What is the difference between a serial object and a model object? What is a gizmo? What is consumption in the modern world? In this episode, our season one finale, we read Jean Baudrillard's exposé on the dizzying system of objects that makes up contemporary consumer society. Listen to us discuss The System of Objects … Continue reading Radical Thoughts Podcast: The System of Objects
Piranesi by Suzanna Clarke; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020. I always feel a little bit guilty when I fall in love with the first book by a relatively new author because I know that I’ll inevitably wait for their next work with anticipation and think of it in terms of the first book. “Ah, yes,” I’ll say, … Continue reading Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
I’ve been excitedly awaiting Jairus Banaji’s A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism for some time. His book Theory as History is one of the most interesting works of Marxist scholarship concerning modes of production, divisions of labour, and agrarian studies to date. I find his work particularly interesting because he stresses both the importance of … Continue reading Reading “A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism”
It seems common practice nowadays to fit Marx into one kind of triad or another. Marx-Lenin-Mao, for instance. Or Marx-Freud-Nietzsche - Ricoeur’s three “masters of suspicion.” Henri Lefebvre, eclectic and imaginative as ever, gives us his own triad of Continental giants in his aptly titled, newly translated, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche (or, The Realm of Shadows). … Continue reading Henri Lefebvre’s “Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche”
The following is a first part of a critique of Byung-Chul Han's In the Swarm. This will respond to the first chapter. I. NO RESPECT "Respect presupposes a distanced look - the pathos of distance. Today, it is yielding to the obtrusive staring of spectacle…. A society without respect, without the pathos of distance, paves … Continue reading Critique of Swarm – Part 1
"Proletarian revolutions criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltryness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise … Continue reading The Biography, The Accounting of Life, Will Come – (Blanchot, Judgement, the Question of Political Redemption)
I was drawn into The Vorrh by the voices of other artists: Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair, Jeff Vandermeer, and even the elusive Tom Waits all hailed it as wondrous, dark, and engrossing. These were voices I respected, and they drew me into the jungle with their calls. In many ways, a summary of The Vorrh … Continue reading A Look at a Book: The Vorrh
[Warning: Spoilers for The Beginner's Guide may be found below] It seems we have entered into a golden age of deconstuctive, postmodern, indie games within the last three or four years. In 2013 we were given The Stanley Parable and the first act of Kentucky Route Zero, each eschewing traditional gameplay for quirky narrative exploration … Continue reading Deconstruction, the Player, and the Played, Part One: “The Beginner’s Guide”
I just replayed Call of Duty: Black Ops for the first time in years this week. Actually, it's technically my first time really playing it - I grew up in a home where I didn't have Call of Duty (or really any FPS games for a long time) so I had to eagerly await going … Continue reading Control in “Black Ops”
I knew when I started these reviews that I was going to end with videogames. The thing was, I had just beat two Telltale series (Tales From the Borderlands, and The Wolf Among Us) and thought that I would have one other game finished by the time I wrote this last section. Things were … Continue reading Some Quick Reviews Part 3: Games
Pen and Screen 