February 2009
Conservatives and Porn: A Match Made in Heaven
From New Scientist:
“When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,” says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.
However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
Normally this would be a good opportunity to rip on conservatives for being hypocritical and to point out how their ideological beliefs lead to this sort of dynamic due to sexual repression, but maybe a more curious avenue would be to argue that pornography itself is inherently conservative. (Via Perverse Egalitarianism.)
Towards (Passively) Staking a (Negative) Position
Something occurred to me recently: usually when one considers the nature of “debates,” speaking very broadly, the most important part seems to lie in staking a certain position and then usually becoming very well-versed on the subject matter so that one can articulate it clearly in order to defeat one’s opponents. But I don’t think this is the case at all—in fact it’s more likely the case that the most important part of a “debate” is to first of all decide who your opponents are. One could consistently stake the same position amongst a variety of audiences, but, in point of fact, depending on which audience I decide to enjoin, my position is actually going to shift, even if I don’t intend for it to. For example, if my audience is composed of historians and I’m arguing a Lacanian point about Stalinism, the “active” aspect of my discourse is going to remain consistent (that Stalinism, for example, is a perversion in the Lacanian sense), but the “passive” aspect will shift towards proving empirically that this is the case. But, if all of a sudden my audience is composed of Hegelians, I’d argue the same point, but the “passive” character would likely shift towards a more speculative defense of these arguments.
Read more on Towards (Passively) Staking a (Negative) Position…
“A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas”
The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second.
Yes, yes, yes.
Speaking of Beck…
Push-pull between nonsense and insight, followed by a cover of “Message in a Bottle”.
Hegel’s Hauptwerke
Is it wrong that I desire this? (I recently came across it at the Powell’s Books at UChicago.)
Badiou on Le Petit Nicolas
Because it’s (always?) more interesting to read about philosophy when it’s outside of doctrinal/pedagogical consideration (and especially when it has to do with someone has eminent as Alain Badiou):
… As Badiou says, quoting Zizek, those who used to oppose parliamentary democracy to Stalinism missed the point that Stalinism was the future of parliamentary democracy. Indeed, “the technological means for controlling the population are already such that Stalin, with his endless handwritten files, his mass executions, his spies with hats, his gigantic lice-ridden camps and bestial tortures, appears like an amateur from another age”.
And how many times have you heard pundits boasting about the big turnout for a particular election? Boast they must, because it is happening with less and less frequency these days. But what does this say about voting, as an act? What matters, apparently is that people participate, and thus give the system a democratic imprimatur…
More worth checking out over at Lenin’s Tomb.
Beck Does Dylan, Peaches Does Iggy
There’s a new charity cover album featuring Peaches, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Beck Franz Ferdinand, Rufus Wainwright, Scissor Sisters, Peaches and a handful of boring british artists.
The coolest part about this project and what sets it apart from other charity cover albums is that the original artists selected who they wanted to cover their work.
We asked 15 ultimate icons to select a favourite song from their classic back catalogue and to nominate the new act they most trust to create a unique interpretation of that hand-picked track.
Most of the covers are worth a listen, including:
Bob Dylan’s Leopard-skin Pill Box Hat by Beck
The best track. The instrumentation reminds me of The Return of Jackie and Judy by Tom Waits. Very raucous.
The Stooges’ Search and Destroy by Peaches
Peaches puts the song in ice water, with her dirty synths and electronic beats, without losing the menacing power of the original.
Elvis Costello’s You Belong to Me by The Like
I know nothing about this band, but their phrasing is perfect for a Costello song.
Blondie’s Call Me by Franz Ferdinand
Perfect match.
The Ramones’ Sheena is a Punk Rocker by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Very straightforward, much like the original, but still very cool. New York City really has it all.
Skip these:
The Clash’s Straight to Hell by Lily Allen
An okay song, but seriously, Lily allen? Papa papa papa-san?
Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die by Duffy
Not Duffy’s fault, the song is awful, especially by McCartney standards. Still, the sparse arrangement makes a valiant effort.
Night Writing 11
NOTE: These don’t have titles, but they’re all separate entities, not sections in a single work.
I.
My guitar sounds not unlike a broken brake
that can’t let go
because it’s not a guitar
it’s a piece of wood
that communes with electricity
New Scott Walker Duet
A band called Bat for Lashes has a new album out, with a song featuring a duet with Scott Walker. What’s more, there’s a video for the song featuring footage from Mullholland Drive.
