Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Michael Hudson:
“Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest”
This information is of tremendous importance.
Bonus link: Debt: The First 5000 Years
Links to articles by Eric London:
“The New York Times on Race and Class: What Determines Social Mobility in America?” and Part 2
Bonus links: “Why Liberals Separate Race from Class” and “Beyond the Class Ceiling: Education and Upward Social Mobility” and “America’s Political Economy: Lost Generations — Cumulative Impact of Mass Incarceration” and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017” and Liberalism: A Counter-History and “How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth” and “Between Obama and Coates” and “How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence” and Review of Class, Race and Marxism and Walter Benn Michaels on Left Neoliberalism and The Trouble With Diversity and The Condemnation of Little B and “The Controversy Surrounding the Roseanne Television Series” and “Social Class in the 21st Century“
Bonus quote:
“it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already — whether we know it or not — made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.”
Rex Butler, “What is a Master-Signifier”
Link to an article by Frances Stonor Saunders:
Bonus Links: “How the CIA Secretly Funded Abstract Expressionism During the Cold War” and Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War and The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters and Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America and Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War and Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War and Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy and Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy and Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era and Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War and “Cold War Propagandist: Nicolas Nabokov, JFK, and the Shostakovich Wars” (much of this commentary is insipid, but some useful historical background is provided) and Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers and “The CIA Book Publishing Operations” and “Theaters of War: Hollywood in Bed with the Pentagon and the CIA” and Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism and “Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music and US Foreign Policy in the 20th Century” and “From Fight the Power to Work for It: Chuck D, Public Enemy and How the CIA Neutralized Rap”
Some of the books above applaud the anti-communist propaganda that the CIA, State Department, and other U.S. institutions were pushing/funding, while others are more critical.
What is sort of most bizarre about all this is that the Soviets took the bait! That is, many people in the Soviet Union did believe they were falling behind the U.S. and western nations and their abstract art (etc.), as described in Moshe Lewin‘s The Soviet Century.
Link to an article by Joel Lexchin:
“The Pharmaceutical Industry in Contemporary Capitalism”
Bonus link: “Phillip Zweig on Legalized Kickbacks in Healthcare”
Link to an article by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie:
“How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation”
Other examples of similar industry behavior include concussions in football, leaded gasoline, certain pharmaceuticals, etc.
Link to an article by Russell Mokhiber:
“Patricia Harned on Ethics Compliance and Corporate Conflicts”
This is all about taming capitalism and putting a happier face on it, in order to try to stave off attempts to end capitalism.
Link to a machine translation of an article by Felipe Demier:
“The Senses of a Prison: Lula, Democracy and the People in the Dining Room”
Link to an article by Julian Vigo:
“The Spawn: Feminism’s Misandry Problem”
Bonus Quotes:
“one should . . . admit how problematic it is to anchor one’s political demands to status of victimhood. Is the basic characteristic of today’s subjectivity not the weird combination of the free subject who believes themselves ultimately responsible for their own fate and the subject who bases their argument on their status as a victim of circumstances beyond their own control? Every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat – if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he already hurts me; this logic of victimization is today universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of sexual or racist harassment.”
Slavoj Žižek, “Sex and ’68: Liberal Movement Revolutionized ‘Sexuality’ But at What Cost?”
“In short, the extreme horror of Auschwitz did not make it into a place which intrinsically purifies every single one of its surviving victims into ethically sensitive subjects who got rid of all petty egotistic interests.”
Slavoj Žižek, “We Need to Examine the Reasons Why We Equate Criticism of Israel with Antisemitism”
“They play the Beautiful Soul, which feels superior to the corrupted world while secretly participating in it: they need this corrupted world as the only terrain where they can exert their moral superiority.”
Slavoj Žižek, Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors: Against the Double Blackmail (2016)
“The beautiful soul attitude finds a particularly fertile ground in what many call the ‘infantilization’ of our societies. We are encouraged to behave as children: to act primarily upon how we ‘feel,’ to demand — and rely on — constant protection against the ‘outer world,’ its dangers and fights, or simply against the world of others, other human beings.”
“Too Much of Not Enough: An Interview with Alenka Zupančič”
“PC anti-racism is sustained by the surplus-enjoyment which emerges when the PC-subject triumphantly reveals the hidden racist bias on an apparently neutral statement or gesture”
Slavoj Žižek, “The Need to Traverse the Fantasy”
My only disagreement with Vigo’s article is her characterization of “motherhood privilege” (more broadly, “parenthood privilege”) as “delusional nonsense”. Laws and corporate policies do sometimes grant benefits to parents that are not given to the childless — isn’t that a parenthood privilege? For instance, assume that parenthood is burdensome but socially beneficial; could someone benefit by avoiding more burdensome and less socially beneficial wage work in a capitalist society through parental leave that is not available to other workers who would like to have time off from wage work to engage in burdensome and socially beneficial activity other than parenthood? If so, then there is a parenthood privilege. There is a trace of chauvinist defensiveness in Vigo’s argument there, though this doesn’t undermine her larger point. See also “About the Fate of Contemporary Girls” Excerpt
Link to an interview of Stephanie Coontz: