The Drowned and The Saved is a book of eight essays by Italian-Jewish author, Primo Levi. It is his last work, written a year before his death. It is an analytical book about life and death in the Nazi extermination camps, informed by Levi’s personal experience as a survivor of Auschwitz.
You can buy the book from the Yellow Lighted Bookshop (Nailsworth, Tetbury or Chalford pick up or delivery at £3.50) via the previous link – RRP £10.99. When looking at your “basket” enter the “couponcode” stroudradical24 for a 12% discount – final book price £9.67, a saving of £1.32)
Stroud Radical Reading Group events are free to attend, though we will make a collection to cover costs. Anyone is welcome to listen to the discussion, though we encourage contributions only from those who have read at least some of the book. If you do not have time to read the whole book, please choose a single essay to read.
Also taking place on Sunday January 28th at 7.30pm is a screening of Denial, as part of Stroud Film Festival. The film is based on the acclaimed book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier by Deborah Lipstadt. More information and tickets available to buy online from the Festival website. Tickets are be priced at £6 – cheaper tickets (£4) are available to people on low incomes, and people who are able can pay £8 to ‘pay it forward’.
A 4 minute video from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, introducing Primo Levi through the context of the typescript of Levi’s first book that his American relatives recently donated to the Museum (embedded below)
We’ll meet at 10 John St – the old Electric Bike Shop, next to the Ale House pub and currently home to Access Bike/Creative Sustainability. More info on the venue below.
As publishers Verso say: “The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care—childcare, healthcare, elder care—to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.”
On this webpage you can find free resources including free downloads of two chapters and a free online version of the whole book, details to buy a copy of the book at a discount, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue.
We will focus our discussion on chapters 3 and 6, and the following questions. Thanks to Benjamin – who will introduce the session – for coming up with these:
What can we do to create more caring kinships/communities/states?
Is there a conflict between indiscriminate and emotionally invested care? Can/should either be enforced?
In a world so empty of care, should caring people extend their care as far as possible to make up for this, or is it enough to care as much as they would in a caring world?
What role does the state have in a non-hierarchical caring society?
We enourage people to read the whole 97 page book but you are also welcome to listen to the discussion and ask questions even if you haven’t read the book (or engaged with other the free resources).
Resources related to the book are available below – most are free. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below. Audio/visual materials are provided for anyone who prefers these to reading – don’t feel you have to read content to attend the ‘reading’ group. The aim is to discuss the ideas – however they have been presented.
We’ll meet at 10 John St – the old Electric Bike Shop, next to the Ale House pub and currently home to Access Bike/Creative Sustainability. There’s one small step to enter the shop, then access is level. There are a couple of sofas and some harder chairs. There’s good lighting, and lots of room. It’s not an easy space to keep warm but there are heaters and some blankets. If you have any questions about acessibility or the venue, please get in touch.
About the author and the book
The Care Collective was formed in 2017, originally as a London-based reading group aiming to understand and address the multiple and extreme crises of care. Each coming from a different discipline, we have been active both collectively and individually in diverse personal, academic and political contexts. Members include: Andreas Chatzidakis, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, and Lynne Segal.
Publishers Verso say:
The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care—childcare, healthcare, elder care—to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.
The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world in which each and every one of us can not only live but thrive.
The Care Manifesto demands that we must put care at the heart of the state and the economy. A caring government must promote collective joy, not the satisfaction of individual desire. This means the transformation of how we organise work through co-operatives, localism and nationalisation. It proposes the expansion of our understanding of kinship for a more ‘promiscuous care’. It calls for caring places through the reclamation of public space, to make a more convivial city. It sets out an agenda for the environment, most urgent of all, putting care at the centre of our relationship to the natural world.”
Endorsements:
“The Care Manifesto is a radiant invitation to transform our economy and society, a roadmap for how we can emerge from overlapping crises and weave a new social fabric. The ethic of universal care is an antidote to the spiralling carelessness that our current system shows towards people and the planet. The authors understand that care is not a commodity: it’s a practice, a core value, and an organizing principle on which a new politics can and must be built.” – Naomi Klein
“This manifesto is a call to action for global progressives. The Care Collective shows the “systemic carelessness” of existing political, economic, and kinship orders are broken both for humans and the planet. They demonstrate that capacious care offers a practical and already existing starting point for change on all levels” – Joan Tronto, author of Caring Democracy
“In showing us the power of mutual aid, coalition-building and solidarity, this book aids us in ensuring our activism is enacted through our daily actions within our communities and that whilst change starts within us, it doesn’t end there” – Adele Walton, gal-dem
On Wednesday 25th October 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss Old Gods, New Enigmas by Mike Davis. Davis died on October 25th last year, and we will meet to honour his life and work on the anniversary of his death. Davis was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He was been described as the “Best Socialist Writer of the Last Half Century“.
As usual we’ll discuss what we made of the book and how it might be relevant to us in our own lives. We will focus on Chapter 4 – “Who Will Build the Ark?” which explores global warming, how “city life is rapidly destroying the ecological niche-Holocene climate stability-which made its evolution and complexity possible”, and “the city as its own solution”. We enourage people to read the whole book but you are also welcome even if you haven’t read even the Chapter – to listen to the discussion and ask questions.
On this webpage you can find free resources, details to buy the book at a discount, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue. We’re planning to once again be at the SISTER House – as this is a building Stroud in Internationalist Solidarity Together for Earth Repairs (SISTER) have reclaimed on Lansdown Road.
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below. Audio/visual materials are provided for anyone who prefers these to reading – don’t feel you have to read content to attend the ‘reading’ group. The aim is to discuss the ideas – however they have been presented.
This book is the second in a 3-part series on Crisis, Mutual Aid, and Radical Action, which will also cover work by the Care Collective (full details to follow). You can come even if you didn’t attend the previous event, and you don’t have to come to the next one.
About the author and the book
Publishers Verso say:
“Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler before his profile as one of the world’s leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian survey of Los Angeles. Since then, he’s developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial history, but as a stylist without peer.
Old Gods, New Enigmas is Davis’s book-length engagement with Karl Marx, marking the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth and exploring Davis’s thinking on history, labor, capitalism, and revolution – themes ever present the early work from this leading radical thinker. This will be his first book on Marxism itself.
In a time of ubiquitous disgust with political and economic elites, explores the question of revolutionary agency—what social forces and conditions do we need to transform the current order?—and the situation of the world’s working classes from the US to Europe to China. Even the most preliminary tasks are daunting. A new theory of revolution needs to return to the big issues in classical socialist thought, such as clarifying “proletarian agency”, before turning to the urgent questions of our time: global warming, the social and economic gutting of the rustbelt, and the city’s demographic eclipse of the countryside. What does revolution look like after the end of history?”
Endorsements:
“There is no one better at building on Marx’s legacy of profound and engaged politcal analysis than Mike Davis” – Leo Panitch
“The heterogeneity of Davis’s latest book Old Gods, New Enigmas reflects his decades of accumulated interests…a formidable intellectual, and this collection contains many gems.” – Troy Vettese, Boston Review
On Wednesday 27th September 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon Firth. The book looks at the disasters of Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilised relief in their wake – often on anarchist principles, contrasting these with the “Disaster Capitalism” and ensuring that collective solidarity in a dangerous world isn’t missed in academic “Disaster Studies”.
As usual we’ll discuss what we made of the book and how it might be relevant to us in our own lives. We enourage people to read the book but you are also welcome even if you haven’t read the book – to listen to the discussion and ask questions. This book is the first in a 3-part series on Crisis, Mutual Aid, and Radical Action, which will also cover work by Mike Davis and the Care Collective (full details to follow). You don’t have to attend all the events in the series, but you are invited to!
On this webpage you can find details to buy the book at a discount, free resources, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue. We’re planning to once again be at the SISTER Summer School – but as this is a building Stroud in Internationalist Solidarity Together for Earth Repairs (SISTER) have reclaimed on Lansdown Road.
After August, the book is available from Yellow Lighted Bookshop for £19.99, and you should be able to get a 12% discount: after adding the book to your ‘basket’, view your basket where there is an option to enter a ‘Coupon code’. Add the code “StroudRadical23” and click/tap “Apply coupon” (final cost should then be £17.59).
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.
Two excerpts from the book have been published in Dope Magazine which is distributed on the streets of Stroud by people experiencing homelessness, and available online as a pdf: Issue 21 has part one, Issue 22 has part two.
Audio interview with Rhiannon Firth discussing the ‘Politics of Care and a Utopian Future‘ on the ‘Politics of Care in Pandemic Time’ podcast series (35 minutes – this podcast looks at Firth’s work before Disaster Anarchy was published)
Video of Rhiannon Firth discussing Anarchy, Utopia and Mutual Aid with the Anarchism Research Group (18 minutes)
Rhiannon Firth is currently a lecturer in Sociology at UCL. She is the author of two books: Utopian Politics: Citizenship and Practice and Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK. She is active in social movements and popular education projects in London.
Publishers Pluto Press say:
“Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilised relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.
As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organised relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term ‘mutual aid’ entered common parlance.
