Unemployed Negativity
Friday, January 17, 2025
The Death of Cool: Silicon Valley and Cultural Capital
Monday, January 06, 2025
Nothing Less: On Death, Knowledge, and Affects
Saturday, December 28, 2024
A Blessing and a Curse: In Memory of my Mom
The two phrases you hear when you lose someone, at least in the US, are "Sorry for your loss" and "May their memory be a blessing." The two phrases are diametrically and not dialectically opposed. The first emphasizes absence, the living person that is gone, while the second emphasizes presence, the memories that remain. The first of these phrases are more common, more generic, while the second is more often heard from Jewish friends, at least in my experience, and is a translation of the Hebrew "zichrona livricha." The second has begun to be used more widely, either in act of cultural appropriation or cultural tribute. I have always thought it to be the better of the two phrases.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
An (Éminence) Gris Area: Thinking and Acting in Miller's Crossing
The one two punch of Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink are probably peak Coen brothers for me. They have other films that are considered classics (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc.), but they are two films that typify everything that comes to mind when one thinks of the Coen Brothers, the obsessions with classic Hollywood films and the culture that produced them; the attention to dialogue that turns every line into both an archive and a poem; and a dark sense of humor. A few years ago, thanks to the Maine International Film Festival I got to see the film with Gabriel Byrne speaking afterwards. One of my best movie going experiences.
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men...? On Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism
Saturday, November 02, 2024
Working Politics: The Divisions and Unity of Labor
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Why We Write: Or, Blogging as a Philosophical Practice
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Automatic Against the People: Reading, Writing, and AI
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Towards a Genealogy of Right Workerism: Notes on the Origin of Bizarro World
Monday, September 02, 2024
Marx's Basement Demo Tapes: On Monferrand's La Nature du Capital
As many readers of this blog probably know, there is a new translation of Capital coming out this month. I am sure that this new translation will have a great deal of new revelations drawn from the work of considering the text in light of its multiple variations and Marx's notes. However, it seems to me that the book that we are in need of reconsidering is not so much Capital but the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.