The Subset of Theoretical Practice Collective On The Unity of Theory and Practice

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The Subset of Theoretical Practice is a collective research project and a political collective, bringing together researchers interested in investigating contemporary politics, with a special focus on developing new tools for political organization. While these two sides overlap, they are not the same, as we are engaged in theoretical work together and invested in building a formal framework and a political theory that can be verified and reproduced elsewhere. Most of the members come from previous experiences with political organizing, so we think it’s not by chance that, even though we are interested in developing a consistent theoretical engagement with the hard sciences, we still want to focus on the pragmatic implications of our theoretical work. These political experiences are in fact quite heterogeneous, including the Circle of Studies of Ideas and Ideology, the Passe Livre Movement, the Treta no Trampo collective, the Philly Socialists, the Brazilian Communist Party, the Socialist and Freedom Party, some DSA chapters, penal abolitionism political collectives, housing movement activism, Occupy, the Brazilian punk movement, amongst others. The theoretical references are equally distinct, mixing orthodox and heterodox Marxist approaches, contemporary philosophy – continental and analytic – in different areas of mathematics and physics, structural anthropology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of history, amongst other fields. However, both politically and in the realm of theory, they focus on developing the means to compose together these heterogeneous traditions and strategies.

Longer descriptions of their project can be found here:

The "About" section on their website:

"Section XVIII" of the Atlas of Experimental Politics

A longer history, that includes their original relation to the Circle of Studies of Ideas and Ideology, is told in the text Contribution to a Critique of Political Organization

A podcast on the history of the CSII:

On the history of recent courier strikes in Brazil and the collective Treta no Trampo

Presentation contextualizing the STP in the last decade of political struggles in Brazil


Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip  ( @aufhebenkultur )
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Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

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