It sounds like it was recorded in the same magical room as “Sons Of” by Walker and “Innocent When You Dream (78)” by Tom Waits. As much as I love Walker’s trembling, almost androgynous vocals on the Drift and Tilt (which sounds almost like a harried Nina Simone at points), this song features that impossibly handsome voice from his 60’s pop albums. Awesome. Now, get him in the studio with Radiohead, since they both (1, 2) seem to be fans of each other’s music.
“Top Ten” Preview
I’m working on a new musical project based on Billboard’s top ten singles this week. I’ll be reinterpreting the following songs by the following artists:
- Flo Rida - Right Round
- T.I. Featuring Justin Timberlake - Dead and Gone
- Eminem, Dr. Dre & 50 Cent - Crack A Bottle
- Kanye West - Heartless
- Lady GaGa Featuring Colby O’Donis - Just Dance
- The All American Rejects - Gives You Hell
- Taylor Swift - Love Story
- Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You
- Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
- Lady GaGa - Poker Face
Dame Edith Sitwell’s “English Lesson” & Slide Show Poetry
First, watch this video (maybe turn the sound off):
This video is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is Dame Edith Sitwell’s playful childlike rhythms, which come fast and don’t stick around. Personally, I find the reading and music a little annoying, but to each his own.
Read more on Dame Edith Sitwell’s “English Lesson” & Slide Show Poetry…
The Crisis of Credit Visualized
This is very cool. It also does a great job of showing where the surplus-value is. (Via Daring Fireball.)
Dublin March A Warning Shot To Leaders Who Plan Wage Reductions For Workers While Pumping Billions Into Banks
The title of this article “100,000 Protest Irish Gov’t Over Recession” doesn’t get it right. There’s no sense protesting a recession, it’s an inevitable part of our economic system. People are protesting the unsympathetic and corrupt response to this crisis by democratic governments the world round.
“Our generations yet unborn have been mortgaged in order to keep this banking system together,” Congress of Trade Unions General Secretary David Begg told cheering crowds at Dublin’s Merrion Square.
“Your children and my children and our grandchildren will all have to try to deal with what has been laid upon their shoulders.”
Here in the US, the government is debating stricter restrictions on reliving consumer debt because it wants to make sure not to “award bad behavior”. Meanwhile, banking bailouts continue under the threat of economic collapse by the same financial institutions that caused the crisis.
Government’s responsibility is to the people, not to banking institutions. What good is done by protecting financial frameworks when the nation is left strangling in personal debt?
We are financing unscrupulous lenders with almost no concessions. Instead of changing the nature of our economy, the government is asking people pay to extend the life of these predatory financial institutions. These are essentially stalling tactics to avoid the big question: How will we restructure our society?
The White Stripes on Last “Late Night”
On the last Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the White Stripes came back from their hiatus to play a special song. (With Meg on guitar!)
If you’re looking for equally entertaining late night talk show minimalist post grunge revival blues with a little more polish, check out Dan Auerbach, of the Black Keys, from earlier in the week.
A Bizarre Hypothetical
From our friends at Fox News, attempting to explain the Facebook privacy debacle:
Say you had a lapse of good judgment in your youth, hung out with some Communist Party members and shared some photos of you and your new pals with your Facebook friends.
Now say you’re older, and you choose to run for office, and you want to get rid of any incriminating photos or information out there about you — like maybe that online petition you signed advocating the legalization of marijuana. You delete everything from your Facebook page, and you should be good, right?
Slight problem. That picture of you and the guys with the hammers and the sickles is probably still out there, somewhere. And it won’t go away.
Night Writing 10
Thank You
It took four hours in the sand
before we came across the owl
wrapped in banana leaves, breathing
with vigor- his eyes were wider than before
We called to him again
this time he shot up
screeching
DeLong vs. Harvey
On February 11 I posted a link to a David Harvey article regarding the likely failure of the stimulus package to recover the U.S. economy. Interestingly, prominent neoliberal economist/blogger Brad DeLong (often cited by Matthew Yglesias) responded to Harvey in a less than charitable manner. David Harvey responds back by questioning DeLong’s usage of neoclassical economic theory, with DeLong responding back (again) by arguing that Marxism is “objectively-reactionary,” and apparently theological (a claim I actually would embrace), while unironically citing (economist) Joan Robinson:
Darwin’s Birthday: New Atheism
In celebration of Darwin’s birthday a few days ago, I thought it would be worth posting this quote from Richard Seymour over at Lenin’s Tomb about today’s “new atheists”:
The ‘war on terror’ and the Israel-Palestine conflict are seen as being driven by ‘religious extremism’ in this purview. Naturally, when discussed in those terms, people like Sam Harris conclude that Islam is the worst religion, the most menacing kind that exists on the planet, mandating all sorts of extreme measures including torture and bombing. Naturally, Amis concludes that the ‘extremists’ (Muslim extremists, he means) have a ‘monopoly on self-righteousness and violence’ and produces all kinds of fulminations about Islam and Muslims to accompany this. This is the quite logical result of a culturalist reading of a dense mesh of geopolitical struggles. To this extent, the ‘new atheism’, where it is not just naive and bossy, is an ideological accessory to empire.
