Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell

by Philippe Pignarre, Isabelle Stengers, Andrew Goffey (Translator)

Capitalist Sorcery neither sets out a new political programme nor offers a new theory. Rather, it aims to encourage all those who are resistant to resignation and inertia, whose stories of partial successes must be told, celebrated and shared.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Politics

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 18, 1999

Reviews

[kinslee ♉︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a very fun and interesting read and I think anyone not meeting the concept where its at is missing the point of the entire text. there are flaws, to be sure, but none so glaring I feel it diminishes the main point. overall, this non-theory theory does a perfectly good job of analyzing modern problems in an anti-capitalist lens.

not very many good or lengthy reviews of this on here, and I don’t have much else to say, so I included a bunch of quotes from the text that I feel are very well made points.

yes, this book is hard to read, but if you take it in chunks not only is it easier to stomach, it’s easier to fully digest and relate all parts of it.


“It is a matter of defending strength and joy against every form of mobilisation that would inspire mistrust towards all those places where one thinks ‘too much’. If it is not protected, the cry ‘all together’ is quickly transformed into an incantation.”

“If one said to them 'but your goddess is only a fiction', they would doubtless smile and would ask us if we are among those who believe that fiction is powerless, or that behind every fiction there is something that should be explained in acceptable, scientific, rational or intellectually reliable terms. In terms that reassure. And straightaway this demand to be reassured puts us on the side of the believers, those who believe that they can classify, that they can separate out the 'true' causes from those that would only be superstition or would refer only to psychological, sociological, even psychoanalytical causes, causes that always explain weakness, never becoming. What makes people uncomfortable, what is difficult to accept is that witches are pragmatic, radically pragmatic: truly experimental technicians, experimenting with effects and consequences. We have the habit of looking 'behind' the technique for what would justify it or provide a guarantee ... but a guarantee against what?”

“It will be said: what can a few sociologists do against what is on the horizon? Against what will close up the interstice that might be opened up by the discovery that citizens are capable of constructing a position?
Because what is indeed predictable is the professionalisation of the consultancy processes, with the reign of blind procedure - the procedures have been followed, so the result is legitimate. A new generation of who minions is being prepared, those who will be the 'co-ordinators' who will 'responsibilise', who will 'structure the debate', who will 'promote consensus'. We say that those who object in this way contribute to the closure of the microfissure, to the perpetuation of the anti-politics of the probable, against the political creation of the possible.”


“This does not signify that it is necessary to take the converse position, passing from disqualification to identification with a wisdom that we have lost or destroyed. We are accustomed enough to that, oscillating between triumphalism and guilt, between arrogance and the cult of what that arrogance has destroyed; and to the usual disappointment that results from the idea that it is enough to give the kiss of peace to what we wrongly defined as a hostile monster, turning the enemy into a friend. That would still be to think of ourselves as being the only true actors, capable of making and of unmaking. In order to escape from the hold of this dream of grandeur, we will say that in the first place, to reconquer supposes an apprenticeship implying a certain humility: to learn to renew one's links with ancient practices that capitalism has dishonoured and which we have triumphantly believed we can do without. Practices that spoke of prudence in a fearsome world, of the possibility of creation despite the permanent probability of war.”


“That is why the slightly contemptuous qualification that is sometimes reserved for so-called 'pre-scientific' or ‘non-scientific' techniques, of ‘recipes', is suitable for these techniques. In effect, what recipes are usually
reproached with is that they do not have the power of explaining why they ‘work' in terms that transcend the situation in which they ‘work'. They do not have the power to describe the situation in a mode that is
immediately generalisable to other situations. In other words, recipes are always 'minoritarian'. But that is precisely why they are a matter of relay (or of stealing): they cannot be borrowed without also being taken
up again differently, reinvented, modified, or if one tries another recipe, interrogated so as to learn what it is a good idea to pay attention to. We therefore have to reformulate our statement. Political creation, the people of relayers, calls for a culture of recipes, which aren't assimilable to theories. Recipes, which could very well also be what a group that experiments ought to make itself able to recount, in a pragmatic mode. This would mean being interested as much by their successes as their failures in order that they catalyse imaginations and fabricate an experience for 'the milieu', which avoids the need for each new group to have to 'reinvent everything' from scratch.”


“Maybe every political creation needs those who it brings together to know how to make exist the fact that they need help in order for the situation to oblige them to think/feel. The circle of the pragmatics of witchcraft is a response to this need. It makes a situation exist that is irreducible to the 'free expression' of individual opinions. To cast the circle is to fabricate a closure, a separation, the space of an experience that is irreducible to individual psychology, and which much rather puts in question those who call themselves individuals: all those who are brought together - big-mouthed or anxious, paranoid or plaintive, shit stirrers or thirsty for understanding - are in the first place all 'infected' or 'poisoned' equally, although in different modes, and all equally need what none among them is able to produce alone.”

[Lauringui · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este libro es un libro difícil. No se si es un problema de traducción pero muchas frases entre los párrafos quedan inconexas o manejan una ironía que pierde su efecto desde la perspectiva sudamericana. El contexto francés, el puntapié del libro "la revuelta de Seattle" y otros acontecimientos que relata quedan inconclusos para quienes leemos sin ese background.

