The Role of Revolution in the Transition from Man to Ape (and back again): On War For The Planet of the Apes

Perhaps the new ape films should be considered as one long remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Initially, this seemed to be limited to the first film, but the subsequent sequels have extended the revolutionary moment. Ape versus humans is no longer a chapter in the story, but the entire story. The first film, which seem like a risky one off when it was first released, had a few "easter eggs"alluding to a missing mission to Mars that set up the original films. With the film's success there was the need to continue the story, converting easter eggs to plot points, to provide the full story of the transformation of our world into a world of apes. This makes the recent ape films unique in the world of apocalypses and dystopias; the film does not present a new world already made, but the conditions of its making. That the final in what is now being called a trilogy comes out in 2017 on July 14th, hitting two revolutionary anniversaries, Bastille Day and the Russian Revolution of 1917, would only seem to underscore the point of revolution.They attempt to show how the planet of the apes came into being, revealing the causes and the contingency of what the original presented as necessity.

A Universal History of Villainy: A Brief Remark on Spider-Man: Homecoming

In Jameson's essay on The Wire there is an interesting digression (and in Jameson it is mainly the digressions which are interesting) on the problem of evil in popular culture. Jameson takes up the question of evil, of villains, more broadly, reflecting on both their decline and centrality to popular culture. To quote a long passage, or at least the important parts:

The Golden Pig: Okja and the limits of Satire

Critics of Okja have been quick to point out its jarring tonalities, one part satire of the world of corporations and branding events and one part touching story of a girl and her (giant mutant) pig. This seems to be off for at least two reasons. Tonal shifts seem to be something Bong Joon-Ho revels in. The Host also melded horror, a family drama, and a scathing account of the US involvement in South Korea, and Snowpiercer reveled in shifting tones, as every new railcar opened to a new scene and a new mood, from its own satire of the ideological state apparatus to the horrorific scene of black hooded executioners of the repressive state apparatus. A kind of jarring tonal shift is not new to this movie. 

Old Time Religion: On American Gods the book and TV show

The following passage from Marx's Grundrisse could serve as a fairly accurate pitch meeting for American Gods: 

Let us take e.g. the relation of Greek art and then of Shakespeare to the present time. It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation. Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek [mythology] is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? What chance has Vulcan against Roberts and Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Crédit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them...

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

In Space No One Can Hear You Struggle: On The Expanse

I am not sure if this going to be much more than a long exhortation to watch The Expanse. 

The Original Sin of Accumulation: Trying to Say Something Original About Ursprüngliche Akkumulation

Red May Seattle

A bit of context: last weekend I was asked to participate in Red May Seattle, contributing to both its Marx-a-thon, a day long reading group on Capital and the Grundrisse, as well as discussing neoliberalism, science fiction, and the current struggles. What follows here is neither the text of what I presented on primitive accumulation, nor a kind of follow up self critique, it is an attempt to jot down some thoughts that were generated in collective discussion and reflection before they dissipate. It is red in practice and in theory, or, at the very least red in theoretical practice. What follows owes a great deal to all of those present at Red May. Names are withheld because I may have completely misunderstood what they were saying. 

Yet Another Effort, Spinozists, If You Would Become Marxists: Marxist Spinozism Against Enlightenment Spinozism

Me at PAF talking about Spinoza and Transindividuality 

(I am running out of Spinoza/Marx graphics)

In a recently published piece in Jacobin (which is a response to this piece in Viewpoint) we see the following statement:

"Precisely because of what we affirm in Spinoza, we view his French reception in the twentieth century skeptically. Thinkers such as Deleuze and Althusser largely reject Spinoza’s rationalism, monism, and determinism, reducing his substance to a swirl of anarchic forces, whether in Deleuze’s nomads or in Althusser’s aleatory materialism. These readings perform a kind of “substance abuse,” replacing Spinoza’s objective metaphysics with a Nietzschean play of forces.

But a different tradition of Marxist Spinozism doesn’t fall into this trap. Starting with Joseph Dietzgen and Georgi Plekhanov and proceeding with the Soviet Spinozists, A. M. Deborin and Evald Ilyenkov, these writers treat Spinoza as a dialectical thinker avant la lettre. They participate in the tradition of the left-Hegelians Heine, Feuerbach, and Hess, who hailed Spinoza as the real godfather of German Idealism. As such, they did not reject Spinoza’s humanism for a Heideggerian inspired antihumanism. Instead, they sought to affirm human power and dignity through an understanding of the material world."

Dialectic of the Donald: Or, Not Trump Again

The Owl of Minerva might fly at dusk, but her eagle works the day shift 

Let us begin with negation. You did not want to read this, you even told yourself that you were done, no more Trump think pieces, tweets, or articles. After all there are more important things to think about, and thinking about Trump, thinking about politics in age of Trump, seems almost to be a contradiction, like trying to think one's very inability to think. I get that, dear reader, I did not want to write this either, but I did--drawn in and repelled. Trump is not just the car wreck that you feel compelled to gaze upon. Trump is like slowing to watch a car crash and then going home to read a dozen articles on the dangers of drunken driving and digital distraction on today's highways, knowing all the while that all the articles in the world won't change the world. 

Triptych of a Tree: Memoirs of a Film Goer

That Hitchcock's Vertigo  has been imitated multiple times is not surprising, but it is slightly curious that the same tree appears in two other films. The original scene takes place as Scottie Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) takes Madeline (Kim Novak) to the redwoods. It is a fiction within a fiction, we later learn that it is actually Judy imitating Madeleine who, at the moment, is channeling Carlotta Valdez a woman who lived decades prior. The lines on the tree make it possible for Madeleine to present a life that began before her life. The lines in its bark is a memory before memory. The tree stands as a mute witness to a life that has passed before. It is a living fossil of a life not lived. 

Sidekick No More: Horkheimer on Work

In Max Horkheimer's critically underrated (and out of print) Dawn and Decline we find the following aphorism: