Alexander > Recent Status Updates

Unfortunately for everyone I know, they're going to have to hear me prattle on about the stagnation of productivity and its link to the stagnation of wage growth for the next two weeks, but they don't know it yet ehehehe

"There are those who see foxes and those who see pelts."

So desperately want to say this is a book about class warfare, but in truth it's simply an honest memoir about work. That class war clings to its every page like a slick of oil is just what happens when you're honest about it.

Enjoying this because it's like a way more chill Kant who's also very excitable over art. An aesthetic Kantianism written by a human and not a concept-mechanic.

A book on the memory and forgetting of what cannot (but) be forgotten: the immemorial.

A very charmingly written portrait of the practice of psychoanalysis from the side of the analyst. Takes the drama(s) of transference as its guiding star which is a great decision, storytelling wise.

DENSE. The book first of all, but then also myself in its wake.

Jam packed with goodies.

Title is doing that clever thing where it's not just talking about two competing 'origins' of 'the political', but two alternative ideas of what 'an origin' even means when it comes to something like 'the political'.

Dated and preechy and rambling.

Breathtaking.

Never letting anyone tell me that a modern text is "too violent" ever again. Strewth.

the main thing the men do in this book is weep and cry like they're always just sheading tears for one reason or another

Sad. I'm so sad after reading this book, which is about UBI, but is also actually about our capacities to dream and imagine a world other than this, and the diminution of those dreams into a matter of merely surviving the world we've been given. More words to come.

Incredibly good. Much more than just about the UBI, instead it uses it as an index to track entire shifting landscapes of political economy and attitudes towards it. Very US-UK focused so far though, waiting for the 'global' to really kick in.

"Capital requires us to recognise mental illness just enough to maintain a surplus class, but not enough for it to be forced to grant recognition and sufficient support where it is costly."

Federici: "To demand wages ... does not mean to say that if we are paid we will continue to do it. It means precisely the opposite. To say that we want money ... is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it."

"The houseworker is the greatest technological invention made by capital in the process of reproduction".