However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance, co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the twenty-first century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice is needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.”
Endorsements:
‘Commendable – a book that prepares us to think about and react to system failures’ – Peter Gelderloos
‘Firth bridges the theories and methodologies in the continuing development of anarchist and liberatory frameworks of decentralised disaster responses, first articulated after Hurricane Katrina. They demonstrate through personal histories and analysis deeper paths forward in anarchist processes and practices that allow our liberatory imaginations to resist the collapse while creating viable alternatives without state coercion or interference’ – scott crow, author of ‘Black Flags and Windmills: Hope , Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective’
‘A clear, timely and rigorous account of anarchist responses to catastrophes. It avoids romanticisation, as Rhiannon Firth incisively unpicks state and corporate strategies of co-option’ – Benjamin Franks, Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy, University of Glasgow
On Wednesday 30th August 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. Noughts and Crosses is described as Young Adult fiction – this is the first time we’ve read such a book. It’s fitting to link to the BBC Bitesize intro page, which summarises the book as “a novel set in a dystopian Britain in which society is divided by racism. Dark-skinned Crosses are privileged in society over the light-skinned noughts. Against the odds, the main characters, Sephy and Callum, fall in love across the divide which leads them into danger. Malorie Blackman was inspired by real events from history and her own life when she wrote this novel.”
As usual we’ll discuss what we made of the book and how it might be relevant to us in our own lives. SRRG regular Asha will introduce the book for us. At this session, we’ll also provide a quick introduction to Stroud Radical Reading Group – mentioning the books we’ll be reading later in the year and providing a quick history of books we’ve read in the past. We enourage people to read the book but you are also welcome even if you haven’t read the book – to listen to the discussion and ask questions.
On this webpage you can find details to buy the book at a discount, free resources, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue. We’ll be in a new venue this month – the SISTER Summer School – an empty building Stroud in Internationalist Solidarity Together for Earth Repairs (SISTER) have reclaimed on Lansdown Road.
The book is available from Yellow Lighted Bookshop for £8.99, and you should be able to get a 12% discount: after adding the book to your ‘basket’, view your basket where there is an option to enter a ‘Coupon code’. Add the code “StroudRadical23” and click/tap “Apply coupon”.
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.
Malorie Blackman has written over seventy books for children and young adults, including the Noughts & Crosses series. Many of her books have also been adapted for stage and television, including a BAFTA-award-winning BBC production of Pig-Heart Boy and a Pilot Theatre stage adaptation by Sabrina Mahfouz of Noughts & Crosses. In 2005 Malorie was honoured with the Eleanor Farjeon Award in recognition of her distinguished contribution to the world of children’s books. In 2008 she received an OBE for her services to children’s literature, and between 2013 and 2015 she was the Children’s Laureate. Most recently Malorie wrote for the Doctor Who series on BBC One, and the fifth novel in her Noughts & Crosses series, Crossfire, was published by Penguin Random House Children’s in summer 2019.
Published twenty years ago last year, Malorie Blackman’s ‘Noughts & Crosses’ broke the hearts of a generation of teenage readers, and its influence on Young Adult fiction can be felt across the genre with the themes of racism, diversity and conflict still as pertinent in this era of Black Lives Matter as they were when the series was first published.
Endorsements:
‘The Noughts & Crosses series are still my favourite books of all time and showed me just how amazing story-telling could be’ – Stormzy
‘The most original book I’ve ever read’ Benjamin Zephaniah
On Sunday 30th July 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm at The RYSE, 2 Bath St, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss After Geoengineering: Climate Trajedy, Repair, and Restoration, by Holly Jean Buck. The book explores how “We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo” but asks “is there another possible future after geoengineering?”. On this webpage you can find a link to buy the book at a discount, free resources, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue.
This discussion is part our series on climate change, but you are welcome to join the discussion even if you cannot make the other events. You are also welcome even if you haven’t read the book or the free section of it available below – to listen to the discussion and ask questions.
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.
Free resources
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below:
Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying rural futures, the politics of platforms, and how emerging technologies can address environmental challenges. She works as an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York. She is also the author of Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.
“Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductive idea. We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo, but is there another possible future after geoengineering? Can these technologies and practices be used to bring carbon levels back down to pre-industrial levels? Are there possibilities for massive intentional intervention in the climate that are democratic, decentralised, or participatory?
These questions are provocative, because they go against a binary that has become common sense: geoengineering is assumed to be on the side of industrial agriculture, inequality and ecomodernism, in opposition to degrowth, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and climate justice. After Geoengineering rejects this binary, to ask: what if the people seized the means of climate production? Both critical and utopian, the book examines the possible futures after geoengineering. Rejecting the idea that geoengineering is some kind of easy work-around, Holly Buck outlines the kind of social transformation that would be necessary to enact a programme of geoengineering in the first place.”
