Dive into the archives.
- “…distant noises from the right bank.”
Allow me a long quotation from Negri’s engagement with Derrida’s Specters of Marx. Here Negri argues that while in Derrida there is a critique of capitalism (“specter of capitalism”) the “specter of communism” is indetectable.
- What should we do with the obscene oil profits?
“Exxon Mobil reports outsized profits. So did Shell. It’s all got politicians teeing up evil-oil rhetoric, except they are leaving one thing behind: the facts.” Let’s see what this little Marketplace ideological hack job serves us as “facts”: Oil prices are set by global forces. Since the mid-1980s, actual negotiations and deliveries of oil contracts [...]
- Keynes vs. Hayek
Circulating in the attention economy of the internets is this Austrian appropriation of the hiphop vernacular. Moralist tone of the Hayekian critique of excessive borrowing aside, I find it quite interesting how the liberatory tinge of Hayek’s “I want to free the markets!” is made to contrast with Keynes’ “I want to steer the market”. [...]
- Slavoj Zizek against Bernard-Henri Levy
There are a number of important moments, in particular look for the charity as a consumption practice or the violence of charity, the problem of zionist anti-semitism, the persistence of systemic violence in West Bank, the neccessity of communism in the advent of “new” commons, palin a as fascist, Hitler as a new age philosopher [...]
- Love etc.
A new single from Pet Shop Boys. Here are the almost Veblenian, or even perhaps Lacanian, lyrics. But I especially admire the line that refers to Gerhard Richter. I also embedded the video. You need more You need more You need more You need more You need more You need more You need more You [...]
- Beyond “commodity fetishism”: the Wire and the political economy of drugs
HBO series, the Wire, entered its fifth, and, unfortunately, the last season. Although I’ve wholeheartedly agreed that “the best thing ever happened to TV is Twin Peaks,” since I became an addict of the Wire, I felt the need to reconsider my allegiance. There are so many things to say about the Wire and there [...]
- Health Care Reform Debate and Feminine Sexuation: Passage to the Act
(Dear reader, sorry for the delay in posting–this summer has been one long emotional roller coaster ride so far.) Part 3 of “Health Care and the Community Economy: Towards an Ethics of Surplus and Geography of Sufficiency.” Feminine Sexuation and Health Care Reform So far we have learned what it is like to fail in [...]
- Iraqi workers strike against the new Oil Law
The following is an excerpt from the interview that Amy Goodman conducted with Antonia Juhasz, the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. The interview is aired on Wednesday as the 600 pipeline workers in southern Iraq began a strike on June 5 to protest the new oil law [...]
- Health Care and the Community Economy: Towards an Ethics of Surplus and Geography of Sufficiency. (Part 1)
Introduction In a recent presentation entitled “Freud in the Field: Some Early Twentieth Century Encounters in Participant Observation,” critical geographer Laura Cameron argued that Bronisław Kasper Malinowski’s participant observation was inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis—the productive tension it creates between engagement and reflection. Though Malinowski later repudiated psychoanalysis as a result of a controversy over the [...]
- Iraq oil and its colonial pre-history
I remembered some years ago talking in class about the US-led plans of privatization in Iraq at the beginning of the Occupation. From what I recall, Bremer even had a timeline for selling off the state-owned oil firm. At the time, it was roundly criticized by neighboring countries (surprise, surprise), and i think the plan [...]
