Pretty happy to see this taken seriously. Its like I was waiting for someone to reach for the falling penny. When it happens, its come with a whole new angle, or several, but most importantly Robyn Marasco finds new ways to displace the trivialisers and poseurs. The reading via Jose Esteban Munoz has a lot to teach us, and opens up new paths for research and I hope new readers or at least writings and ways to understand how and why to (sometimes) get out of the library. That the point is to find more ways to do this is, well, the point. Another, that I was already more familiar with, is through the sustaining work of comrade Alberto Toscano, but in general, the scope and fluency here – and sense of inquiry – is why Marasco is refreshing. Perhaps the coverage of, and the the need to excuse, associations with critical theory could be a little less. I’m not sure that it is best to comprehend Bataille this way, too many have been chaining him to some misplaced stash of Benjamin’s horde – whereas Siegfried or Teddy would have been better interlocutors in the 30s, if they could be dragged along to meet with Souverine. Imagine. Nah, maybe we have to agree with Michael Taussig that only Benjamin could get us to pay still more attention to the craft of writing – to get us to carry some of the paragraphs to the page and set them just so – but to complain that we have more critical theory is a minor and insignificant quibble about an anyway fluent text. Maybe, finally, we could ask if we need all the associations that are only reminders of much already done – but I am anyway happy to be implicitly contrasted to Nick Land [once invited him to talk at Manchester and he came and sat under the seminar able to deliver his bits – of course I don’t remember what he said]. Anyway, everyone should take the time to read this, its worth much and there seems to be more to come, and there’s a book on Hegel, and …
OK, its a download of what I assume is a preprint, here: https://www.academia.edu/49072682/Batailles_anti_fascism_Contemporary_Political_Theory_
While I’ve scanned the compare and contrast page that I most like :)
Trinketization 