Endorsements:
“In the face of rapid climate change, how should we think about geoengineering? In this timely and bold book, Holly Jean Buck lays out a case for approaching geoengineering from the Left. Blending journalistic insight with scientific speculation, After Geoenginneeringinspires much-needed thought experiments about the changes coming to our warmer and weirder world.
Joel Wainwright, author of Decolonizing Development, Geopiracy, and Climate Leviathan (with Geoff Mann)
This is the guide to the future. There’s hardly anything scarier than geoengineering, but it is coming towards us, closer for every day of CO2 spewed into the air. It can no longer be wished away – and thankfully, we have Holly Jean Buck to explain what it might look like and how it could be survived, perhaps even used for the good of the planet. Written in graceful prose, combining the latest science with the crystal ball of a sci-fi author, this book shines. Anyone worried about what comes next should read it.
Andreas Malm, author of The Progress of This Storm and Fossil Capital
About Stroud Radical Reading Group events and the venue
Our events are free to attend, though we will collect donations to cover the costs of venue hire on a donate-what-you-can-afford basis. We try to ensure the discussions are welcoming to new people, including people who have never been to a reading group before – and you don’t have to have been to university. You don’t even have to have read any of the book – you can just come along and listen to the discussion. Some free resources including a sample chapter we’ll focus our discussion on are included above, and we’d encourage people to read/listen to as much as they can ahead of the session.
James facilitates the sessions, which we start and finish with everyone having a short time to introduce themselves, and mention something that struck them about the reading or which they’d like to discuss. The conversation then flows, with people using hands to indicate they’d like to speak – and we try to make sure everyone gets a chance. Sometimes we identify particular questions to think about during a session or even before it.
The RYSE is a new venue for us – it is accessed by a staircase. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements, or other questions about how the events work.
We will keep windows open for ventilation, hand sanitiser is provided, and we ask people who are ill to stay away (whether they are ill with covid or something else). Attendees do not generally wear masks but we will be respectful to anyone who chooses to and other members may wear masks at request of other attendees – let us know your preferences in advance.
On Saturday 24th June 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm at The RYSE, 2 Bath St, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss The Solutions Are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution From Below, by Peter Gelderloos. The book looks at how “grassroots networks of local communities are working to realise their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction”. On this webpage you can find a link to buy the book at a discount, free resources, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue.
You can buy a copy of the book from the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop with a 12% discount by using this link. After adding the book to your ‘basket’, view your basket where there is an option to enter a ‘Coupon code’. Add the code “StroudRadical23” and click/tap “Apply coupon”. The book will then cost £14.95, saving you £2.04 or 12%. You can collect the book from shops in Nailsworth, Tetbury or at the Chalford Village shop, or delivered for an additional cost of £3.50.
This discussion is part our series on climate change, but you are welcome to join the discussion even if you cannot make the other events. You are also welcome even if you haven’t read the book or the free section of it available below – to listen to the discussion and ask questions.
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.
Free resources
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below:
60 minute audio interview with the author from The Poor Prole’s Almanac podcast – exploring the concept of community-building, the power of utopia, and what kind of tools are at our disposal to find ways to gum up the system destroying the ecosystem
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist writer and movement participant. He is the author of Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation.
In The Solutions Are Already Here, “Gelderloos argues that international governmental responses to the climate emergency are structurally incapable of solving the crisis. But there is hope.
Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realise their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.
Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalised to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.”
‘Few books are as honest, inclusive and based on so much experience of committed social and ecological struggle. The Solutions Are Already Here opens doorways to a world so many young activists want to know and understand, and reminds so many more that now is the time to act’ – Dr. Alexander Dunlap, Centre for Development & the Environment, University of Oslo
About Stroud Radical Reading Group events and the venue
Our events are free to attend, though we will collect donations to cover the costs of venue hire on a donate-what-you-can-afford basis. We try to ensure the discussions are welcoming to new people, including people who have never been to a reading group before – and you don’t have to have been to university. You don’t even have to have read any of the book – you can just come along and listen to the discussion. Some free resources including a sample chapter we’ll focus our discussion on are included above, and we’d encourage people to read/listen to as much as they can ahead of the session.
James facilitates the sessions, which we start and finish with everyone having a short time to introduce themselves, and mention something that struck them about the reading or which they’d like to discuss. The conversation then flows, with people using hands to indicate they’d like to speak – and we try to make sure everyone gets a chance. Sometimes we identify particular questions to think about during a session or even before it.
