Kholan ᎪᎳᏄ > Recent Status Updates

I feel like I ended this book a different person then when I began: both times.

Finished this back in 2020.

Great Werewolf: the Apocalypse story in my assessment so far

Curious intro by Foucault. I've checked out Antigone's Claim (Butler) and Grosz's Volatile Bodies and Incorporeal text and I am curious how AO might aid in my understanding of the post structural milieu. I've finished my first round of A Thousand Plateaus and the Acid Horizon reading group is focusing on AO, so here I am.

Finished Yuk Hui's intro. Solid intro to cybernetics in general.

Spends a good deal of Time speaking of algorithms as if they were independent agents.

Into chapter 6: Fitting that the theory of the face and facility (faceality I mean), is expounded upon before fleshing out the theory of the Body without Organs (BwO). A good friend recommended this text some time ago and I shouldn't be surprised that it was well placed. It is really rather enjoyable. There is much here I can relate to my perceptions (ie seeing faces everywhere) and my experiences (eating disorders).

The audiobook is really well done. Perhaps it's unsurprising since this is largely built on that of a podcast.
Just got to Part 2 and I'm looking forward to reading/seeing the accompanying PDF materials. There is some citations in the body of the text, as the medium surfaces, but being able to follow the historical scholarship has been something that I've been looking forward to since the podcast.

Just starting Chapter 4. This text has been a wild read. A lot of racial and psycho-social heuristics are challenged here, both in their interplay and in the divulging of individual cases: the framing in "Mad is a Place"; the life and legacy of Buddy Bolden in Chapter 2; from Gayl Jones *Eva's Man* (1976) in ch 3; Ntozake Shange, *Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter* (1994) in context of feminist sex wars.

There is much to be said in Muñoz’ invocations of Samuel R Delaney's Times Square Red Times Square Blue. Muñoz’s use of Delaney’s work elucidates developments in the political climates around queer liberation and its synonymy with the collars and chains of capitalist absorption. Also, Muñoz's term Disneyfication is super compelling in gentrification discourse, as is his use of Lisa Duggan's homonormativity.

Not as dry as I was expecting.

Definitely an experience, but it is slowly getting easier to read. I recommend watching/listening to Avgi's book talks first to ease you into the concepts discussed. The main points aren't as controversial as the click-bait title may indicate.

So good. Been listening and re-listening to each section of the audiobook while I drive for about 7 months now and I am always making new connections.
1. Etymology of the Sun
2. Etymology of the Moon
3. Capital: Luminaries and Saturn
4. Etymology of Saturn
5. Etymology of Venus
6. Etymology of Mars
7. Power: Venus and Mars
8. Etymology of Mercury
^ Where I am
9. Etymology of Jupiter
10. Labor: Mercury and Jupiter

I need to reread, but is a good story for understanding the era of Wilde's trials. I started reading Ella d'Arcy to recognize more of the non-masculine genre writers of le fin du siècle, and found her cadence wonderful: just the right amount of purple prose wrapped about scientific and artistic terminology that I felt like I was learning.

This is such a trip. I don't think I can earnestly recommend to any but the most critically minded.

Part 1, of which I am now done, has some rather dated content in its positioning, and there is content worth a couple trigger warnings, but there are novel contributions here, especially around the framing of ekphrasis. The following essays are a cut above the rest: Collection of Sand, The Museum of Wax Monsters, A Novel Inside a Painting, Say It with Knots, and Writers Who Draw. I look forward to more.

Such an enlightening read but I never feel like I have time to really sit down with it and let it sink in.

Oh my goodness! I wasn't expecting an intimate knowledge of the archival profession, let alone relate to the emotions and relationships dealing with them. Yes, it's a vampire story, and a queer one at that, but it doesn't feel like genre writing at all. The first chapter rings of extremely well-written fan-fiction, with the positioning of a POV with some assumed familiarity, but doesn't leave you hanging. I'm pumped.