autraumaton

"Moreso than any other historical event, assassination stokes the fires of the counterfactual imagination." autraumaton is pleased to announce the publication of "BANG! THUD: World Spirit from a Texas School Book Depository," by Andrea Sun-Mee Jones and Joshua Dubler, illustrated by Seth Price.

The establishment of the so-called conservative "big frame" over the last few decades has been accompanied by the sedimentation of a strange bedfellow in American academia: progressive pragmatism. Constantly on the lips of these "vulgar practical men" (Mao) is a word that plagues any vaguely "political" discussion in the classroom: "agency." What does it mean to be a social agent? How is it that we measure change in the world? If agency, as the authors quip, is simply effects divided by actions, is not the assassin the exemplary social agent? Don't let the wry humor with which they answer these questions fool you: Jones and Dubler's short work is nothing short of a complete subversion of our basic assumptions about social change. "Bang! Thud" will take you an afternoon to read but a life change to process.

To purchase "BANG! THUD: World Spirit from a Texas School Book Depository," click here.

autraumaton is a journal of theory with an emphasis on religion and politics. The first issue of the autraumaton journal opens with "Religion, Illusion, Suspicion: When Description Comes to Reduction" by Joshua Dubler, where the author draws connections between Bourdieu's "irresistible analogy" and Freud's understanding of illusion in proposing a new theory of illusion in practice. The second article is titled "Bigotrocity, or Why Sarah Silverman is a Filthy Bitch...No Joke" by Benjamin Fong. In this short piece, Fong questions the value of the "comedic state apparatus." Andrea Sun-Mee Jones' "The Puppet Called Perversion" is the third article in this issue. Jones analyzes Slavoj Žižek's "The Puppet and the Dwarf," explaining how Žižek understands perversion, Hegel and Christianity. Slavoj Žižek's "The Ignorance of Chicken, or Who Believes What Today?" rounds out the first issue of autraumaton. In this piece, Žižek proposes a new understanding of belief that more appropriately responds to the rise of Christian fundamentalism today.

autraumaton #1 was released in the Spring of 2007. To download these articles and learn more about the formation of autraumaton, please click on the link to the left.

To purchase autraumaton #1, click here.