James Comey's needlessly redundant memoir, Saving Justice, feels like a cash-grab more than a substantive conversation on the criminal justice system James Comey's needlessly redundant memoir, Saving Justice, feels like a cash-grab more than a substantive conversation on the criminal justice system in America. If you've already read A Higher Loyalty, I wouldn't bother with this footnote in book form....more
Asylum is a haunting work by architect-photographer, Christopher Payne. The introductory remarks, provided by the legendary Oliver Sacks, cradle the iAsylum is a haunting work by architect-photographer, Christopher Payne. The introductory remarks, provided by the legendary Oliver Sacks, cradle the images of abandonment and isolation in a measure of dignity, tolerance, and understanding. ...more
Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told is a compelling work of pop-history, which situates chattel slavery at the heart of American capitaliEdward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told is a compelling work of pop-history, which situates chattel slavery at the heart of American capitalism, industrialization, and modernization. Indeed, in order to understand the meteoric rise and dominance of the United States on the global stage, it is necessary to examine the central role that slavery played in the country’s social, political, cultural, and economic development.
The book sports an unorthodox, yet equally compelling structure, which divides the narrative into chapters corresponding to segmented body parts. For instance, there are chapters for “The Heart”, “Feet”, “Heads”, “Right Hand”, “Left Hand”, and so on, each reflecting the ways in which the enslaved African-American body was broken down, objectified, commodified, and fetishized. For the “whipping machine” of chattel slavery wasn’t just aimed at ‘slaves’, like some nebulous disembodied abstraction, but real, concrete human bodies.
On the surface, this may seem like an obvious point, but it’s not. The particulars of history can be quickly swallowed up in the sheer enormity of human suffering, especially when we are dealing with atrocities on the level of slavery. Baptist tries his best to convey this complex materiality, while also reminding his audience that each slave was a person. We are physical bodies, to be sure, but we are physical bodies with rich inner lives. There is an emotional and psychological depth, a private experience of the world, that cannot be reduced to any purely objective description. Although it’s a delicate balance to maintain, I think that Baptist’s efforts pay off. The Half Has Never Been Told is well worth the read....more
Carlo Rovelli is one of my favourite pop-science authors. Reality Is Not What It Seems offers non-experts an accessible overview of the current thinkiCarlo Rovelli is one of my favourite pop-science authors. Reality Is Not What It Seems offers non-experts an accessible overview of the current thinking on quantum gravity. Aside from conveying recent developments, Rovelli is also skilled at presenting a general picture of the history of scientific thought. An enriching and inclusive book geared toward the curious and thoughtful layperson....more
Charles Bukowski hated mankind but adored cats. On Cats collects some of his poetry, anecdotes, and blurbs on the subject of our feline friends. Some Charles Bukowski hated mankind but adored cats. On Cats collects some of his poetry, anecdotes, and blurbs on the subject of our feline friends. Some are interesting; most are a bore. ...more
Eliran Bar-El is a sociologist whose work is primarily concerned with the sociological (re-)production of intellectual figures and intellectual intervEliran Bar-El is a sociologist whose work is primarily concerned with the sociological (re-)production of intellectual figures and intellectual interventions. His most recent book, How Slavoj Became Žižek, is – as the title suggests – an application of those research interests to the iconic Slovenian intellectual, Slavoj Žižek. The book seeks to explain Žižek’s rise to popularity as a public intellectual, especially in the United States, and to make sense of the popular attraction to his work, which – like the man himself – is highly idiosyncratic and unusual.
Before I proceed any further with my comments, I should mention that this book was retracted by the University of Chicago Press, due to charges of plagiarism leveled against Bar-El. Although I am not aware of the specifics, the Press made the following statement on their website: “This title is no longer available for sale. After its original publication, the Press and the author were made aware of several insufficient, missing, or erroneous citations of source material upon which the author builds his argument. The Press and the author are grateful to the observant readers who identified this, and the author apologizes for any inconvenience and harm caused.” And so, again, while I’m not aware of the plagiarized material in question, I think the entire book needs to be bracketed off and approached with caution, as these charges are quite serious. In the academic world, this is basically the equivalent of intellectual suicide.
