Introducing Dialogues Journal

Call for Submissions for Issue 1

The realm of the journal is a realm that often calls forward a distinct sense of futility, at least in its usual manifestation as a sort of academic commodity, consumed by others within the circles around the journal, and constructed as a career building mechanism. In this form the concept of the journal is meaningless. There have been a myriad of responses to this form, and a rising chorus of rigorous journals that are attempting to resist this tendency. Dialogues aims to be a part of this trajectory, to build a project that is simultaneously rigorous and resistant to the meaninglessness of internalized academic discourse. But, in doing so we intend to engage in this sort of project in a way that is divergent from other projects that exist within this vein, and in doing so, fill a gap that we perceive as currently existing.

In attempting to introduce a project that will continue into the foreseeable future we are always presented with a distinct difficulty. On the one hand there is a compulsion to want to define the project, to discuss the reasons that the project is being done, and the logic behind the structrure of something that is meant to exist in a specific form, as a project. But, on the other hand there is always an artificiality to this process in itself, one that we should, and often do recognize, exists as a synthetic attempt, an attempt to define something that still has a life. It is as if we are attempting to carry out come form of Calvinist quest, to determine the form of the thing, divinely, as if the life of the thing is merely the playing out of the definition of the thing, determined before life began. Without this sort of structure however, it is often difficult to say anything at all, and it is within this paradox that I will be attempting to describe this “project”, for lack of a better term.

The concept behind Dialogues journal is one that specifically leaves room for development. Rather than taking the traditional route of journals of this sort, which become defined by some concept of political tendency or loosely defined discipline, we are going to be undertaking something different, a literary and theoretical project that is based in a method, rather than an attempt to define content. This means that one should not expect the discussions that play themselves out in these pages to be grouped around a consistent trajectory of concepts which develop from issue to issue, there are plenty of other journals for this, but will be centered around some central text, some central questions, which will necessarily shift from issue to issue in relation to the discourse that exists around and outside of these pages.

Within the limitations of each issue of this journal, for the duration of its run, some central text will be chosen, a text that has immediate relevance within radical discourse. These texts will be printed in full, in order to provide a reference point, and an introduction will be written in order to lay out some outlines of central questions. These introductions will serve a dual role. Firstly, they serve as a form of cartography, a mappiong through a specific possible reading of a piece, often a reading that exists outside of the limitations of the discourse around a specific piece; in this role the introduction serves exists in its traditional space, as an orientation based text. But, secondly, the introduction will also serve as a provocation, as a piece that is written before the solicitation of other texts on the questions identified in the introduction. Traditionally, the introduction follows the body of the text temporally, often written after even if it appears before the remainder of a text. But, in this pedagogical form the introduction becomes introductory in two different manifestations, both in the sense of a mapping, an opening up of a discourse, and as a beginning point, something that looks out onto a literary production that is indeterministic, that the introduction cannot paradoxically respond to, as is normally the case. Here the introduction serves to be the text that draws in other responses, that calls to other writers, many of which will be asked directly to respond, and that begins a discussion that moves far beyond the introduction itself, which ceases to be a summary and becomes an opening.

It is with this methodology in mind that we begin the process of assembling the discourses around the first issue of Dialogues, and the process of introducing a piece that has caused a series of controversies in specific circles within the anarchist milieu, a text titled Letter to the Anarchist Galaxy. Over the past year or so this text has generated a series of discussions, often carried out across a series of linguiostic barriers, and with the delays that translation always imposes, often heated, sometimes written, but usually confined to the circles of those of us that have had access to the text, which tend to center around the insurrectionary anarchist and post-insurrectionist tendencies within the anarchist milieu, specifically those of us with an eye toward the clandestine. But, beyond a discussion of communiques and clandestinity this text attempts to engage with a more central question, the question of the relationship between political identity and the projectuality of conflict. This raises a myriad of correlary questions, such as the question of anarchist identity as such, whether the concept of so-called political agreement is an irreducible category in the escalation of conflict against the state, and how attempts to exist within the realm of a poltical identity interacts with wider dynamics of conflict.

We are currently soliciting pieces for the first issue of the project, an annual project centered around these sorts of focused textual discussions around pieces with political relevance within the anarchist milieu. Pieces are limited to 7500 words, and should be submitted no later than April 8th.

Letter to the Anarchist Galaxy: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-letter-to-the-anarchist…

Submissions and questions can be sent to kulchurcollaborative@gmail.com