Link to an article by David Walsh:
“The Guardian’s Marina Hyde Accuses Actress Susan Sarandon of Being Trump’s ‘Asset’”
Month: July 2018
Benjamin Fong – Inventing the Weekend
Link to an article by Benjamin Fong:
One quibble with this article: reference to “a cultural trajectory that would eventually bring us the three-minute pop song” seems off, when taking into account the history of music recording technology recounted in Michael Denning’s book Noise Uprising.
Angie Schmitt – Self-Driving Cars Are Coming
Link to an article by Angie Schmitt:
“Self-Driving Cars Are Coming. Will They Serve Profit or the Public?”
Don Fitz – Birth of the Cuban Polyclinic
Link to an article by Don Fitz:
“Birth of the Cuban Polyclinic”
Bonus links: Cuban Health Care: The ongoing Revolution and “Dossier No. 25: People’s Polyclinics: The Initiative of the Telugu Communist Movement”
Vijay Prashad – Mexico Elected a Left-Wing President
Richard Seymour on Talk Show Hosts
“The late night talk show hosts are all politically timid mummy-birds, puking up pre-masticated ideas, plucked from brain-dead newspapers, into the wide, expectant beaks of their audience. *** But they tend, on that ground, to be very sensitive to the ideological consensus they both form and, through laughter, police.”
Bonus link: “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” Review
Hiram Lee – Everything is Love? Beyoncé and Jay-Z Flaunt Their Wealth
Link to Hiram Lee’s review of the album by The Carters Everything Is Love (2018):
“Everything is Love? Beyoncé and Jay-Z Flaunt Their Wealth”
Bonus links: Beyoncé Review and “How Boots Riley Infiltrated Hollywood”
Kalundi Serumaga – On Reinventing Europe: An Open Letter to Mr George Soros
Link to an article/letter by Kalundi Serumaga:
“On Reinventing Europe: An Open Letter to Mr George Soros”
This pieces raises many excellent points. But it is also worth pointing out some questionable aspects of its theoretical framework and recommendations. First, while the article characterizes the essence of Europe as Bonapartism, it does so by applying philosophical standards that originated in Europe, or at least drew from European precedents. While it may well be fair to call the current hegemonic ideology of Europe (and elsewhere) Bonapartist, to treat all of Europe as monolithic and without counter-currents seems rather reductionist. Second, the “tasks for EU civil society” include “2. Find out what your countries truly owe, and make them pay it back” This is basically both a politics of victimhood and an expression of ressentiment. Frantz Fanon once wrote, “The colonized man is an envious man.” That seems accurate in this context, but as a statement of limitation of vision. The last chapter of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks explicitly rejected Serumaga’s approach, and that is a big part of why Fanon is a stronger theoretical reference point than what is expressed in Serumaga’s article. Lastly, the article concludes by saying, “It is time for the North to (once again, after Ancient Egypt) learn from the South.” This is a dubious offhand assertion of identity politics, yet again in the service of the valorization of victimhood status and ressentiment. It is problematic mainly because, in a cynical way, “[w]e thus enter a cruel world of brutal power games masked as a noble struggle of victims against oppression.”