Exploding Appendix and Cybersalon presents… ‘Are we witnessing the return of the state?’ Live Debate with Paulo Gerbaudo and Richard Barbrook (Online and In-Person Interactive Session – 1st March 2022)

From the 2008 financial crisis through to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of upheavals have challenged the way we think about the state and its role in society. In his 2021 book, The Great Recoil: Politics after Popularism and Pandemic, Paolo Gerbaudo draws upon Marxist and republican theory to explore the ways that recent crises are taking us beyond neoliberalism’s emphasis on free market economics, business interests and a reliance on flexible labour, and towards the emergence of something else; something that seems to demand a greater reliance on state intervention and democratic controls.

In this session we will be debating our current global predicament. Are we really witnessing the end of neoliberalism? Are we really witnessing the resurgence of the state? What are the dangers and possibilities that lay before us?

To do this, Exploding Appendix and the Cybersalon will join forces to take stock of the present and look forward to the future. The Cybersalon was founded in 1997 and is a UK-based collective and think-tank focusing on the process and effect of the digital revolution in industry, society and its emerging digital cultures. Its members and audiences include entrepreneurs, technologists, hackers, activists, government officials, business and community leaders, academics, artists, creatives, and designers. In keeping with the Cybersalon’s commitment to Digital Democracy, we will be joined by two prolific writers, whose work engages with radical politics, the problems and possibilities of new media and digital technologies, as well as developing their own thoughts and theories concerning the state.

Paolo Gerbaudo is a sociologist and political theorist from King’s College London and is the author of Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (2012), The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest (2017), The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy (2018) and The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic (2021).

Richard Barbrook is an academic from the University of Westminster. His books include The Californian Ideology (1995 with Andy Cameron), Media Freedom: The Contradictions of Communication in the age of Modernity (1995), The Class of the New (2006), Imaginary Futures: from thinking machines to the global Village (2007), and Class Wargames: ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism (2014). He is currently working on a book on the state.

 The online session will take place via Zoom (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85344854080?pwd=UjZVOHZSNDRXaW5ycUJOdnNVem4xUT09). The meeting ID is 853 4485 4080.  The passcode is “414170“.

This session will take place both online via Zoom and in person at The Artist Residence, Brighton, UK. The Artists Residence can be found on 33 Regency Square, Brighton, BN1 2GG. Join us in Venue from 7pm and online from 730pm.  To book a free place in the venue, click here. For any questions  please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com

This session will be run by Bradley Tuck and take place on the 1st March 2022 from 19:30 – 22:30 (UK time). If you have any questions please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com

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