Putting those charges aside for a moment, I think the book still has a number of redeemable qualities, and Bar-El has some interesting things to say. He presents Žižek’s popularity as an enigma of sorts – something that needs to be questioned and interrogated. To be sure, there is something inherently strange about the appeal of Žižek inside and outside of academia, when he has spent his life’s work peddling mostly dead ideas (i.e., German idealism, psychoanalysis and Marxism) from dead figures (i.e., Hegel, Marx, Freud and Lacan). This is even more curious in the American context, where Žižek’s notoriety has reached a level of pop-cultural superstardom enjoyed by few other academic philosophers-turned-public figures.
In a strange way, Bar-El’s book reminds me of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, but as an intellectual biography rather than an autobiography. In attempting to explain Žižek’s global appeal, particularly since the 9-11 attacks, the book gestures at many of the same value judgments that Nietzsche set forth as guides to understanding himself. If you recall, Ecce Homo – translated in English to Behold the Man – is divided into four parts with peculiar titles, each seeking to ironically justify and prop-up his own legacy. The colourful titles were: “Why I am So Wise”, “Why I Am So Clever”, “Why I Write Such Good Books”, and “Why I am A Destiny”. Although I don’t get the sense that Bar-El thinks that these judgments apply to Žižek, I do think that his analysis seeks to understand why Žižek’s fans are inclined to appraise him in this light.
Thus, Bar-El asks us to join him in ‘beholding the man’. The book uses “positioning theory” to identify key aspects of Žižek’s persona, ideas, and social history, which combined to form his “super-position” on the global stage. I won’t break his argument down into all of its component parts, but there’s one really crucial point he makes that I want to touch on, and that is the “sacrificial” quality of Žižek’s super-position as academic philosopher-turned-public philosopher-turned-meme. As Bar-El writes: “This positioning again brings Žižek closer to a Socrates (of the digital age), who, according to [Alain] Badiou, was ‘the first philosopher but also the first analyst.’ While Socrates sacrificed himself physically for corrupting the youth, Žižek paid a metaphysical sacrifice for his position through the media-academic trade-off.” It’s the stereotypical narrative: an academic steps outside of the ivory tower and, as punishment for his sinful transgression, is cast out by his peers, like Adam and Eve from Eden. As Žižek’s public appearances grew, his respect within the academy diminished. Yet, despite losing respect among his peers, his global influence undeniably grew. Love him or hate him, Žižek is clearly a noteworthy figure of contemporary thought.
The history of philosophy as an academic discipline is a contentious matter, and rightly so. The fact that philosophy has, for the most part, retreated behind the walls of the university is ironic when we consider its origin story. After all, philosophy began in the public sphere, in the streets of Athens, through democratic dialogue and open lines of questioning. It often led to death – as in the case of Socrates – or extreme poverty and social alienation – as in the case of Diogenese.
We can see, therefore, how the bourgeois professionalization of philosophy, and its subsequent safeguarding within the private realm, is itself a Hegelian reversal of philosophy as it was initially understood and practiced in antiquity. Perhaps those “sacrificial” intellectuals like Žižek, who intentionally straddle the popular/academic threshold, are the synthetic products of this public-private swing of the philosophic pendulum. Is a return to the public sector the proper site of philosophic inquiry? If philosophy is a public product, then is the popularity of public intellectuals like Žižek, or Chomsky, or Cornel West really such a bad thing?...more
J. Samuel Walker's The Day That Shook America does exactly what it promises - it offers a "concise history" of the September 11th attacks, and it doesJ. Samuel Walker's The Day That Shook America does exactly what it promises - it offers a "concise history" of the September 11th attacks, and it does so with a strong sense of narrative and a firm grasp of the facts. Although Walker's book is an excellent segue into this topic, a more comprehensive work would need to address the broader implications of 9/11, including: the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; revolutions in global security; the Snowden leaks, privacy, and public trust; racial profiling, scapegoating, and Islamophobia; the epistemological dilemma posed by conspiracy theories; patriotism and collective memory; and, importantly, how the United States wrestled with 9/11 after the Bush administration. However, as a clear-eyed introduction to the history of September 11th, The Day That Shook America is an indispensable resource....more
Don Brown’s The Great American Dust Bowl is an excellent visual representation of this fascinating period in American history. The gritty art style maDon Brown’s The Great American Dust Bowl is an excellent visual representation of this fascinating period in American history. The gritty art style matches the thematic content perfectly. The narrative and social history are accessible to readers of all ages, but kudos to Brown for citing his sources and including a bibliography for further reading. ...more
Deathscapes is an interdisciplinary collection of papers on the application of thanatology to cultural geography and the study of 'place'. The text wiDeathscapes is an interdisciplinary collection of papers on the application of thanatology to cultural geography and the study of 'place'. The text will be of particular interest to anthropology, sociology, and history students with a keen interest in the Anglo-American ways of death, dying, and commemoration. Strongly recommended....more
Once a year, I challenge myself to read a book that I'm pretty sure I'll dislike. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life fit the bill, and since it's beeOnce a year, I challenge myself to read a book that I'm pretty sure I'll dislike. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life fit the bill, and since it's been sitting on my 'to read' list forever, here we are.