The RYSE is a new venue for us – it is accessed by a staircase. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements, or other questions about how the events work.
We will keep windows open for ventilation, hand sanitiser is provided, and we ask people who are ill to stay away (whether they are ill with covid or something else). Attendees do not generally wear masks but we will be respectful to anyone who chooses to and other members may wear masks at request of other attendees – let us know your preferences in advance.
We’ll host three events exploring issues related to climate change between May and July – all 7.30-9.30pm but on different nights of the week and at a couple of different venues. All events are free and everyone is welcome, as ever – you don’t need to have read the book to come along and listen. Full information and free resources are available via the links below.
For the first half of 2023, we will host a series looking at fascism and antifascism, both historically and in the present. You do not need to attend all the sessions in the series to come to or get something out of this session, though of course we recommend coming along to as many as you can!
Each of the events has it’s own page on the website, where you can find full informaiton, free sample chapters and audiovisual materials, and links to buy discounted copies of the books.
Our events are free to attend, though we will collect donations to cover the costs of venue hire on a donate-what-you-can-afford basis. We try to ensure the discussions are welcoming to new people, including people who have never been to a reading group before – and you don’t have to have been to university (contact us if there is something we can do to help welcome you). You don’t even have to have read any of the book – you can just come along and listen to the discussion (we of course encourage people to read/listen to as much as they can ahead of the session, but what’s important is learning together). And if you can’t get there for 7.30pm, don’t worry – turn up when you can and join in.
Please bear in mind that these books include, as a necessary part of their content, quotations of or descriptions of vile antisemitism and other racism, bigotry and violence.
All the sessions are held on Wednesdays, once a month, from 7.30-9.30pm – full dates below. We will discuss:
The Exchange has step-free access. We will keep windows open for ventilation, hand sanitiser is provided, and we ask people who are ill to stay away (whether they are ill with covid or something else). Attendees do not generally wear masks but we will be respectful to anyone who chooses to and other members may wear masks at request of other attendees – let us know your preferences in advance. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements, or other questions about how the events work.
Publicity
Help us publicise the event by downloading a poster, printing it out and sticking it up somewhere!
This discussion will be the fifth and final of a monthly series looking at antifascism. You do not need to attend previous sessions in the series to come to or get something out of this session, though of course we recommend coming along to the other sessions too (if you’ve heard about them in time).
Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.
Information about White Skin, Black Fuel from the publishers Verso:
“What does the rise of the far right mean for the battle against climate change? In the first study of the far right’s role in the climate crisis, White Skin, Black Fuel presents an eye-opening sweep of a novel political constellation, revealing its deep historical roots. Fossil-fuelled technologies were born steeped in racism. No one loved them more passionately than the classical fascists. Now right-wing forces have risen to the surface, some professing to have the solution—closing borders to save the nation as the climate breaks down. Epic and riveting, White Skin, Black Fuel traces a future of political fronts that can only heat up.”
About the Zetkin Collective
The Zetkin Collective is a group of scholars and activists working on the political ecology of the far right. It was formed around the Human Ecology division at Lund University in the summer of 2018. Conducting research in their native languages, the contributing authors to the book White Skin, Black Fuel are: Irma Allen, Anna Bartfai, Bernadette Barth, Lise Benoist, Julia Bittencourt Costa Moreira, Dounia Boukaouit, Clàudia Custodio, Philipa Olivia Dige, Ilaria di Meo, George Edwards, Morten Hesselbjerg, Ståle Holgersen, Claire Lagier, Andreas Malm, Sonja Pietiläinen, Daria Rivin, Line Skovlund Larsen, Luzia Strasser, Laudy van den Heuvel, Meike Vedder and Anoushka Eloise Zoob Carter.
About Stroud Radical Reading Group events and the venue
Our events are free to attend, though we will collect donations to cover the costs of venue hire on a donate-what-you-can-afford basis. We try to ensure the discussions are welcoming to new people, including people who have never been to a reading group before – and you don’t have to have been to university. You don’t even have to have read any of the book – you can just come along and listen to the discussion. Some free resources including a sample chapter we’ll focus our discussion on are included below though, and we’d encourage people to read/listen to as much as they can ahead of the session.
The Exchange has step-free access. We will keep windows open for ventilation, hand sanitiser is provided, and we ask people who are ill to stay away (whether they are ill with covid or something else). Attendees do not generally wear masks but we will be respectful to anyone who chooses to and other members may wear masks at request of other attendees – let us know your preferences in advance. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements, or other questions about how the events work.
Stroud Radical Reading Group 