I think it’s also worth noting that, given its status as an ideological supplement to U.S. hegemony, new atheism is ironically not much different than “new age” spiritualism. Both represent the “cultural logic” of late capitalism and its split attitude towards religion: one is based on the post-modern obsession with Darwin/evolution and the rejection of historical narrativity, which in the end serves to justify imperial subjugation of culturally “inferior” theocracies; the other involves the rejection of the Judeo-Christian tradition by fetishizing “Asian” culture, viz. Buddhism, based on the “culturalist” attitude to late capitalist political economy, i.e. to the U.S. as Capital and China as Labor, the latter of which it elevates to the level of “cultural appreciation.”
Ranks of Jobless Swelling Across the World
The New York Times:
Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs.
High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.
The actual title of the article is “Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide,” referring to a recent U.S. national intelligence report claiming that the financial crisis has become the biggest security threat (outpacing terrorism). Obviously, in the context of this article it’s not made clear exactly what “stability” refers to, but the politicization of the jobless masses would certainly pose a serious threat to global capitalism.
Revolt is in the Air
The Socialist Worker sums up a number of important political events in the wake of the financial crisis, including strikes, riots, and the rise of a new revolutionary left across Europe.
As millions of people in Europe struggle to make sense of their new economic plight, an array of political questions will test the left in general and the revolutionary left in particular, even in places where they have been weak historically.
For the first time in more than a generation, huge numbers of people are looking for a radical alternative to free-market capitalism. As people take to the streets, they are debating how to fight the assault on living standards and what should replace the free market.
Whether or not they are familiar with the slogan “Another world is possible” made popular by the global justice movement of the late 1990s, millions have concluded that another world is necessary.
The only problem with the analysis is that most of the so-called movements have been so nationally fragmented or blunted by parliamentary politics that there isn’t yet a sense of a real “event” on the horizon. However, the very logic of the financial crisis—its world-historical magnitude, its concreteness, and its locus—implies a certain set of conditions or procedures in which the genesis of something new should begin to emerge. We just haven’t seen it yet—not because we aren’t looking hard enough—but simply because the exposure of the cracks, fragments, and gaps have not been engaged with as rigorously, scientifically, and with enough “fidelity” for a movement of global emancipation to seize upon the agitation.
The Scientist at Work
There’s also a John Cleese podcast where he talks about this sort of thing in length. It’s worth the dollar.
David Harvey on the Bailout
Or why the stimulus package is bound to fail. (Tweeted by Lenin.)
The Spirit of 1968
Around the UK, thousands of students have occupied lecture theatres, offices and other buildings at more than 20 universities in sit-down protests. It seems that the spirit of 1968 has returned to the campus.
While it was the situation in Gaza that triggered this mass protest, the beginnings of political enthusiasm have already spread to other issues.
…Beginning with a 24-hour occupation at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January, the sit-ins spread across the country. Now occupations have been held at the LSE, Essex, King’s College London, Birmingham, Sussex, Warwick, Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Nottingham, Queen Mary, Manchester, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Kingston, Goldsmiths and Glasgow.
Revolutionary nostalgia, like the kind specially reserved for May ‘68, is often irritating and tends to gloss over much of the ambiguity surrounding the events and how their failure is directly reflected in our present circumstances, but the UK Independent—beyond this absurd conceit—points to an interesting fact, which is that, objectively, there has been, over the past year or so, a significant spike in student activism across Europe—and even here in the US. Beyond Britain, the student occupation of the New School and the riots in Greece indicate that this is a wider phenomenon aimed, perhaps, at wider goals (than simply gaining rights for Palestinians, for example).
Via Lenin’s Tomb.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s SAMO© Graffitti
Process has a new goal. We’re going to try to build a new history of outsider poetics. There’s something happening that isn’t academic, quadriplegic or kitschy.
To do this we’re going to have to start with Basquiat. Who wrote on buildings with paint. Get out your spray cans!
Magical Negros
The Washington Monthly:
Yesterday, [Michael] Steele spoke to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about the Republican position on the economy, and inexplicably, stuck to the same position, arguing, “What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work.”