The book is basically what I expected: misogynistic, homophobic, dogmatic, and silly. There's some decent, motivational advice sprinkled throughout, but nothing more profound than what you'd find in your average Ted Talk. Don't be fooled - Peterson may be a clinical psychologist by training, but this isn't clinical psychology. It's a right-wing Christian apology, dressed up as a statement on Human Nature, and clearly aimed at young, confused, and frustrated men. Peterson is skilled in the art of rhetoric, and he wields that talent unrelentingly in favour of his religious and political affinities.
In 12 Rules for Life, Peterson comes across as the humourless, angry, and pigheaded figure that he is. His tone is equally callous and ridiculous, making perfect fodder for meme-aficionados (anyone else LOL at the shots he fired at Elmo?!). It's no wonder that he's found himself in so much trouble with U of T and the College of Psychologists of Ontario. This book is an intellectually dishonest piece of self-aggrandizing tripe. As Zizek would say, it is "pure ideology" in its purest form....more
What does it mean to say that time runs faster for our heads than our feet? Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time weaves theoretical physics with poetry aWhat does it mean to say that time runs faster for our heads than our feet? Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time weaves theoretical physics with poetry and philosophy into a seamless whole. The result is a surprisingly effective piece of pop-science that avoids clichés, but also isn’t afraid to engage with the more sublime aspects of its very human subject matter. Highly recommended. ...more
In Sorting Daemons, Jan Allen, Kirsty Robertson and E. K. Smith explore what it means to think about surveillance technology aesthetically. There seemIn Sorting Daemons, Jan Allen, Kirsty Robertson and E. K. Smith explore what it means to think about surveillance technology aesthetically. There seems to be a definite technophobic lean, but the collection of art is compelling nonetheless....more
As the title suggests, Muybridge and Mobility examines the photography of Eadweard Muybridge through the analytical lens of “mobility”. The text consiAs the title suggests, Muybridge and Mobility examines the photography of Eadweard Muybridge through the analytical lens of “mobility”. The text consists of two essays written by two separate authors – namely, cultural geographer and social theorist Tim Cresswell (a personal favourite), and art historian John Ott. Working within their respective disciplines, the authors use the concept of “mobility” as an organizing theme and an entry point for discussing Muybridge’s ground-breaking motion-studies work, particularly his masterpiece, Animal Locomotion.
In the first essay, Cresswell leans on Walter Benjamin to read Muybridge within various “constellations of mobility” that were transforming society in the late 19th and early 20th-century. Cresswell is particularly interested in the sequences involving horses, which he conceptualizes as a kind of liminal space of mobility, situated between a fading epoch defined by horse-drawn power, and an emergent one characterized by steam power, rail, and automobiles. Muybridge also tried to elevate his own aesthetic and normative work to the level of scientific legitimacy. The photographer deployed a number of strategies to achieve this sort of “scientific mobility”, including the use of gridded backgrounds and other pseudo-scientific facades. In doing so, Cresswell argues that the camera, the non-human subjects, and the backgrounds were active – not passive – agents of historical change. “They were”, he claims, “implicated in the production of a particular kind of space.”
In contrast to Cresswell’s more speculative and philosophic examination, Ott’s essay frames Animal Locomotion squarely within the social and racial history of Gilded Age America. Moving away from the abstract toward the concrete, Ott unpacks the inclusion of Black athletes within Muybridge’s work – most notably, his inclusion of Black boxers and jockeys – and suggests that his motion-studies afforded a degree of social and racial “mobility” that was not accessible to Blacks in the other domains of public life. As an interracial project, Animal Locomotion crossed colour lines and gave certain Black athletes an opportunity to challenge racial hierarchies, transgress social customs, and thwart segregation laws. Although Ott acknowledges that these opportunities for resistance and ascension were limited, they were still opportunities nonetheless. As Ott states, the Black athletes featured in Muybridge’s photographs “[…] could occupy marginal yet productive spaces, both social and discursive, unavailable to most African Americans.” In this case, photography dislocated and loosened up the essential separations of race and class – if only briefly.
