My teacher says I'm breaking books at an eighth grade level: book thread

[Greg Nog]

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

ALWAYS

[elpollodiablo]

Did I mention I read Mrs. Dalloway last year? I quite liked it!

[peacocks]

mrs. dalloway was great for sure! To the lighthouse you say? I'll check it out!

[fishjim]

Agree with pollo & Nog, but Orlando is still a romp. Hard to go wrong with Woolf, though my least favorite was probably The Years. And while The Waves is waaay impressive, it's a bit too experimental for pleasurable reading.

[elpollodiablo]

Orlando's about anti-semitism, yeah?

[peacocks]

I thought it was basically about Vita Sackville-West? That's why I'm interested, anyway.

[fishjim]

I think pollo's making a joke about Florida? But yes, it's about Vita Sackville-West. And gender roles.

[peacocks]

heavy sigh

[coldforge]

surely if he were making a Florida joke he'd ask if it were about goths.

[mixed cats]

I finally got around to getting a library card yesterday, after living in this town for almost five years. There are so many folklore collections available there. I'm in trouble.

[davy]

Awful Library Books hit one out of the park this morning...

[fishjim]

I'd support burning that book, yes.

[Greg Nog]

They are often so taut they appear ready to snap like a fiddle string

Well it IS a pretty sick core, thank you

[cold before sunrise]

Massage might be a key to unlocking the universe.

[elpollodiablo]

I've been mired in political philosophy lately, mostly relating to violence and theories of the state and democracy. Arendt, Benjamin, Agamben, Zizek. Highlights have been the Zizek and this guy Robert Paul Wolff who is an anarchist political philosopher I'd never heard of before; he's got a pretty striking critique of nonviolence that I spammed jeb's FB wall with the other day. The lowlight has been this dude John Keane's Violence and Democracy which essentially makes the argument that violence is the antithesis of democracy, that democracy only persists by "democratizing" violence, rooting it out, diminishing it, and guarding against it, and that democracy is under constant threat from without, and that "true" democracies are "forced" to respond to the violence of others, etc. I only read about half the book but from that bit it's not clear that he ever allows for the possibility that a state monopoly on violence is a precondition for democracy itself, or that the relationship of democracy and capitalism operates on a low-level thrum of structural violence. Basically a bunch of utopian liberal humanism. It'll be good fodder for this presentation I'm giving at the end of the month, though!

[Good Intentions]

and this guy Robert Paul Wolff who is an anarchist political philosopher I'd never heard of before; he's got a pretty striking critique of nonviolence that I spammed jeb's FB wall with the other day.

I've been reading a lot of his stuff recently, after I came across his really quite wonderful blog ( http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com - he posted a long series of memoirs of his time in the profession which was extremely interesting for people in the field, and charming in their own right) and have even gone so far as to correspond with him, in our blogs and through more conventional channels. Have you seen his 'The Poverty of Liberalism'? I really like that a lot, and it aims at, amongst other things, the type of wishy-washy liberalism you mention.

[elpollodiablo]

Hey, that's awesome! And I'll look that up, for sure. His essay on violence was rad, for sure, and I really dug his kind of irascible tone.

Thanks for the tip!

[Good Intentions]

The book I pointed towards covers a lot of other ground as well, so you probably don't need to read the whole thing. Though I think it wouldn't do you, or anyone else, any harm to read it all. It includes a tremendously helpful analysis of what is special about the large-scale co-operative action which governments are well-suited to do. That long post I made in response to Babar about what's bad about privatising government cribs shamelessly from that, and it's a topic I've been pursuing quite a bit recently. I might have also mentioned this here before, but Wolff's 'Understanding Marx' is an excellent introduction to Marx's political thought, and is especially good at bringing out the economical import of Marx's work.

[elpollodiablo]

Do you have any thoughts you'd like to share on Benjamin's Critique of Violence? It's the essay I've struggled with the most of everything I've read lately. Dont have any specific queries at the moment, but I've got some questions in my notes...

[Good Intentions]

Never read it. I read some stuff which discussed it second-hand, but that was too long ago for me to remember. I have read some other Benjamin, and am not surprised that you find it hard-going (as does everybody else): Benjamin, for good or ill, tries to give you every detail he can think of all at once (if you ever want to read something unapproachably dense, try any section of his Arcades project). But you probably know that already.

[coldforge]

GI< how do you feel about Rick Roderick?

[Good Intentions]

Never heard of him, sadly.

[coldforge]

Interesting! I am enjoying this: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/03/04/rick-roderick-on-derrida/

[Good Intentions]

Well, that would explain why I haven't heard of him - I stay a long way away from Derrida.

[coldforge]

Pollo might like him. Apparently he made his bones on Habermas.