What we are all about:

Symbolization arranges and orders society, human subjectivity, and our sense of the world. Symbolization is usually less something we do on purpose than something that is done to us as we are subjectivized within this societal order.

Symbolization includes the presuppositional frameworks, practical models, scientific understanding, unconscious dynamics, and matrices of intelligibility that subtend, reify, and inform our practical and theoretical efforts. Symbolization frames and assigns meaning, but more importantly, it is the conductor of habitus, the directives programmed by das Man, by the big Other, and by a social order in which our time-energy and desire are subjected to domination in the forms of perpetual servitude to malicious masters and faceless institutions, self-enslavement, and ideology.

As subjects of ideology who seek liberation, as workers who seek time-energy outside of work, and as researchers who want to start thinking outside of the confines of specialized and highly controlled institutions, New Symbolization is both a process and goal. It means acquiring the conceptual means necessary for personal and collective liberation.

To even begin, we need both philosophy and theory, the history of ideas and the critique of history. Such a process/goal is itself a way of being in the world that will require continual familiarization with, and critique of, everything-science, art, languages, the social sciences-but not just willy-nilly, eclectic, or curiously detached, no! The vision is to experiment with methodology and the sometimes-systematic application of different concepts, lenses, frames, and lines of interrogation.

Our interests take us "everywhere" but we are mapping the contours of desire, ideology, and subjectivity in the process. As this develops, we will gain a new perspective, but not just any perspective.

Having a perspective without philosophy and theory is pure ideology. The perspective(s) that will develop and proliferate from New Symbolization are only just the beginning of what's ultimately necessary for what we are called to do.

These are just footholds on the journey, marks along the path, messages to fellow travelers and collaborators. If you are just a tourist who does not seek to go deeper and break from the ruts everyone is in, if you just want it easy, to take the beaten path, then this is probably not for you. But if you are trying to think and act in ways that will break beyond the confines of systemic stultification, psychological gerrymandering, and ideology, then welcome!

We've got work to do

Dave AKA Pleeb