Filthy Hans posted:

I'm almost through the Prince of Nothing series and highly suggest avoiding it unless you want to read about a fantasy world where the economy runs on rape

I'm only finishing it out of morbid curiosity

vyelkin posted:

this is the wrong thread for whatever the hell you're talking about

CRAZY KNUCKLES FAN posted:

Also here's the whole thing if you want to read it:

Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism

Blisster posted:

Fanon is a really interesting figure. I read Black Skin White Masks and A Dying Colonialism last year, and my partner got me Wretched of the Earth for Christmas which I will be starting soon. The chapter in BSWM about the black experience left me pretty stunned.

I wish I knew a bit more about the context of his writing, sometimes it is hard to parse out what is outdated psychology stuff and I don't get most of his literary references at all. Interested to see what everyone will think of the book.

vyelkin posted:

Cool choice to read Nkrumah. Gonna stick this for another month since it's starting up again, and if I have time I'll join in the reading

Filthy Hans posted:

would it help if I said the book isn't very socialist either

loquacius posted:

talk about fiction in the pop culture thread, I do it all the time

Greg Legg posted:

It's almost March, any thoughts on the next book? I have been reading, I'm just not confident enough to really comment on any of it!

AnimeIsTrash posted:

I am very behind on my reading on my reading. Since we've been on a decolonization kick recently, how about some Mark Fisher next?

Capitalist Realism

For a bonus Exiting the Vampire's Castle

AnimeIsTrash posted:

I am very behind on my reading on my reading. Since we've been on a decolonization kick recently, how about some Mark Fisher next?

Capitalist Realism

For a bonus Exiting the Vampire's Castle

Smythe posted:

lol someone posted that recently so i reread it. the vampire castle essay that is. i would love to read capitalist realism. it will be a couple week tho.

i was fishing for a quote from foucault's discipline and punish today and was reminded at how tight it was

anyways i suggest the essay and also capitalist realism. its short. eager to read it.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

I am very behind on my reading on my reading. Since we've been on a decolonization kick recently, how about some Mark Fisher next?

Capitalist Realism

For a bonus Exiting the Vampire's Castle

Dreylad posted:

Giving Capitalism Realism another read is always good for some discussion.

Given the themes so far, Adolph Reed Jr.'s The South might be a good read for another month. I've been meaning to read it, although it may be hard for some people to access.

Alternatively, there's the classic Class Notes

Xaris posted:

tangentially relevant but I’d like to remind ppl that zlibrary is back for all your book needs if you need help getting whatever book club book we’re doing. you do need an account though http://singlelogin.me

and thank god. using libgen sucks and sucked even more to try to tor onion link poo poo

Cuttlefush posted:

that's good news. i've never had a problem with libgen but maybe it's a provider thing?

AnimeIsTrash posted:

You should check out W.E.B DuBois’s Black Reconstruction in America if you end up liking the south. Lenin most likely based his writings about black America on much of DuBois’s work.

quote:

The fourth law of the Vampires’ Castle is: essentialize. While fluidity of identity, pluraity and multiplicity are always claimed on behalf of the VC members – partly to cover up their own invariably wealthy, privileged or bourgeois-assimilationist background – the enemy is always to be essentialized. Since the desires animating the VC are in large part priests’ desires to excommunicate and condemn, there has to be a strong distinction between Good and Evil, with the latter essentialized. Notice the tactics. X has made a remark/ has behaved in a particular way – these remarks/ this behaviour might be construed as transphobic/ sexist etc. So far, OK. But it’s the next move which is the kicker. X then becomes defined as a transphobe/ sexist etc. Their whole identity becomes defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioural slip. Once the VC has mustered its witch-hunt, the victim (often from a working class background, and not schooled in the passive aggressive etiquette of the bourgeoisie) can reliably be goaded into losing their temper, further securing their position as pariah/ latest to be consumed in feeding frenzy.

quote:

They are also overwhelmingly young: in their twenties or at most their early thirties, and what informs the neo-anarchist position is a narrow historical horizon. Neo-anarchists have experienced nothing but capitalist realism. By the time the neo-anarchists had come to political consciousness – and many of them have come to political consciousness remarkably recently, given the level of bullish swagger they sometimes display – the Labour Party had become a Blairite shell, implementing neo-liberalism with a small dose of social justice on the side. But the problem with neo-anarchism is that it unthinkingly reflects this historical moment rather than offering any escape from it. It forgets, or perhaps is genuinely unaware of, the Labour Party’s role in nationalising major industries and utilities or founding the National Health Service. Neo-anarchists will assert that ‘parliamentary politics never changed anything’, or the ‘Labour Party was always useless’ while attending protests about the NHS, or retweeting complaints about the dismantling of what remains of the welfare state. There’s a strange implicit rule here: it’s OK to protest against what parliament has done, but it’s not alright to enter into parliament or the mass media to attempt to engineer change from there. Mainstream media is to be disdained, but BBC Question Time is to be watched and moaned about on Twitter. Purism shades into fatalism; better not to be in any way tainted by the corruption of the mainstream, better to uselessly ‘resist’ than to risk getting your hands dirty.