In both essays, it becomes apparent that Muybridge and his subjects were central – not peripheral – to the technological revolution that was happening around them. Indeed, the motion-studies work of Muybridge must be understood as at least partly responsible for the tectonic shifts in our shared cultural assumptions about space, time, and social hierarchies.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Muybridge and Mobility. The text succeeds on both of its promises; in the first, as a solid piece of cultural theory, and in the second, as an engaging study of a vital 19th-century figure....more
Sander Gilman has quickly become one of my favourite cultural historians. Making the Body Beautiful is a rich and challenging work, which skillfully gSander Gilman has quickly become one of my favourite cultural historians. Making the Body Beautiful is a rich and challenging work, which skillfully grafts the beautiful onto the grotesque, blurring any distinction between the two.
Broadly speaking, the book explores the changing techniques and meanings associated with aesthetic surgeries across the globe. Although the text is ‘macro’ in scope, Gilman is fundamentally concerned with Western conceptions of beauty, race, and gender. More specifically, his text pays special attention to the unique relationship between anti-Semitism, rhinoplasty, and the Jewish nose. The result is compelling, to say the least.
In every decision to go under the knife, Gilman locates the human need to belong – that is, the desire to “pass” from one group to another. Mutilating one’s own body for the sake of an imagined ideal is certainly a strange practice. Yet it is a practice which exists in varying degrees all across the world. As a global phenomenon, then, perhaps aesthetic surgery is – to borrow the words of Nietzsche – a practice that is “human, all too human.” Gilman certainly thinks so.
Making the Body Beautiful convincingly argues that the history of aesthetic surgery offers one of the clearest examples of the convergence between the practices of modern medical science and the Enlightenment ideals of human perfectibility. A thought-provoking (and squirm-provoking) work that will reward a close-reading. ...more
Disease and Representation gathers fourteen essays written by the eminent social and cultural historian of medicine, Sander L. Gilman. The essays coveDisease and Representation gathers fourteen essays written by the eminent social and cultural historian of medicine, Sander L. Gilman. The essays cover a wide range of topics and historical contexts, sweeping from antiquity to Reagan’s America. Throughout the text, Gilman puts forth a compelling and provocative thesis – namely, that representation is a form of control. Human beings represent disease so that they may cast a net of order over a universe that appears harsh, chaotic, and unpredictable. As Gilman writes: “Disease, with its seeming randomness, is one aspect of the indeterminable universe that we wish to distance from ourselves. To do so we must construct boundaries between ourselves and those categories of individuals whom we believe (or hope) to be more at risk than ourselves.” From this premise, he concludes that “[t]he construction of the image of the patient is thus always a playing out of this desire for a demarcation between ourselves and the chaos represented in culture by disease.” The faculty of reason performs a neutralizing function. If it cannot solve problems or guarantee certainty, reason can at least offer some kind of explanatory framework where there was none before.
We seem to find this neutralizing process psychologically satisfying for its own sake. For instance, the fear-inducing bump in the night is, in a sense, defeated once it is labelled as ‘The Boogeyman’. The label doesn’t make the noise disappear, but it does remove some of the ambiguity surrounding the noise. Naming is disarming. Once a thing is identified, the unknown becomes the known, even if superficially. We make things less terrifying simply by reducing their unfamiliarity to something familiar and easily identifiable. Similarly, rational order can take something as complex and terrifying as HIV, and condense its nature to a singular image of the homosexual male. Such representations may be oversimplified or flat-out wrong, and in most cases, they are. However, what they lack in complexity and empirical accuracy, they gain in another sense – a perceived sense of control.