Y, aunque no tiene soluciones mágicas ni alternativas salvadoras, sí se nota que está organizado y en su contexto (es un libro que se editó en 2005 por primera vez) su impacto puede haber sido distinto. Ahora creo que no dice nada novedoso, quizás invita a pensar nuevas formas de nombrar el sistema que habitamos. Interroga en la búsqueda de interpelar. Muchas veces falla, porque hace preguntas que, al menos en Latinoamérica, nos venimos haciendo desde hace muchos años (no sé si serían preguntas populares en 2005 pero desde 2010, seguro)

Lo más interesante para mi: los últimos dos capítulos y las notas del final de Anne Vilèle que reorganizan el discurso y parecen tener menos problemas de interconexión entre oraciones. La tosquedad del texto en general, pareciera como si habláramos con dos franceses que saben español, pero que no lo hablan de manera fluida. Eso creo que es lo peor del libro, la imposibilidad de seguirlo muchas veces.

En general, es un panorama de la visión europea de ciertos problemas con el sistema, que grita y proclama interseccionalidad usando otras palabras (intersticio, empowerment, reclaim, entre otras). No deja de remarcar la necesidad de que la gente piense (la gente que no tiene hambre, al menos) pero se queda ahí. A little disappointing :/

[Foppe]

I found this book quite a frustrating read for largely stylistic reasons. For related reasons, I am as yet unable to say how fruitful I think their approach. Having said that, this review captures fairly well why I think the book is interesting. As such, let me (for now) simply quote a little bit from the review:

The argument, which presumably draws on Deleuze and especially Guattari’s work on “machinic enslavement” and “apparatuses of capture,” claims that capitalism does not reproduce itself thanks to the powers of ideology/illusion or alienation. Ideology/illusion separates a theater of appearances from an objective and truthful reality, as if by a screen (43), while alienation implies the existence of non-alienated intellectuals who are going to allow the masses to “become conscious” of the forces oppressing them. (106) By contrast, capitalist sorcery operates by “capture,” through a culture of “spells” that immobilise thinking and paralyse collective action. What anti-capitalist politics needs then is not so much demystification or dis-alienation, but a counter-magic capable of protecting its practitioners and breaking the spell.

[Antônio Xerxenesky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needed more sorcery/counterspells (really) for a 5 star rating (I'm serious).

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Llegir a Stengers és terriblement frustrant perquè sembla tenir una capacitat innata per basar les seves reflexions en aconteixements relativament irrellevants, als quals dona voltes i més voltes. D'alguna manera, té l'efecte d'anestesiar-me, de contra-suscitar atenció. Tot i això, el que més m'agrada d'ella és la seva clara priorització a un art de l'atenció immanent, a la negociació ontològica, al parar per pensar, i també la seva voluntat d'erradicar el pensament únic científic i capitalista. Al final, la part sobre bruixes i màgia és de les més curtes, i tot i això de les més interessants.

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im Buch „La sorcellerie capitaliste“ wird gefragt, ob wir an Zauberei glauben – eine Frage, die zunächst wie eine Provokation oder Metapher klingt, sich aber als präziser Angriff auf die Selbstsicherheit des modernen Denkens entpuppt. Im sechsten Kapitel, „Croyez-vous à la sorcellerie ?“, zeigen Isabelle Stengers und Philippe Pignarre, dass der Glaube an das „Natürliche“ und die Ablehnung des „Übernatürlichen“ selbst Teil eines kulturellen Zaubers ist, der den Kapitalismus als einzig mögliche Realität erscheinen lässt. Indem sie den Begriff der „Sorcellerie“ aufgreifen, entlarven sie die westliche Tendenz, alle anderen Formen des Wissens und Erlebens zu pathologisieren oder zu folklorisieren. Das „System sorcier“, das sie im Kapitalismus erkennen, ist kein Aberglaube, sondern eine Struktur der Gefangennahme: eine Macht, die nicht durch Ideologie, sondern durch Gewöhnung und vermeintliche Rationalität wirkt. Das Kapitel ist damit eine Einladung, die eigenen Denkreflexe zu prüfen – und die Frage, was es heute heißt, „seine Seele zu verkaufen“, nicht vorschnell als bloß metaphorisch abzutun. Insgesamt zeigt das Buch, dass bloße Kritik am Kapitalismus nicht genügt: Es fordert dazu auf, Praktiken zu entwickeln, die seinen „Zauber“ tatsächlich brechen können.

[Leo Ledgard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretende ser un libro introductorio al capitalismo y no lo es. No recomendado para personas sin conocimientos previos del capitalismo. Utiliza autores poco conocidos a excepción de Marx. Los planteamientos en epistemología son contradictorios a las investigaciones de la mayoría de los autores en epistemología. La relación con la brujería confunde en vez de aclarar o generar un mayor entendimiento de los conceptos.

[Toni Bones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this hard to enjoy because of the writing, it had a great concept that seemed hidden behind the wall of dry intellectualism. It's a slog is what I'm saying but it could have been wonderful, I love the discussion but I am having to re-write all of what I learned so people can enjoy it. If ideas are good enough to think, why not make then pleasurable too.

[Karina Escalante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si es a veces un poco difícil de leer. Al final convence pero cuesta un poco pillarlo

[Olivia A]

It was definitely a book and I definitely read it

[Sara G · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book that doesn't really go too in depth on the topics its covering, it's incredibly inaccessible.

[Mona Kareem]

pretentious book attempting to 'think aloud' about methods of resisting capitalism. happy am done with it. for good

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hell yeah.

[Octa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great ideas but very, very arduous writing.