Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Deborah Veneziale:
“Why the U.S. Failed to Control COVID-19: Incompetence, Class violence, Deception, and Lies”
Bonus links: “NYT Scolds China for Not ‘Learning to Live’—or Die—With Covid” and “Preconditions for Disaster: A People’s History of Covid – Extract” and “New Study Highlights Significant Health Impacts Three Years After COVID-19 Infection”
Link to an article by Jim Kavanagh:
“Danger to Society: Against Vaccine Passports”
Bonus links: “COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments Against Mandates at Universities” and “Suppressing Scientific Discourse on Vaccines? Self-Perceptions of Researchers and Practitioners” and “Everyone Else Is Lying to You: A Damning Archive of Science Denial” and “Twitter Files #19” and “Study Reaffirms That Masks Prevent COVID-19 Transmission”
Link to a review by George Martin Fell Brown of Helena Sheehan’s book Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History (1985/2018):
“Book Review: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science”
This review does suffer from a bit of a Trotskyist (anti-Stalinist) bias, but it still provides a useful historical overview.
Link to an article by Christine MacDonald:
“I Went to a Climate Change Denial Conference. It Made Even Less Sense Than You’d Think.”
This article was published on the magazine In These Times’ web site. The publication is populist, meaning that it constantly strives to demonize its political opponents and construct an enemy. Aside from that, what the article explains about climate change deniers is that they are engaged in what Jacques Lacan called “university discourse” in order to defend a particular social structure. Bruce Fink explained this concept of “university discourse” in his book The Lacanian Subject (1995):
“the university is an arm of capitalist production (or of the ‘military-industrial complex,’ as it was called . . . ), suggesting that the truth hidden behind the university discourse is, after all, the master signifier. Knowledge here interrogates surplus value (the product of capitalist economies, which takes the form of a loss or subtraction of value from the worker) and rationalizes or justifies it.” (p. 132).
“Working in the service of the master signifier, more or less any kind of argument will do, as long as it takes on the guise of reason and rationality.” (p. 133).
See also Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (1983):
“What counts today is not the spectacular effects but the solid facades, respectability. What was earlier called swindle today is called expert advice. *** Today, without an academic education one cannot even become a swindler anymore.” (p. 488).
Populists generally avoid getting into these issues, because to do so would tend to reveal the large degree of agreement between them and the political far right. But this article is still a good example of how the right doesn’t care about making “good” arguments as long as they serve their desired (if unstated) social arrangement.
Link to an article by Maximilian Werner:
“Why (Mostly) Men Trophy Hunt: A Biocultural Explanation”
Bonus link: The Theory of the Leisure Class
Link to an article by John Molyneux:
“How Fast is the Climate Changing?”
Bonus quote:
“That the capitalist class is most interested in protecting its power, position, wealth and way of life means that the struggle to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of global warming is a class struggle. It is a struggle for power — not a struggle over morality or individual consumer choices. The capitalist class holds out the promise of ‘more of the same’ because that is the way that it can continue to accumulate wealth while working people get the same raw deal of exploitation, racism and oppression that they have for centuries.”
Jodi Dean, “Climate Change Is Class War”
See also “Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy” and “The Discovery and Rediscovery of Metabolic Rift” and “Endangered Species Act: A Failure Worth Fighting For?”
Link to a review by Philip Alcabes of the book Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness (2019) by Anne Harrington:
“No Peace of Mind in Psychiatry”
Bonus links: “Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris” (takes an implicitly anti-Freudian perspective, ignoring Lacan) and “Élisabeth Roudinesco Interviewed on the 30th Anniversary of Jacques Lacan’s Death”
Link to Robert Merton’s four norms that constitute “four sets of institutional imperatives taken to comprise the ethos of modern science… communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism.” (CUDOS is the acronym):
(contrast that with this: “Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Celebrity Salesman for the Military-Industrial-Complex”)
Link to an article by Jonathan Latham:
“Unsafe at any Dose? Diagnosing Chemical Safety Failures, from DDT to BPA”
Bonus link: “They Aren’t All Safe”
Link to an article by John Steppling:
“Population Bomb or Bomb the Population?”
Bonus links: “Ashley Dawson: Extreme Cities” (Steppling’s article essentially provides the answer to an audience question that Ashley Dawson stumbled with in this video of an otherwise excellent talk) and “Malthus’ Essay on Population at Age 200” and “Population Explosion” and “Will Limiting Population Growth Solve the Climate Crisis?” and “Ten Reasons Why Population Control Can’t Stop Climate Change”and “Saving Nature: Overpopulation is not the Primary Problem” and “1973: Ernest Mandel on Marxism and Ecology, ‘The Dialectic of Growth'” and The Closing Circle and Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis