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On this page there’ll be found my most recent articles from all “Categories”.
NEW VITA – https://darkosuvin.com/vitae/vita/
NEW BIBLIOGR. OF D.S. AND SF – https://darkosuvin.com/2026/02/13/two-checklists-of-disseminated-items-that-concern-sf-with-utopian-fiction-or-utopianism-and-a-few-border-items-9200-words/
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FOR A THEORY OF THEATRE: THE PERFORMANCE TEXT AS AUDIENCE-STAGE DIALOG INDUCING A POSSIBLE WORLD (1985 & 2021, 8,700 words)
0. Some Presuppositions;
1. Bakhtinian Dialog and Theatre;
2. On PWs, on Subordinating Communication to Pragmatics, and again on Dialog;
3. The Audience-Stage Dialog as Induction of PWs;
Posted in 2. BRECHT-DRAMA-THEATRE
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IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO (2020, 5,000 words)
Introduction to my book Parables of Freedom and Narrative Logics: Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction and Utopianism, ed. Eric D. Smith, 2 Vols., P. Lang, Oxford 2021.
Abstract: A somewhat autobiographically inclined introduction to a new book of articles and poems 1969-2001 is divided into: 1. How a Young Boy, Age 11 on, Fell in Love with Freedom (Axiology); 2. How a Young Man, Age 15 on, Fell in Love with the Narrative Logic and Transfer of Parable (Epistemology);3. On Some Positions and a New Presupposition of This Text – the need for a (libertarian) Communism 2.0.
Keywords: freedom, parable, communism,
Posted in 1. SF & UTOPIANISM, 3. POLITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Tagged communism, freedom, parables
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CAPITALISM IS NOT BIOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE FOR HOMO SAPIENS: Thots in a Siege (May-Aug. 2020, 3,750 words)
First published as “Thoughts within the Coronising Siege” Political Animal Magazine, http://www.politicalanimalmagazine.com/themes/theory/, also utopian-studies-europe.org/coronising;
A series of fragments from e-mail debates with comrades during the corona lockdown in March ‘20 and a bit after. Sections: A/ long duration prospects, centrally a further mutation of predatory capitalism; B/ short duration: the rulers’ the toggle between disease control and their profits leads to millions of unnecessary deaths, the need collective self-defense (organising) arises. In Europe, the political and financial bureaucracies centrally safeguard business activities; the timid strengthening of State capacities or palliative measures – limited exemptions from the payment of housing, small sums for the poorest – do not sufficiently guarantee the labour and health of the working people, now or in the future. C/ This changes all: possibly hundreds of millions infected are on the horizon if India and the rest of S. Asia, Africa, and Latin America (and Russia?) are counted. Planning for the working people and its welfare, spurned as communist, must be introduced: the choice is to organise or be ground down into a new slavery plus eco-catastrophe. Global capitalism is not biologically sustainable for the species Homo sapiens.
Keywords: Corona; Coronising; Capitalism; Planning; Ecology
RECTIFICATIONS: HOW TO GO ON (2020, 12,850 words)
First published as “How To Go On” in Socialism & Democracy no. 83 (July 2020): The article is divided into On Life and Liberty vs. Capitalism, The Capitalocene Economy of Life (focus on USA and its poor majority), The Political Economy of Vaccines, Upper-class Encroachments on Civil Liberties, and proposals for alternatives
Keywords: covid pandemy, political epistemology, epistemology,. capitalism, capitalocene, US emarginated poor, vaccines, surveillance, First published as “How To Go On” in Socialism & Democracy no. 83 (July 2020).
Posted in 3. POLITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY
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THE HUMAN FACE OF NECESSARY DISCIPLINE (2020, 4,400 words)
Abstract: Review article of J. Dean, Comrade.
Keywords: Jodi Dean, comrade, communism, communist party, discipline, messianism, cognition, exempla
First published as “Jodi Dean’s Comrade” (review article) in Socialism & Democracy no. 83 (July 2020): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080 08854300 .2020.1805263
Posted in 3. POLITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY
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WE HAD A CLASSIC: Notes Defining Predrag Matvejević (2020, 10,700 words)
Japanese Slavic and East European Studies Vol.40. , 2020
A unit in 2 parts:
1/ A necrological look back at PM’s writings and how I encountered them as old friend, with stress on those written after the fall of SFR Yugoslavia, about the “ex” world and what values remain (as in Mediterranean Breviary, The Other Venice, and Daily Bread);
2/ review of a booklet by Tommaso di Francesco, Breviario jugoslavo, 2018, of interviews with PM on ex-Yugoslav affairs curing 20’ years, the main point being that the sins of successors much surpass those of SFR Yugoslavia
Posted in 4. SFR YUGOSLAVIA
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UTOPIA OR BUST: CAPITALOCENE, ANTIUTOPIA (2019, 13,350 words)
Keynote speech at the Utopian Studies Society (Europe) 2019:
Part 1: Where Are We in the Capitalocene;
Part 2. What Existential Antiutopia Means for Us;
Keywords: Capitalocene; utopia; antiutopia; ecocide; totality; epistemology; counterrevolution; violence
ORWELL AND 1984 TODAY: GENIUS AND TUNNEL VISION (2019, 14,500 words)
Orwell, as he himself said, came from a lower, professional service fraction of the English and imperial ruling class that was “simultaneously dominator and dominated” (R. Williams), so that a combination of State and monopoly power became his major nightmare. His horizon was as of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 a revolutionary socialism committed to freedom and equality, opposed both to Labourite social-democracy and to Stalinist pseudo-communism.
I concentrate on 1984, drawing on narratology (its agential system, spacetime descriptions, and composition — “the Winston story,” the “Goldstein excerpts,” and the Appendix on Newspeak) and historical lessons. I conclude that 1984 has an interesting but limited “Tory anarchist” stance and horizon: being revolted against the rulers but not believing the revolt can succeed (in direct polemic with the Communist Manifesto). In Orwell‘s view there are “three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle and the Low,” but the mindless and passive Low reduce this to the Middle against the High, or intellect and impotence vs. cynical power. No economics entails here no class struggle and a fair amount of misogyny. Orwell‘s textural skill was penetrating, but his thematics very limited. Still, he was one of the first to notice the long-duration slide of politics toward fascism is, even if he drew a wrong consequence from it, as evident in his early conflation of Stalinism and Nazism into the untenable “totalitarianism.” 1984 remains a concerned, appealing, and in some ways useful text that lacks wisdom.
Darko Suvin 