Cured Quail

31/07/2024

Just published online from our second volume!

Ross Wolfe on how abstract art gave sensuous form to the real abstraction at the heart of capitalist society, with attention towards the work of Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian.

Art and Social Reality: Historical Origins of Aesthetic Abstraction

https://curedquail.com/Art-and-Social-Reality

12/07/2024

Yet another banger just published from our upcoming Vol. 3:

The Force of Music: On the Genesis of Social Obedience
by Iris Dankemeyer

“Because the internalized compulsion to work against the threat of disintegration is not decreasing but increasing, bodies without labor are longing to be welded together and integrated. The system of leisure no longer compensates for labor, but effectively replaces it: the DJ acts as a slave driver, the associated sensuality evinces the body’s fitness and willingness to perform. Discomfort at the culturally demanded renunciation of impulse is no longer sublimated, but instead turns into a masochistic desire for direct suppression. Techno fulfills this desire with rhythmic flogging and up to 150 beats per minute.”

https://curedquail.com/The-Force-of-Music

Help bring Vol. 3 to print by preordering your copy here:

https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-3-spring-2024

28/06/2024

To help build momentum and generate preorders for Vol. 3, we are now intermittently publishing essays from Vol. 2:

For a Dialectical Concept of Culture by Marcel Stoetzler broadly examines why civilization can only fulfill what culture has hitherto only promised in vain, once no one ever goes hungry again.

https://curedquail.com/For-a-Dialectical-Concept-of-Culture

“Culture is the promise of emancipation, square meals and happiness; but then again, culture is garbage.”

Help bring Vol. 3 into a world hardly deserving by preordering your copy here:

https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-3-spring-2024

15/06/2024

Enough delay. To help generate more preorders to send Vol. 3 to print, we are now publishing a few of the essays online.

The first is a balance sheet on climate catastrophe:

Managing Decline by Jacob Blumenfeld

https://curedquail.com/Managing-Decline

"The choice would then no longer be between socialism and barbarism but between inhabitable barbarism and uninhabitable barbarism. […] We are inheriting a broken world, we need to let it down gently. We no longer need to abolish it, since it’s already abolishing itself. Our task in the present and the future is rather to manage its decline."

Help bring the volume into the world by placing a preorder now!

https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-3-spring-2024

04/03/2023

"The specific moment of frustration that mutilates individuals today and prevents them from individuation is no longer the family prohibition, but the coldness that increases as the family becomes more riddled with holes."

First English translation of Theodor W. Adorno’s “On the Problem of the Family” (1955)

Endnotes is a communist theoretical journal produced by a discussion group of the same name based in Britain and the US.

03/03/2023

G.M. Tamás (1948-2023).

21/02/2023

Qualitative Break: Why a Radical Critique of Work is Necessary Today

by Norbert Trenkle

https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2023/02/21/qualitative-break-why-a-radical-critique-of-work-is-necessary-today/

"The negation of labour, then, is much more than the simple matter of a quantitative reduction in working hours, as proposed, for example, by today’s technological utopians. Rather, the negation of labour is necessarily a qualitative break with all the reified forms of activity that constitute capitalist domination and its social relations—and a necessary precondition for social emancipation itself."

Norbert Trenkle October 13 2022 Translated by John de Plume Originally published at In capitalist society, the compulsion to work is fundamental. To survive in this society we either work for ourse…

06/02/2023

https://www.commonnotions.org/the-self-devouring-society

Everyone can feel that the world is getting angrier. The Self-Devouring Society provides an original and rigorous explanation of why.

04/01/2023

Fu**ed up a holiday gift for that special someone?

F**k it up further by purchasing them a copy of Cured Quail Vol. 2: https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-2

Not many copies left!

Cured Quail is a journal of critical theory that takes seriously the aesthetic, social and conceptual problems of illiteracy. However, illiteracy...

29/12/2022

New, dynamite issue of Insurgent Notes is out:

http://insurgentnotes.com/

25/11/2022

The Ideal of the Broken Down: On the Neapolitan Approach to Things Technical

by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

Alfred Sohn-Rethel Originally published in English at Hard Crackers In Naples, technical devices are, as a rule, broken: it is only under exceptional circumstances and due to some astonishing accid…

21/06/2022

"If it is argued—and it has, indeed, been argued against us—that what is most pragmatic today is to enter politics, to get organised in some left-wing group or a local union, to make an impact from within, then the pragmatism of this position is highly relative and conditional. Even a straightjacket might keep you warm during a winter’s night."

The end of an era. Introduction to the final issue of riff-raff:

https://www.riff-raff.se/texts/en/riff-raff-10-introduction

13/06/2022

What save half-truths, gross simplifications, or trivia can, in fact, be communicated to that semi-literate mass audience which popular democracy has summoned into the market place?

