Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Haydar Khan:
Bonus links: “Intersectionalism, the Highest Stage of Western Stalinism?” and “The Politics of Identity” and The Trouble With Diversity and “What’s Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle” (And Its Critics)” and Liberalism: A Counter-History (“Liberalism has always pivoted, Losurdo argues, on drawing a dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – those who are worthy or capable (morally, intellectually, biologically/racially) of the gamut of rights and liberties we associate with liberalism and those who are not.”); see also “Remarks on Gender”
Link to an article by T.J. Coles:
“Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Celebrity Salesman for the Military-Industrial-Complex”
Note that this identified deGrasse Tyson as an old-fashioned shill rather than part of the “idiot pool”. Anyway, this article doesn’t explicitly reach deGrasse Tyson’s secular humanist “scientism” ideology which is really what drives his sociopolitical status quo boosterism:
“The relevance of these practices is that they account for Tyson’s scientism as a tactic in a culture war. I’ll lay out some principles of Tyson’s apparent culture to show how the conflict arises. Tyson’s all-business impatience with philosophy and his allusion to progress indicate that he stands not just for the supremacy of science, but for the modern institutions (capitalism, private industry, democracy) that have exploited scientific knowledge. The liberal values (freedom of thought, environmentalism, admiration for underdog scientists) and inchoate pantheism that surface in his series, Cosmos, show that he stands also for secular humanism. Put these together and you have a culture that reduces to neoliberalism, an ideology that’s analyzed thoroughly by Philip Mirowski’s Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. Neoliberalism is the rebirth of the social policies that led to the Great Depression, which rebirth was made possible by some propagandists’ mastery of the double standard. Neoliberalism is what powerful Republicans and Democrats have in common, the understanding that capitalism runs counter to democracy, but that a semblance of the latter is needed as the noble lie to sustain the magic of the former. Thus, neoliberals are both populists and technocrats, depending on their audience. In any case, in so far as Tyson despises philosophy for being useless in contrast to science, he must approve of the modern applications of science—not just the medical breakthroughs and technological advances, but the egoistic, materialistic mass culture of consumerism that bankrolls the loftier work of scientific inquiry.”
Benjamin Cain, “Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Scientism and the Scapegoating of Philosophy”
Bonus links: “Book Review: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science” (“Capitalism portrays science as a purely objective phenomenon and considers any attempt at understanding the political implications of science to be an intrusion of ideology into the sphere of objective, scientific neutrality.” *** “‘Positivism’ refers to the rejection of philosophy in favor of adopting an (often oversimplified) understanding of natural science as the basis for all theoretical and practical activity.”) and “Where Is the Rift? Marx, Lacan, Capitalism, and Ecology” (“modern science is ‘untrue’ insofar as it is blind to the way it is integrated into the circulation of capital, to its link to technology and its capitalist use, i.e., to what in old Marxist terms was called the “social mediation” of its activity.”) and Making Peace With the Planet (“Since a standard represents a point on a scale, its practical meaning depends entirely on the nature of the scale. Although the position of the pointer is simply a number and therefore objective, the choice of the scale and therefore the meaning of the number is entirely arbitrary. This creates an opportunity to disguise self-interest as science, for the scale is readily manipulated to govern the apparent meaning of the standard.”)
Link to an article by Rob Urie:
Link to an interview of Matt Christman, co-host of the podcast Chapo Trap House, conducted by Micah Uetricht:
“The Horror and the Hopefulness of Chapo Trap House“
Bonus link: Diamondback Interview
Link to an interview with Boots Riley:
Link to an article by W.T. Whitney Jr.:
“Climate Change: What About the Marxists?”
Bonus links: “This Changes Some Things” and “Survival of the Richest”
A guide to the music of Tom Zé. His professional musical career spanned half a century (and counting), though today many of his recordings are out of print — even in his native Brazil. What is available in the United States tends to skew toward his later recordings, which has the unfortunate effect of placing some of his finest material out of reach. His solo recordings are listed below divided into two time periods. His collaborations are listed separately — some being mere guest appearances while other are more extensive. Pursuant to the legend below, ratings are assigned to each, though Zé hardly has any bad releases so bear in mind these are just relative assessments. Links to other resources, including books and films, are provided at the end.
