Written by adswithoutproducts
July 20, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Posted in blogs
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Tom McCarthy,C
Franz Kafka,Diaries
Gabriel Josipovici,What Ever Happened to Modernism
Craig Raine,Heartbreak
John Berger,Corker's Freedom
John Berger,A Painter of Our Time
Karl Marlantes,Matterhorn
Tom McCarthy,The Remainder
J.G. Ballard, ed. V. Vale, J.G. Ballard: Conversations
Sam Lipsyte, The Ask
J.G. Ballard, Atrocity Exhibition
Bill Clegg, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
James Miller, Sunshine State,
J.G. Ballard, The Collected Short Stories, Volume I
Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan
Adam Haslett, Union Atlantic
John Morton, Tennyson Among the Novelists
Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited
Martin Amis, The Pregnant Widow
Charles Bernstein, All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems
Joshua Cohen, Witz
David Lipsky, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual
Christian Solomon, Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind
Boris Groys, Communist Postscript
Gabriel Josipovici, Now
Mark Twain,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Michael Chabon,Manhood for Amateurs
Peter Handke,Don Juan: His Own Version
Stuart Ewen,PR: A Social History of Spin
Edward Bernays, Propaganda
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
Peter Handke, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Peter Handke, The Weight of the World
Florence and the Machine, Dog Days Are Over
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You’ve read Joe’s response, I’m sure, but in case you haven’t, I think it points to the problem with thinking about progress sans pragmatism. Yes, I think PE’s on to something theoretically, but much as I wish I could get behind it, it reads like more naive optimism to be easily dismissed. Not that I don’t think such thought unserious and/or a spur to better things, only that I think I’m getting old … or maybe it, with its perpetual, nay, necessary unfulfilment is. I wish I could believe in the revolution again, but once you learn how entrenched the powers-that-be are, ideas like that seem akin to wishing Batman would show up and right things … and yes, I do wish it was that easy, but it isn’t. I’m not sure where this disenchantment train is headed, so I’ll stop while I’m behind.
SEK
July 20, 2007 at 11:47 pm
No, I’m totally with you and with Joe. I just think that these PE people have done a nice job making their case. It’s a serious looking blog, and I appreciate that.
They took a poke at me too, slightly, in that piece. This is a marker of what a mature and well-balanced person I am (now) that I’m linking without comment.
CR
July 20, 2007 at 11:50 pm
CR–
Thank you for the plug. I appreciate it.
SEK–
I also thought Joseph’s critique was a good one, not least because it spurred me to clarify my thinking even further. I’ve finally gotten around to posting a response over at my site. I don’t know if it will confirm or dispel your skepticism, but I hope it’s the latter. My “revolutionism,” such as it is, is neither apocalyptic nor messianic. I also agree that pragmatism is important; however, I don’t think pragmatism is antithetical to a revolutionary position, as long as we think of revolution not as an event, but as a practice engaged in a concrete situation, working ultimately towards re-making its parameters. To invert the slogan of the ’68 protesters: I’m a idealist, I demand the possible! Part of my motivation in starting the blog (as well as intervening in the debate) was simply to direct attention to projects already in motion, actually-existing projects that could serve as models. My stress on political economy is in the same pragmatic spirit: I don’t think we stand any chance of making a new society if we don’t understand the basic objective institutional mechanisms currently employed to reproduce the one we’re trapped in. It’s time, I think, to sublate the dialectic of enlightenment, bring critical reason and instrumental reason back together again. The way out is through. When the revolution comes, someone’s going to have to know how to do the plumbing.
Hythlodaeus
July 24, 2007 at 11:10 am