Matteo Pasquinelli, Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers / Institute of Network Cultures, December 2008.
ISBN 9789056626631 © 2008, the author
Paperback, 240 pp., ill. (b/w), 14×21 cm.
About the book
After a decade of digital fetishism, the spectres of the financial and energy crisis have also affected new media culture and brought into question the autonomy of networks. Yet activism and the art world still celebrate Creative Commons and the ‘creative cities’ as the new ideals for the Internet generation. Unmasking the animal spirits of the commons, Matteo Pasquinelli identifies the key social conflicts and business models at work behind the rhetoric of Free Culture. The corporate parasite infiltrating file-sharing networks, the hydra of gentrification in ‘creative cities’ such as Berlin and the bicephalous nature of the Internet with its pornographic underworld are three untold dimensions of contemporary ‘politics of the common’. Against the latent puritanism of authors like Baudrillard and Zizek, constantly quoted by both artists and activists, Animal Spirits draws a conceptual ‘book of beasts’. In a world system shaped by a turbulent stock market, Pasquinelli unleashes a politically incorrect grammar for the coming generation of the new commons.
About the author
Matteo Pasquinelli is an Amsterdam-based writer and researcher at the Queen Mary University of London and has an activist background in Italy. He edited the collection Media Activism: Strategies and Practices of Independent Communication (2002) and co-edited C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). Since 2000, he has been editor of the mailing list Rekombinant.
Book presentations
- Amsterdam, 20 January 2009 @ De Waag, Theatrum Anatomicum. With: Sebastian Olma, Merijn Oudenampsen, Geert Lovink.
- Torino, 1 April, 2009 @ Share Campus, DAMS University. With: Bruce Sterling, Luca Barbeni.
Reviews
- Gigi Roggero, “Oltre ogni speranza negli spiriti animali del capitalismo digitale”, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Il Manifesto, 4 Feb 2009 [in Italian].
- Jussi Parikka, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Leonardo reviews, 1 May 2009.
- Luciana Parisi, “Uncommon Bestiary”, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Mute, 19 May 2009.
- Jason Read, “I am an Animal, You’re an Animal Too: Matteo Pasquinelli’s Animal Spirits”, Unemployed Negativity, 1 Jun 2009.
- Arie Altena, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Metropolis n. 3, June/July 2009 [in Dutch].
- Paolo Pedercini, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, Neural magazine, 3 Aug 2009 [in English and Italian].
- Willem van Weelden, review of Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons, in: J. Seijdel and L. Melis (eds), Open #18 – 2030: War Zone Amsterdam, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009.
Downloads
- Download Introduction [PDF]
- Download Table of contents [PDF]
- Download Acknowledgements [PDF]
Order
- To order a copy: www.naipublishers.nl
- To request a review copy, please contact me and Barbera van Kooij at NAi.
- Available also on Amazon (.com, .uk, .de, .jp, etc.) and online bookstores.
Disclaimer
Not to be mistaken for a latecomer ; ) with a mediocre cover such as: George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, Princeton University Press, March 2009.