Molecular red: theory for the anthropocene

"Of all the 'liberation movements' of the twentieth century, the one that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams did not liberate a class or a gender or a race. It liberated an element: carbon. Today, the 'carbon liberation front' threatens to crash the entire climate system. In Molecular Red, Wark looks for a way to understand, and perhaps even combat, this implacable force. He revisits the work of Alexander Bogdanov--Lenin's rival--and the great proletkult writer and engineer Andrei Platonov. In this reading, the Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for our time. Moving toward the present, Wark reads Donna Haraway's cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian utopia as powerful resources for thinking what the carbon liberation front has wrought"--

"First published in paperback by Verso 2016"--Title page verso.

Previously published in hardcover in 2015.

Part I. Labor and Nature -- 1. Alexander Bogdanov : Workings of the World -- Lenin's Rival -- Red Mars -- The Philosophy of Living Experience -- Toward a Comradely Poetics of Knowledge and Labor -- Red Hamlet : From Shakespeare to Marx -- From Marx to Proletkult -- From Dialectical Materialism to Tektology -- Tektology as Metaphoric Machine -- Blood Exchange -- 2. Andrey Platonov : A Proletarian Writing -- Son of Proletkult -- Chevengur as Historical Novel -- Chevengur as Utopia -- Foundation Pit : Impossible Infrastructure -- Happy Moscow : Superstructural People -- The Soul of Man Under Communism -- Socialist Tragedy -- The Factory of Literature -- Part II. Science and Utopia -- 3. Cyborg Donna Haraway : Techno-science Worlds and Beings -- The California Ideology -- From Mach to Feyerabend -- From Marx to Haraway -- From Bogdanov to Barad -- Climate Science as Tektology -- 4. Kim Stanley Robinson : The Necessity of Creation -- Return to Red Mars -- Green Mars : Tektology as Revolution -- Blue Mars : After Utopia -- Conclusion.