"The Retreat From the Word" by George Steiner, 1961

https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2022/06/13/the-retreat-from-the-word/

by George Steiner, 1961 I. The Apostle tells us that in the beginning was the Word. He gives us no assurance as to the end. It is appropriate that he should have used the Greek language to express …

18/05/2022

The perpetuating abandonment of almost everything that makes damaged life endurable — social relationships, spontaneity, transgression, or escape from the daily grind — has become a difficult burden for many to bear.

https://endnotes.org.uk/other_texts/en/florian-bossert-viral-attack-on-fragile-subjects

Viral Attack on Fragile Subjects by Florian Bossert

18/03/2022

»Seit die Pandemie die Welt fest im Griff hat, ist der virale Schrecken zur Normalität geworden. Was den Alltag vor der Seuche noch aushaltbar machte, ist zwischenzeitlich dem Imperativ der Distanz zum Opfer gefallen. Fluchtpunkt der Impfkampagnen ist nur die Rückkehr zur gewohnten Tristesse. Die rapide Entwicklung der dafür nötigen Impfstoffe ist Ausdruck eines gigantischen Fortschritts der Produktivkräfte, der aber ständig unterlaufen wird durch die praktische Anwendung des Wissens über Naturprozesse unter den Maßgaben von Profit und nationalem Standort.«

Inhalt:

■ Editorial
■ Fliehkräfte, Ordnungsmächte. Überlegungen zum Staat in der Corona-Pandemie
■ Desaster und Dilemma. Reflexionen über ökologische Katastrophe und Klimabewegung
■ Der Kranke Planet
■ Kapitalistische Krise und islamistische Gegenrevolution
■ Zur Debatte um die Weltcommune
■ Aufhebung der Familie

Kosmoprolet 6 gibt es hier:
kosmoprolet.org/de/kosmoprolet-6 | 204 Seiten | 5 € | 6 CHF

WiederverkäuferInnen können zu ermässigten Preisen bestellen:
kosmoprolet.org/contact

23/02/2022

Le nouveau parochialisme et la vieille critique des exigences tronquées de la pratique, par Frank Grohmann / Editions Crise & Critique

La tentative, par la théorie critique, de mettre en relation les catégories de la critique de l’économie marxienne et celles de la critique freudienne de la conscience en est finalement restée à une « émulsion théorique », selon Robert Kurz, en raison même de cette aporie — parce que la critique n’atteint pas de cette manière la « forme sujet » qui sous-tend l’objectivité aliénée.

http://www.palim-psao.fr/2022/02/le-nouveau-parochialisme-et-la-vieille-critique-des-exigences-tronquees-de-la-pratique-par-frank-grohmann.html

Le nouveau parochialisme et la vieille critique des exigences tronquées de la pratique Frank Grohmann « Il existe actuellement, notamment au sein de la gauche et au-delà, une tendance à recourir à la psychanalyse pour expliquer tout ce dont la théorie...

23/01/2022

Antithesi's 'The Reality of Denial and the Denial of Reality' has now been translated into German by the good people over at : https://communaut.org/de/das-leugnen-der-realitaet-und-die-realitaet-des-leugnens

In manchen Ländern haben sich neben Querdenkerinnen, Esoterikern und Rechtsextremen auch Teile des antiautoritären Milieus gegen Maßnahmen im Umgang mit der Covid-19-Pandemie gestellt oder die weltumspannende Gesundheitskrise gleich ganz in Zweifel gezogen. Indem die Autorinnen und Autoren der Fr...

16/01/2022

In memory of a friend

"The history of communism is the memory of individuals. There are decedents and hypercomplex lineages as a result of widespread polyandry and polygynie. After the communist revolution there is no more society."

https://endnotes.org.uk/other_texts/en/alain-in-memoriam-b-l

Endnotes is a communist theoretical journal produced by a discussion group of the same name based in Britain and the US.

09/12/2021

The Reality of Denial and the Denial of Reality

by Antithesi / cognord

https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2021/12/09/the-reality-of-denial-and-the-denial-of-reality/

Antithesi / cognord Download PDF This text was written and published in Greek in September 2021. It was meant as a polemic intervention in a debate around the questions of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the…

08/12/2021

Some of us sat down with Bookforum for an interview. Bear witness as we state our case:

"Everyone wants things to get back to normal while being fully aware that everything is forever changed. Yet the damages inflicted upon human beings as of late, not the scars but the open wounds still fresh, both socially and psychologically, haven’t yet received the full balance sheet they deserve."

https://www.bookforum.com/interviews/a-new-journal-uses-obstacles-to-critically-evaluate-culture-24743

A new journal uses obstacles to critically evaluate culture – Sasha Frere-Jones

04/09/2021

Book launch tonight!