When Stephanopoulos responded, “But that’s a job,” Steele added, “No, it’s not a job. A job is something that — that a business owner creates.”
Stephanopoulos, looking confused, asked, “So a job doesn’t count if it’s a government job?” Steele stuck to his guns, insisting that hiring someone to perform a service isn’t an actual job because government contracts “have an end point.” Apparently, a job is only a job if it’s indefinite.
Reflecting back on Rush Limbaugh’s witty election rhetoric, I’ve come to wonder whether Michael Steele would consider himself the GOP’s “magical negro”?
(Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Night Writing 9
Clean Room
I want to become a criminal
because there is nothing to read
and my body is unbalanced
a single violin, only a single violin in a big white clean textured room
I would smash that filth into noxious gas and never hear that sick sound again
Poor Bankers, How Will They Survive Now?
A despicable piece of “journalism” by the Times. (Tweeted by Shaviro.)
The Cowboy
On the Cowboy in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive:
As a post-script, I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview Lynch myself earlier this year, ostensibly on the topic of transcendental meditation. It was as surreal an experience as I hoped, with folk singer Donovan in attendance strumming his guitar, a huge bowl of black coffee at Lynch’s feet, and the director himself, sat on a throne with antlers, yakking about the cow he hand-picked for INLAND EMPIRE’s ill-fated Oscar campaign. Since he was on the subject (kinda), I seized the moment and asked about his inspiration for The Cowboy. Lynch looked down at the bowl of coffee, stared up at the ceiling, then violently fluttered his fingers for a long moment. Finally he stopped, beamed a giant smile and said, “I like cows. And I like cowboys.” And that may be as close to unlocking this character’s mysteries as we’re ever going to get.
Extraordinary Politics
A great post by Mike Soron:
The economic crisis intensifies and citizens everywhere are exhausted by the often sweeping and irregular bailouts, apologies, and revitalized governments for and by the selfish monsters that created the mess.
Since there’s too much worth quoting you should just go to his website to read more. Oh, and now that I’ve finished the second chapter of my thesis, I hope to be contributing more here over the next few weeks!
The Mysterious Smell of Maple Syrup Wafting From New Jersey
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg today announced that the source of a mysterious maple syrup-like odor wafting through parts of the city since 2005 is a New Jersey maker of additives for foods and fragrances.
The smell — which doesn’t pose any health risks — was traced to a Frutarom Industries Ltd. plant in North Bergen that processes the seeds of the fenugreek plant for use in additives, Bloomberg said in a televised press conference at City Hall.
The more you know.
Poster Boy
While most other street or graffiti artists concentrate on adding their own imagery, illegally, to parts of the subway system, Poster Boy, a kind of anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage, has made his outlaw presence known all over the city by cutting and pasting the images that are already there in the form of ads.
It’s funny that the New York Times chooses to write these celebratory stories about street artists only after they’ve been arrested. I remember a similar amount of media attention when Bansky’s true identity was revealed.
I would bet the amount of attention street artists gain after they’re “caught” probably has something to do with an infatuation with any art being challenged or banned. The actual content of the work isn’t worth the print space, but the idea of artistic persecution is. A smart street artist would feed off of that, especially if the ideas behind the work are thin.
“Process” Update
Process is in full swing, though with some adjustments of scope and content. The “Morning Writing” posts have been renamed “Night Writing” as every collection has so far been written during the night time and because the term “Morning Writing” implies a frivolous product.
Night Writing 8
1940 On The Docks
the doves pull on a loaf of bread
tearing up the plastic wrapper
they have wings the size of rats
pulling up the polymer bag
they are the size of hunting dogs
they are the size of plated glass
beaks are red, the sliced bread
crumbles into broken pieces
Karatani
I’ve been writing the second chapter of my thesis this week, in which I try and carry out a more extensive “transcritical” reading of Lacan by picking up where Karatani leaves off in Transcritique. I’ve already read The Parallax View, which was the first Zizek book I ever read, and in retrospect seems like an insane place to have started for someone who, prior to then, was skeptical towards philosophy and had no real knowledge of it. So I wonder: since Zizek has published The Parallax View, which is his way of “responding” to Karatani’s monumental work, when can we expect Karatani to reply back? After trying to immerse myself in Transcritique for the past several month, which is a deceptively smooth read, I would be very curious to see how Karatani would respond, especially in regards to an analysis of Zizek’s reading of Hegel, which I imagine would force Karatani to grapple with some of the weak points in his argument (specifically, his uncharitable reading of Hegel).