Oglethorpe posted:

are there any books about capitalist (and generally non-profit/philanthropist) solutions to problems that go into how the surplus profits/"administrative" overhead result in a net negative for improvement? Like how those surplus profits could go toward further improvement but are instead hoarded away and whatnot

Dreylad posted:

vyelkin posted:

Just finished reading Exiting the Vampire Castle and there were two bits that stood out that I wanted to comment on.

This really rang a bell with me, it reminded me of something I think we've discussed itf several times: modern discourse essentializes actions into types. If someone says something racist, that means they become a racist, rather than being a person who has done a racist thing. The assumption is that you are what you do, rather than that you did something that you might learn not to do in the future. A similar dichotomy that I've harped on endlessly in the past is that a lot of discourse around crime revolves around separating criminals from everyone else (I usually say criminals versus citizens just for easy reference). The assumption is that only criminals will commit crime, and criminals will break any law because they don't care about laws, whereas citizens will never commit crime and will follow all laws. The way to solve crime, therefore, is to find the criminals and lock them up, while minimizing restrictions on citizens because you can trust them to behave.

Fisher is identifying a similar phenomenon in the realm of identity politics, which is that if you commit a racist act you become a racist, forever. It isn't a learning opportunity or a chance to examine what underlying assumptions or biases might have led to it, it's evidence that you were always a racist and now you've finally been exposed so we can remove you from polite society. Actions become essentialized and treated like a glimpse behind the mask someone was putting on to conform to social norms. People then rush to ostracize the offender, because they don't want to be found guilty be association. I think he's absolutely right to call this poisonous to solidarity. Just about everyone in the world has some kind of bias that they will unwittingly expose if prompted in the wrong way, and if we try to build a movement while excluding everyone who has ever done something wrong in their life, it'll be a movement of one.

Another thing that I think this reflects is the contemporary political drive to build a movement around things that already exist rather than building a movement to educate and mobilize people towards a common goal. One example is the endless triangulation of modern political parties around polling. The assumption is that people already have their views and those views are fixed, so the way to win political power is to find a platform that appeals to the existing views of 51% of the population and then roll with it. This is a stupid way to think about people's political preferences, and ignores that people can and do change their minds over time when presented with or mobilized around new alternatives. Both approaches essentialize people. They find ways to push people into little boxes and then insist that the fact that they're in that box proves they have always and will always be in that box, while assuming the only people worth talking to are whoever's left outside a box. Better to be a movement of one than to associate with someone imperfect and risk being branded guilty by association. It's a terrible way to build a movement, and it's the kind of thing that pushes people away as the different segments inevitably cannibalize one another.

This is similar to another part Fisher discusses later in the essay, the second part that I wanted to comment on:

Here Fisher points out that that same essentializing schema also applies to political movements and to history. People raised under Blair enter politics saying things like "the Labour Party has always been useless", ignoring how past iterations of that party oversaw successful policies like nationalizing major industries and building a comprehensive welfare state. Today the party has changed into something useless, therefore the party was always useless instead of being something that could change into something useful once again. Better to give up than to associate with something imperfect.

I think the lesson here is that building a movement requires openness to change. You have to be willing to accept imperfect people and imperfect allies based on the principle that, first of all, imperfections in one area do not contradict solidarity in other areas, like shared class struggle, and second, that imperfect allies can improve themselves over time instead of being essentialized into an improper box and therefore excluded forever. If the goal is to change the world, it's foolish to restrict ourselves to associating with people and institutions that are already perfect. If the world can change, then so can they.

These are relatively unformed thoughts but they're what stood out to me while reading. I'd be interested to hear what others thought.

Dreylad posted:

Still, I can't help but give into my disgust of social media and note that he felt better after he logged off and interacted with actual people. No poo poo dude, but I guess in 2013 it wasn't quite so apparent than social media had no future. And perhaps people weren't quite so aware of how cynically it was designed to hook people and feed their worst impulses and drive a lot of people insane.

vyelkin posted:

Here Fisher points out that that same essentializing schema also applies to political movements and to history. People raised under Blair enter politics saying things like "the Labour Party has always been useless", ignoring how past iterations of that party oversaw successful policies like nationalizing major industries and building a comprehensive welfare state. Today the party has changed into something useless, therefore the party was always useless instead of being something that could change into something useful once again. Better to give up than to associate with something imperfect.

I think the lesson here is that building a movement requires openness to change. You have to be willing to accept imperfect people and imperfect allies based on the principle that, first of all, imperfections in one area do not contradict solidarity in other areas, like shared class struggle, and second, that imperfect allies can improve themselves over time instead of being essentialized into an improper box and therefore excluded forever. If the goal is to change the world, it's foolish to restrict ourselves to associating with people and institutions that are already perfect. If the world can change, then so can they.

These are relatively unformed thoughts but they're what stood out to me while reading. I'd be interested to hear what others thought.