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“Eliot saw shards and pulled some together, because he felt spiritually compelled to. Financiers see fragments and yearn to mix them into new markets, pricing them ever more dearly.”

Fully articulated IP franchises—which bleed from screen to screen, platform to platform, device to device—are the ultimate in the capitalist enclosure of media. New at PB, two new books grapple with this drive to monetize all art and culture.

“Listening requires that we suspend doubt while listening. It also encourages us to imagine a future in which accountability leads to restorative justice and healing.” From the archive:

“Everyone’s brain gets melted. Critique dies. Numbed consumption wins. We pay good money for this.” New at PB:

“It isn’t literal silence that renders some survivors inaudible; instead, it’s the refusal to hear and heed them.” From the archive:

New at PB, Ryan Boyd reviews @dewaard’s “Derivative Media” (@ucpress) and Anna Kornbluh’s “Immediacy” (@versobooks), which interrogate the decay of narrative art forms, namely their general turn toward a slop of sequels, prequels, reboots, franchises.

“How do marginalized people defend themselves against a state that possesses the capability to wipe out communities, either through disruption, death, or jail?” From the archives:

Dysfluency works as a way into a new world, to make that world and its characters more fun, more immersive, and more memorable, rather than a key to coming to simple conclusions about a character.

“Now that I’ve finished the book, the word diva is no longer what I thought it meant. Oh no, what do I do? What is it now? What does it mean now? Oh my God, I’m running to catch up.”

“Black Memphians were the most successful when utilizing a variety of tactics and linking various issues in their movements against Jim Crow and for inclusion and power.” From the archives:

Silent protagonists don’t show us how to “overcome” or compensate for disability. Rather, their limited speech is what makes their games’ narratives possible.

Speechless heroes are the default for gaming as a narrative form, rather than the exception. Jeffrey Careyva examines how the speechlessness of videogame characters communicates ideas about disability.

“Performance can give us the capacity to be in relation to one another by all being enthralled to this singular figure, the diva. Our attentions may be on her, but they are also in the service of the collective we that gets formed in that moment.”

In a contentious world, it can feel good to stand for civility. But as Timothy Donahue writes, appeals to civility actually authorize inequality and violence.

“None of these books are sufficiently attuned to a key First Amendment problem: citizens speak from vastly unequal positions.” From the archives:

“If video games work generally as showcases of players’ skill, focus, and patience—in a word, their ability—then why has the ability to speak fluently been relatively unnecessary for the medium’s icons?” New at PB:

The diva teaches us how to insist upon selves and needs that the world is never going to facilitate. New at PB:

“Agreeing to disagree” requires tolerating the intolerable. New at PB, Timothy Donahue reviews three books on the politics of civility:

“Free speech’ controversies are a circus. They unfold according to a circus script, with each of the performers playing their roles.” From the archives:

“One reason that many people vilify the diva is that she is a woman who insists on having her needs met.” New at PB, Sharon Marcus chats with Deborah Paredez about her new book “American Diva.”