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Reflecting on 6 years of the87press with Azad Ashim Sharma and Kashif Sharma-Patel
Hythe, Interview, Editorial the 87 press Hythe, Interview, Editorial the 87 press

Reflecting on 6 years of the87press with Azad Ashim Sharma and Kashif Sharma-Patel

Director of the press Azad Ashim Sharma and Head Editor Kashif Sharma-Patel reflect upon six years of the87press. They touch upon the development of the press within the context of the British poetry scene, the perils of professionalisation, structural problems for independent presses, the embattled problem of representation and much more.

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Marx and the Climate Crisis #3: Marx and Climate Change by Sean O’Brien
Lecture the 87 press Lecture the 87 press

Marx and the Climate Crisis #3: Marx and Climate Change by Sean O’Brien

Lecture three now moves to confront what is arguably the greatest issue of our age, the product of a carbon-soaked capitalism, and the terrain on which struggles over energy transition play out: climate change. We’ll begin with a critical account of recent theoretical developments on the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’. We’ll then turn to Marxian counterproposals from environmental geographer Jason W. Moore and ecofeminist philosopher Donna J. Haraway, who suggest we might more accurately name this geological period the ‘capitalocene’. Building on these insights, this lecture concludes by asking where our warming world is headed. What will the political and economic consequences be if we fail to reduce rates of carbon emissions sufficiently to keep future heating levels below the critical 2°C threshold?

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Marx and the Climate Crisis #2: Marx and Energy by Sean O’Brien
Lecture, Marx and the Climate Crisis the 87 press Lecture, Marx and the Climate Crisis the 87 press

Marx and the Climate Crisis #2: Marx and Energy by Sean O’Brien

The second lecture extends our line of inquiry into societal nature relations as it pertains to the problem of energy. At the heart of the relation between capital and climate lies energy. Fossil fuels have been the dominant source of energy powering economic expansion since the industrial revolution. This fossil-fuelled economic development, as we now know for certain, has been responsible for the lion’s share of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, leading to global warming, rising sea levels, ocean acidification and extreme weather events. This lecture draws on work in the Energy Humanities, a cross-disciplinary field of scholarship that highlights the essential contribution that the insights and methods of the humanities bring to bear on the study of our carbon-fuelled modernity and the vital question of transition to cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy. Turning also to recent work on Marx and the critique of energy, including the After Oil collective on ‘petroculture’,Andreas Malm on ‘fossil capital’, and Timothy Mitchell on ‘carbon democracy’, we will develop a theoretical language for the age of carbon modernity.

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