Zadie Smith weighing in as the extreme moderate she has always been. Mealy-mouthed and self-satisfied analysis on offer here, more insightful re the psyche of the moderate than any of the topics this essay wants to be about.
Dreamt that the tyrant died and all the flowering trees in the US bloomed spontaneously, in October. All news and social media focused not on the tyrant or his death but on this miraculous blooming.
I was on a hike when a friend texted to share the news that Fred Jameson had died. Although Marxism and Form will remain my favorite book of his, everything I ever read by him stuck with me. Here’s a little cairn I made in his honor on this hike in Maine.
"they are no better than Arabs"--not a slip of the tongue but racist discourse that comes easily to this blathering pop philosopher. He would be a parody if he were not so offensive and banal all at once.
💪 Putin, a dark conservative religious fanatic, must be stopped ASAP, and the West should even provide Ukraine with nuclear weapons if necessary, believes Slovenian leftist philosopher Slavoj Žižek.
My new article on post-truth, whistle-blowing, surveillance capitalism, and the politics of exposure (content is free during COVID pandemic): "The Politics of Exposure: Truth After Post-Facts"
Thanks to
@tallsasian
@random_walker
and
@shoshanazuboff
Can people kindly stop swooning over the Obamas and whatever recent podcast, book, or lofty & empty thing one of them has said? That ship sailed a long time ago.
@efreedgo
He has been called out, esp when he reads "third world texts" reductively. But when he sticks to what he is good at his thinking is capacious enough for the rest of us to extend it in our own ways. I've found his work incredibly productive and still read him regularly.
Join us for the next History of Art Research Seminar
@EdiArtHistory
taking place on Wednesday 9 February @ 13:30 – 14:45, via Zoom.
Prof. Zahid R. Chaudhary (Princeton)
@ZahidChaudhary1
will speak on “The Reinvention of Tradition in Punjabi Diasporic Art” (1/2)
HUGE NEWS! Indigenous Vanguards, by Ben Conisbee Baer is out now from
@ColumbiaUP
This book is going to make waves; get ahead of the curve and pick one up now (for reals).
This is the strangest thing to come out of Trumplandia. Its remixes couldn’t possibly outdo the original: the possessed speaker, the empty laundry baskets, the bro wandering in the background, the angels that had apparently decamped to Africa and S. America.
MacArthur Fellow Fred Moten is creating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life. 📖💭
#MacFellow
Now is the time for every Biden supporter to reach out to one person who voted for Trump.
Empathize with them.
Tell them you know how they feel (you do, from 2016).
Come up with one issue you can agree on.
@tallsasian
@the_point_mag
I’ve been amazed at how post-critical types are so interested in cultivating their aggrieved and wounded selves as a condition for claiming an ideal of hand-holding, feeling-recognition, and community building as an ideal for newfound aesthetic freedom. I mean, go for it folks.
BREAKING NEWS
The 2024
#NobelPrize
in Literature is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
@_MAArgentino
"How do you express desperation? / Who is getting the attention? / What is attention? / Why won't someone listen to me now?" and on and on
IMHO the best “quarantine” movie for our times is Pasolini’s Salo. It doesn’t shy away from making connections between the cultivation of self, the embrace of fascism, and desire for collapse. Plus the rich get to eat shit.
Jan 6 wisdom from Adorno: "Only those suffering from persecution mania can tolerate the persecution which domination ultimately becomes, provided they are allowed to persecute others."
@V21collective
What in the world did "gathering in the head" mean? I am pretty sure, nevertheless, that this is the name of the affliction I have been feeling in 2020.
"Impunity," for Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon (The Trump Edition): a discussion of impunity in the context of US history of race and exceptionalism
@KeeangaYamahtta
@esglaude
@kinohin
DEVELOPING STORY: Students who die while attending Boston University will have the chance to obtain a posthumous degree, starting this Fall. The University released the policy June 12, but did not make an announcement or notify the BU community otherwise.