Schematic

Schematic/algebraic: Capital Finance sector alpha drone Service sector beta drone   Decline of manufacturing/ Export of manufacturing ‘creative’ economy/ New Imperialism   The finance and creative sector is not neutral/ …middle class and liberal-academic chatter provides an alibi/ … for a war on terror which is also global finance and race/class privilege/   Race: – [...]

Adorno to Benjamin

The “Complete Correspondence of Benjamin and Adorno” (Polity 1999 or Surkamp 1994) is always a good read on a cold rainy [even snowing] day. Adorno to Benjamin: Teddy writes to Walter trying to wean him from his trinket mania, get him to sort out the Arcades, and get him on a boat to New York. [...]

Siddown Siddown!

“Hey you, up the front, pull yer head in, your noggins’ in the way, I can’t see the action”. I have long been a fan of Owen Hattersley’s word and image hoard as found on “Sit Down Man Your a Bloody Tragedy”. It presents a (recently very) Keiloresque version of London that is a somehow [...]

Frankenstein in Iraq

“wretch … it is well that you come here to whine over the desolation you have made. You throw a torch onto a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall” (Shelley Frankenstein 1818/1992 228) I was sent some systems static by a close friend from [...]

Žižek sets his own curfews.

Slavoj Žižek has some funny ticks – I remember him taking three and a half minutes at the end of the Lenin and Philosophy conference in Essen (February 2001) telling us all there were only six minutes left for discussions and we should not make grand statements and we should avoid extravagant declarations … and [...]

Nepal turning red via ballots not bullets?

Comrade Prachanda addressing a mass rally in Backtapur, outside Kathmandu, on March 12. Nepal’s general election is on 10th of April and is more important than the cobra-mongoose death embrace that is the election most people seem presently obsessed about (Zizek, Kellner, the entire media, everyone except the residents of Florida who already know their [...]

neighbours are there for each other

Gotta say that so far moving to the new house has been a joy. And my neighbours made it all the more wonderful when last night, before I could even get a free evening (because of Tara’s party – happy birthday Tara), there was a street aesthetics rectification action. What I mean to say is [...]

Doc Sean

Meant to post this a while back – Sean passed his viva. Congratulations. The picture is Sean and Lisa expressing their appreciation for my photography skills. Red Salute Dr Mckeown.

Panto Rancière

The twin towers have been so often represented that it is barely possible to see them now for the fug and smoke. In a certain sense, and for some critics, the question of representation collapsed for Cultural Studies on that day in September, 2001. Of course everything has already been said about it, and nothing [...]

Patrick Swayze Dance with Death

There will be no “Dirty Dancing 3″ it seems. Sad, but at least we can luxuriate in the recollections of knowing that “DD2″ (2004 – where Patch was a dance instructor) will have been the last outing for the Rambo of the ballroom, and the flame will never be dimmed. I am dismayed that he [...]

ASA – From Post-Imperial Anthropology to Post-Anthropological Empire?

A cross post from the Association of Social Anthropology site, filed here (awaiting moderation), but check the original if interested. As I cannot face reading the papers with War Hero Harry splattered (in the wrong way) across the front today, I visited the site of the Royal Anthropological Institute looking for comment, then landed on [...]

Writing Diary

The diary, a memoir, notebooks, letters from the field – the ephemeral residue of the research process of anthropology has increasingly attracted attention, become raw data for cultivation, sifting the soil. This text offers an elaboration and personal appropriation of the flux of comprehension across the unusual long-time visitation of a peculiar mode of culture [...]