issue 2 / winter 2013
“To overcome this crisis without questioning the meaning of consumption, production, and investment is to reproduce the preconditions of financial capitalism, the violence of its ups and downs, the philosophy according to which ‘time is everything, man is nothing.’ For man to be everything, we need to reclaim the time of his existence.”
From Christian Marazzi’s The Violence of Financial Capitalism
About a Bicycle trudged through the autumn and winter seasons with another prolific round of readings, focusing on the irreversible and violent 2008, to present, financial economic crisis. Our intent was to historicize the economic principles that have led to Capitalism’s current transmutations, and reflect on the pathologic effects of standardized time on labour, psychologies, communication, and avant-gardism. In many ways the lens turned back on ourselves and highlighted where we capitulate to Capitalistic pressures (via consumption, silence, bourgeois narratives), yet prove a threat (through socio-political boycotts, self-reflexive line breaks, and by establishing a strong understanding of our working ties) to Capitalism’s obscene superego. We engaged in a genealogical understanding of our current economic state, bit by bit, better acquainting ourselves with the varying degrees of brutality inflicted upon us by financial capital and the bitter logic of Neoliberalism, in order to be better critically situated within Capitalist hegemony.
AAB is a group of self-identified women, with interest in reading and discussing interesting critical themes that are pertinent to the space and time of the readers.