism, this disappointment is understood as a reaction to the shoddy nature, and often absence of, the very goods socialism was supposed to deliver. Collapse is explained as a failure of consumption in the face of the products of liberal democratic capitalism on display across the iron curtain. But Eastern European consumer desires were fulfilled at least as often as they were found wanting. In short, it is too simple and neat—it is too comforting and dangerous—to understand the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe as solely the result of dearth and repression. Bulgarian and East European dissatisfaction with Communism was also, and equally importantly, a reflection of the ennui, struggle, and boredom of living a life ordered by purely consumerist agendas. This paper investigates the relationship between boredom and consumption in late socialist Bulgaria through the lens of visual art of the era. Despite the lower standards of living vis-à-vis their Cold War competition, the Eastern European systems were remarkably good at producing stuff by almost any other historical measure. Bulgarian art of the era reveals the emptiness of that stuff.
Call for papers: Migrating in, migrating out: how to (re)think "migrants' struggles"
от New Left Perspectives-
Публикувана на 18 Март 2014
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Покана за събития
03 Юни 2020 -
Живот с увреждане: трудовата утопия и продуктивизмът
25 Сеп 2019 -
Представяне на „Експлоатация и съпротива: трудът в три подизпълнителски бранша“
18 Окт 2018 -
Представяне на „Плосък данък или демокрация? За прогресивна данъчна реформа в България“
18 Окт 2018 -
НЛП на турне 2016
31 Дек 2016 -
Представяне на изследването "Употреба и злоупотреба с мита за „щедрото“ социално подпомагане"
31 Май 2016
- За институцията на общото благоАнтонио Негри и Жудит Ревел
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Университетски опит: неолиберализмът срещу общите блага
Джейсън Рийд -
Комуналното и деколониалното
Уолтър Миньоло