Since I've already hooked you in with my neologistic title I'll get straight to the point. Reading groups where we all make long term commitments to read a chapter of a specific book every week and then post in a thread about it always fail miserably. So instead this is a reading group where we read different short texts over periods of three or four days (Timing is negotiable but we're trying to keep this short and snappy as possible in every respect in order to keep the attention of all you kids with your Xstations and your playcubes and your gameboy advanced sex editions).
Rather than setting up some thread at the end of each one which will inevitably never get beyond the first three or four posts a fair bit of the discussion of this stuff will occur via Skype. If you don't have Skype, or don't want people knowing your proper Skype with all your actual details, remember that the reason you're participating in this thing is that you're a troubled Generation Y product of our instant access consumer society who was using the internet before you were breastfeeding. If you don't know how to set up a disposable hotmail and create a new Skype account with fake details then your mind isn't yet eroded enough for this project to be of much value to you.
To save you the trouble of excercising your brains too much and risk losing concentration before the thing has even begun, your wise and benevolent overlords have already chosen the first text that we'll be pouring over:
Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, December 1846It's a letter in which Marx gives Annenkov his impressions on first reading Proudhon's book 'System of Economical Contradictions'. A bit like the Poverty of Philosophy only that particular work is probably a bit too much for your TV saturated brains to take. Though if you're interested in deepening your study, the
chapter on Method from that book would probably serve as a decent companion piece.
I've also been advised by the Grand Magus ZeroNo Excalibus Where to inform you that if we're feeling generous we might even discuss how the contents of the text relate to 'current events', since we hear that the proles in this vicinity are into that kind of thing.
My Skype username for the purposes of this group is zanthorus. PM telling me who you are before you add me so I know I'm not just adding some random spambots. Post in this thread if you want to make suggestions for reading material or comment on any other aspects of the overall structure of this project.