This is still under construction.
Born: October 11, 1936, Irará, Bahia, Brazil
Antonio José Santana Martins, who adopted the stage name Tom Zé, was born in the dry interior region of the Brazilian state of Bahia. He has described his hometown of Irará as “pre-Gutenbergian” (in reference to the inventor of the movable type printing press). His father won the lottery, which allowed his family to live comfortably in an otherwise poor and arid rural region. He moved to Salvador, the largest city in Bahia located along the Atlantic coast, to attend the University of Bahia. He studied music. He had an interest in composers like John Cage and Charles Ives. Although Brazil had a troubled legacy as a former Portuguese colony (and briefly was the seat of the Portuguese capital), and was the last country in the western hemisphere to ban slavery, social democratic president João Goulart made some modest reforms and the Brazilian universities recruited professors from Europe to bolster their musical (and other) programs. A military coup in 1964, supported by the United States, overthrew Goulart and installed a series of military “presidents” who ruled until 1985. Zé relocated to São Paulo, was associated with a collection of leftist intellectuals in the 1960s, and became part of the tropicália (A/K/A tropicalismo) movement, the most prominent members (tropicalistas) of which were mostly Bahian too. The (AI5) “coup within a coup” in 1968 brought harsher treatment of leftists and some of the tropicalistas. While considered a key part of tropicália, he also seemed outside it at the same time, never contained by its key precepts despite his obvious sympathies and contributions. His career faltered as the 1970s wore on. By the 1990s he was considering working at a gas station when he was approached by the U.S. musician David Byrne (of Talking Heads), who had come across a Zé record and later sought him out (with the help of Brazilian-raised musician Arto Lindsay) to sign him to a new label. Byrne was largely responsible for reviving Zé’s commercial career and introducing him to international audiences. Though in many respects, Zé’s albums on Bryne’s Luaka Bop label are somewhat over-represented in English-speaking countries.
Caetano Veloso has described Zé’s tenaciously archaic yet inventive approach to music as “bizarrely elegant” and his attitude (reflected in his music too) as having an “ironic, distant sense of humor” that is “at once intimate and estranged[.]” An incident on a plane that Veloso recounts is a fitting summary of a common effect of Zé’s music, when Zé made an absurd request for a particular drink (cachaça) on the plane, then, when it was not available, demanded the stewardess to stop the “caravel” (mid-flight) so he could leave, noting, “we were unnerved by the determination with which [the demand] was made, the sheer imposition of his will.” Veloso was impressed with how “the sincerity of [Zé’s] defiance exposed the absurd pretense of refinement” around him. This was in so many ways a fitting metonym for the entire tropicália movement. (The anecdote also recalls Bertolt Brecht’s short story “Geschichte auf einem Schiff [Story on a Ship]”). Recurring themes in Zé’s music involve tilting against colonial legacies (in the sense of Frantz Fanon) and making demands that emerge from leftist ideologies deemed impossible in his own time. Zé considers himself a performer of limited means. He has referred to at least some of what he does as sung and spoken journalism. In the 1970s he experimented with what can be called a homemade sampler, and has long utilized homemade instruments (like Harry Partch, or Tom Waits in the mid-1980s and early 90s).
After his comeback in the early 1990s, the influence of animated Brazilian folk dance musics from northern regions, like the forró and coco of Luiz Gonzaga and especially Jackson do Pandeiro, were more apparent in his own recordings. He continued working long after others would consider retirement. There is a tenacious sense of experimentation that is constant throughout Tom Zé’s career. He has toured internationally, though availability of his albums outside Brazil can be limited, even his most famous recordings.
Recorded:
Personnel:
Producer(s): João Araújo
Tier: ♻♻
Key Track(s): “São São Paulo”
Link to an article by Arun Gupta:
Bonus links: “Sorry, Bernie, We Need Radical Change” (this article does a good job summarizing the seemingly non-replicable quirks that led to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary election victory, but succumbs to reliance on self-defeating populist demonizations) and Crowds and Party
Link to an article by Zola Carr:
Bonus links: “Are We Governed By Secondary Psychopaths?” and “The War Inside Your Head” and “Mental Health and Neoliberalism” and “Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists With a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?” and “Social Service or Social Change?”