Why did Trump refer to SARS-CoV-2 as the “Kung Flu”? How could something as ambiguous and frightful as a novel coronavirus be reduced so quickly to something racialized and cartoonish? And how many Americans shared a laugh in that moment, feeling a collective sense of catharsis? What function did that hateful image serve? The powerful idea of history that emerges from Disease and Representation is a deeply psychological one. Historical change, in Gilman’s estimation, is propelled by psychic drives, desires, fears, and unconscious motivation. A history of disease is really a history of our relationship to disease. And, as Gilman observes, our relationships are defined largely by our representations of things. An excellent book from a brilliant historian. ...more
There are few philosophers that I dislike more than Jacques Derrida. I distinctly remember reading Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology in my UnThere are few philosophers that I dislike more than Jacques Derrida. I distinctly remember reading Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology in my Undergrad and thinking how painful they were to slog through. So, when I discovered Cinders, although the title and concept grabbed my attention, I entered into the text from a place of irritation and deep resentment. I think it’s important to mention that before I proceed.
Some figures loom so large in the history of philosophy that – whether you like them or not – you need to study if you’re going to take the discipline seriously. Obviously, Derrida is one of those figures, and I have promised myself to return to his work and give him another chance.
After reading the aphoristic Cinders, I have to admit that Derrida can be quite a compelling writer. The image of “the cinder” is a lovely visual representation of Derrida’s twin concepts of “trace” and “differance”. At times, Derrida’s use of imagery even ventures into the sublime. The text is shot through with themes of death, grief, loss, and futility. Take this passage, for instance: “But the urn of language is so fragile. It crumbles and immediately you blow into the dust of words that are the cinder itself.”
You get a very real sense that Derrida is an author struggling with the fundamental lack of control he has over meaning, by virtue of authorship itself. His anxiety is palpable. According to Derrida, once an idea leaps from thought to speech or page, from interiority to exteriority, it becomes something else entirely. It’s as if the idea begins to decay the second it leaves the subject and enters into the object-world of text. Meaning is endlessly deferred and the author cannot pin down any single interpretation once an idea moves from the private to the public realm. Speech is stillborn, he suggests, as “[t]he sentence is adorned with all of its dead.” We are left with the haunting trace of signifiers and signifieds, though it’s never clear what the noises and scratches of language actually suggest. Each word is marked by its presence and its absence; the word is there, on the page, and yet it refers to something outside of itself. "'There are cinders there,' 'cinders there are'", he writes. A word is there in the text, and yet it is not. This is why Derrida sometimes wrote with strikethroughs, in an attempt to mark the presence of absence, and the absence of presence.
Cinders is unique, in that it also reveals some of Derrida’s ethno-cultural sensibilities as well. In the text, Derrida attempts a genealogical analysis of his own thought, connecting it to his Jewish heritage and his personal relationship to the Holocaust. The image of cinders, ash, and decay harken back to the Nazi extermination program. He gestures at this connection several times throughout the text. Most poignantly, he writes: “The symbol? A great holocaustic fire, a burn-everything into which we would throw finally, along with our entire memory, our names, the letters, photos, small objects, keys, fetishes, etc." Ideas become incinerated in the crematoriums of the spoken and written word. Authors and archivists commit their ideas to speech, writing, and collections in a vain attempt to entomb them for the ages. But they, too, become cinders rising up from the flames. The allusion is powerful and lends an interesting historical and temporal weight to his ideas that I haven’t seen in his other work.
That being said, the same issues I have with the rest of his work also pop up in Cinders. To me, Derrida is more properly a literary critic or a poet than a philosopher. He conjures up images and metaphors that allude to Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Hegel. As mentioned, some of those images are actually quite evocative, and they can help tease out new and creative ways to visualize difficult concepts, like the trace, differance, and deconstruction.
However, as I see it, the overarching goal of philosophy is dialogue – that is to say, the need to understand and to be understood. If that’s the case, then Derrida clearly doesn’t fit the label of ‘philosopher’. He has no interest in being understood by his audience, nor in grasping anything epistemologically substantial. I’ve always felt that Derrida’s books are solipsistic in the extreme. It’s as if he’s talking to himself out-loud when he utters unintelligible things like, “[t]he name ‘cinder’ is still a cinder of the cinder itself.” There has to be a better way to communicate about communication.
Overall, I’m glad that I gave Derrida another chance with Cinders – it is the most attractive of the three texts that I’ve read. However, my critical impressions of his body of work haven’t shifted considerably. Cinders is amusing and imaginative, yet it suffers from poor communication and a rather flimsy understanding of how language and meaning actually work. This is typical of post-structuralism, which has a pretty lousy track record when it comes to the philosophy of language. I’ll leave it there for now....more
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