Tony > Recent Status Updates

Still better than Sower

Inching my way through theoretical criticism of vulgar marxists and stalinism which I am very thankful for.

remains intolerable

Still genuinely terrible, the jokes aren't even related, it hardly ever mentions the philosophers whose concepts it's addressing and not thorough at all. Literally every joke is some version of "take my wife, please" Hacks in every regard.

Finally almost done with this beast of a book - also finally moving into territory critical of Marx which I've needed after my last year steeped in his writings and the writings of other Marxists.

I can already tell I will reluctantly need another book where this one leaves off full of non Marxist Socialists

For the first time I actually felt the loss of some of the characters in this book. Sincerely enjoy this much more than the first, consistently more surprising and the parable is more complicated/layered.

A terrible book I'm reading with my nephew. . . He picked it out and I love seeing it ignite his curiosity about these ideas but damn, it's really bad. Hopefully it's a launching pad.

Already I am more of a fan of this sequel than the first book because of its employment of multiple perspectives. That one character disagrees with the other creates intrigue I wasn't feeling in the first book. It's easy to feel this book be too spot on for how sage like its content is, but I have to keep reminding myself it was written in 2001 and likely shaped our understanding of the catastophe we are in.

Moving through the Bolshevik writers to the non Marxist socialists, its clear that the musings of John Stewart Mill and Oscar Wilde were more fantasy than theoretical critiques and practical maneuvering. Revolution will likely only come from the latter. But the former is more fun to read!

Mostly, I am flailing through this desperate for comprehension, hoping I will come out on the other side with principles.

Sylvia Plath was a genius, so was her husband, they were wonderful and terrible for one another. They had red hot fire coursing through their veins and they destroyed themselves.

Just finished Chapter 10 which was a genuinely life changing read about the hard won battle for child labor laws in England and France. Capital if left to its own devices will exploit in every direction. It sows the seeds of its own destruction in garnering enemies through the commonly exploited.

As this book has moved on, I have found myself cooling on the one to one symbolism of the world created here. I like the character, but the world around her even for its constant "change" is monotonous. Characters when they leave or die have little impact. Maybe that is the point?

Appreciated this books use of popular culture to swing into deeper analysis of the political trends, even when the criticism is surface level it feels like the proper way to swirl all the constant stimulus together for something exciting and new.

The Perverse Implantation: on creating a cornucopia of ists and isms to be studied and stratified, turned into a different race than human (the homosexual, the pedophile, the sodomist, the necrophiliac) and thus take sexuality into a power/pleasure play between law, medical professionals, society and the individual? I think.

Working through the Bolshevik revolution having finished the excerpts from Trotsky. This is the first time I've read him and I found the distinction he makes between Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin and himself extremely compelling. Specifically the notion that Stalinism was a reactionary totalitarian response to October Revolution NOT a foregone conclusion of the belief system and methods.

Interviewing Barbara Smith one of the creators of the Combahee River Collective named "for an action" instead of a person.

Plath's father Otto, his education, professional success as an entomologist his disease and possible depression.

Plath's mother - more likely the source of her ambition and who she was most driven to speak about, to, fight with in her work.

The meticulous diary her mother kept of her first words and poems showing the birth of the intermingling of her identity with language.

*SPOILER*

- The well researched revelation that Plath's grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and spent her last years in an asylum and that Plath herself never knew of this.

To have an immense inner world cynically squashed and and the negative view of the world reinforced and made true.

Chapter 15: Where The Bell Jar gets its title. Beautiful description of the trap of ideation and depression.

On the vulnerability of really letting someone know who you are in a dangerous world. On the pain of murder. On the lack of forethought to prepare for disaster as poor "God shaping".

Beyond the intro wherein Taylor suggests the group hoped to expand on Marxist theory making it more intersectional, coining the term. The Combahee River Collective Statement comprised of 1) The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism 2) What they Believe 3) the problems of organizing black feminists (including brief "herstory" of their collective 4) Black feminist issues and practice.

Things aren't looking so swell for our heroine...

"The Repressive Hypothesis" wherein Foucault argues that through taking sexuality from something we must be silent about to a discursive model the powers that control the language (defined by who is listening and who is speaking as in the scientist and the studied or the priest and the confessor) begins to bake in power dynamics in the ways we speak about sex. Institutionalizing sexual dialogue reinforces power.

Because I'm a masochist I suppose...