28/08/2021

The State as a Work of Art

https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2021/08/28/the-state-as-a-work-of-art/

Originally published in Greek: The farcicality of those leaders who govern us today is the measurement of their collective supremacy against us. The more the capitalist system develops its governab…

23/08/2021

Although all of the essays are now available on our website (https://curedquail.com/Volume-1), we've also acquired some additional stock of Volume 1 available again for purchase: https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-1-january-2018-224-pages

Cured Quail is a journal of critical theory that takes seriously the aesthetic, social and conceptual problems of illiteracy. However, illiteracy...

28/07/2021

Better late than never. All essays from Volume 1 are now readily available on our website: https://curedquail.com/Volume-1.

21/07/2021

Benjamin Crais reviews Cured Quail Volume 2 for Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/19401_cured-quail-volume-ii-by-juan-chabrier-veronika-russell-and-eric-john-russell-eds-reviewed-by-benjamin-crais/

"What has been characterized as the 'conservative' position of many of Cured Quail’s authors is also its strength: its unrelentingly negative account of the enforced rituals of debasement and aesthetic impoverishment that constitute much of contemporary culture."

28/06/2021

We are pleased to announce that Little Black Cart is now distributing Cured Quail in the US/Canada. If you're from those areas and would like to order, follow the link: https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=841.

Do NOT be fooled by the image of the cover this volume from the UK is very pretty if perhaps sporting a cover too subtle for online This was printed in 2020 and the opening one line quotation from Baldesar Castiglione There are some illnesses that only grow worse the more they are treated is one for...

18/06/2021

What explains our current theoretical needs and preoccupations with respect to the human psyche? How can we account for new symptoms that abound – compulsion without cathexis, echolalia, sexual anxiety – within the framework of the borderline personality organization, Christopher Lasch’s own inspiration for his sketch of the postwar, narcissistic, new type of human being?

Juan Chabrier ends Volume 2 with a reply to Cured Quail’s psychoanalytic symposium and a theory of dismantling is revived to help explain the burgeoning subject form. Along the way, Chabrier traces the historical eclipse and recent reemergence of psychoanalysis, the waning of neurosis, and the tradition, since Freud, which reveals a psychotic undercurrent to our everyday experience.

As the forty-year-old refrain condemning our culture of narcissism finally becomes a platitude, theories of novelty indeed now come to bore us not because they don’t ring true, but because their conditions are no longer novel. It seems that only in this moment can the faintest call of a genuine analytic social psychology be received anew in the critique of this world.

https://curedquail.com/The-Cave-Where-Echo-Lies

To read the essay in full, order your copy of Cured Quail Vol. 2 here: https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-2

02/03/2021

We are pleased to announce the release of Cured Quail contributor Eric-John Russell's 'Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord', published next week by Bloomsbury: http://bloomsbury.com/9781350157637/

Although prohibitively expensive, you can read the introduction and foreword by Étienne Balibar here: https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/6038b8f8e21b8400014cc099

Revisiting Guy Debord’s seminal work, 'The Society of the Spectacle' (1967), Eric-John Russell breathes new life into a text which directly preceded and informed the revolutionary fervour of May 1968. Deepening the analysis between Debord and Marx by revealing the centrality of Hegel’s speculative logic to both, he traces Debord’s intellectual debt to Hegel in a way that treads new ground for critical theory. Drawing extensively from 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) and 'Science of Logic' (1812), this book illustrates the lasting impact of Debord’s critical theory of twentieth-century capitalism and reveals new possibilities for the critique of capitalism.

Revisiting Guy Debord's seminal work, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Eric-John Russell breathes new life into a text which directly preceded and informed the revolutionary fervour of May 1968. Deepening the analysis between Debord and Marx by revealing the centrality of Hegel's speculative log...

14/02/2021

Cured Quail is pleased to present:

“THE PROFOUND MYSTIFICATION OF THE STATE”

A couplet of brand new essays by Théorie Communiste and Chris Wright.

“Conspiricism in General and the Pandemic in Particular” by Théorie Communiste: https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/conspiricism-in-general-and-the-pandemic-in-particular/

”The Infinite and Finite in the Storming of the US Capitol” by Chris Wright: https://curedquailjournal.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/the-infinite-and-finite-in-the-storming-of-the-us-capitol/

From different perspectives, these new essays complement one another by posing the question of how present social movements relate and position themselves to the state through a logic of conspiracist discourse, revanchism, anti-Semitism and antiblack racism. It is argued that all such phenomena carry with them a profound mystification of the state.

Please help Cured Quail continue to publish new content by purchasing our second Volume: https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-2

Unlike all other leftist rags asking for support, we will remember your first name.

07/02/2021

We are now sold out of Cured Quail Volume 1. However, we are now offering it as a free PDF with any purchase of Volume 2. More details here:

https://curedquail.bigcartel.com/product/cured-quail-volume-2-pdf-of-volume-1

Enjoy the experimental design and beautiful engravings of Rodolphe Bresdin alongside critical essays by the contributors from our inaugural volume!