literature

Been re-reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and suspecting that Gregor Samsa did not actually turn into a beetle. I think it’s all in his head and that he’s just crazy and thinks he’s an insect. I think this because:

• he gets transformed into a “vermin,” which could actually be a person;
• Kafka’s father, with whom he had a Freudian relationship, frequently called people he disliked “vermin”;
• Kafka said that the “vermin” should not be illustrated at all;
• does Gregor’s family really act like they’re in the same house as a giant beetle or a crazy person?

I’m reading Moby Dick (annotated Norman Critical Edition) and really liking it so far. The annotation helps quite a bit with understanding the historical and literary references.

Listening to The Jakarta Method thanks to a suggestion by a Hexbear user. Holy shit, I can’t believe how uninformed I was about Indonesia. Far more important for the US in the 1960s than Vietnam.

Trying to listen to Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said, but I’m finding myself bored in the first few chapters and might give up.

Theory list I am very gradually (over months) reading:

-Theories of Surplus Value

-Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

-Grundrisse

-Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

-Intellectual and Manual Labour by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

-For fun, a book from an art exhibition, called The Economy Is Spinning which takes influence from Sohn-Rethel among others

Just finished "The Devil's Chessboard." The book really goes out of its way to shower JFK with praise, but it's quite informative with regards to how the security apparatus took a central executive position in US government. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Kennedy was killed by an op spearheaded by Allen Dulles

Since finishing the book, I've started reading Marx's Capital. I didn't expect to read the phrase "One coat equals twenty yards of linen" over 50 times, but here we are. The book got much more engaging once it started laying out what "capital" is and how it differs from an equal exchange of commodities.

Grimscribe, and My Work Is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti. It's an interesting modern take on weird lovecraftian fiction.

Four books I think of:

• Primavera con una esquina rota by Mario Benedetti for some Spanish practice, takes place in the 70s and follows a few characters affected by the Uruguayan dictatorship
• Capital vol 2, no further explanation needed, I haven't been reading as much of it as I should tbh, but I am continuing to slowly make my way through it
• The Tondrakian Movement, by Vrej Nersessian, about a Christian sect largely based in the peasantry in 9th to 11th century Armenia that admittedly I first heard about in a CK2 mod lmao, but who were anti-feudal, pretty pro gender equality, etc.
• I'm going to decline to name this one lol

Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History. It’s a banger. I’ve read excerpts of his before, and really liked them, but his books are wild. He quotes like a motherfucker, which is incredibly insightful, but takes a bit longer to read than other authors I’ve read. Literally 145 citations in the first 35 pages.

Recently finished The Iron Heel by Jack London. It's fascinating to read a 100+ year old fiction novel and still feel like its relevant and even predictive. But then you realize class struggle has been going on for a long time and the critiques from last century still apply today, there's just different technology. Worth the read even if its more dialogue than plot.

Also read Che, My Brother which is a fascinating insight into how Che became a Cuban revolutionary and his legacy after his death told by his brother, Juan Martin. I learned a lot of little details about his life growing up in Argentina, his eccentric parents, and how Che was able to inspire even his own family to join the fight. Great book.

Just finished David Graeber’s Utopia Of Rules and while it is only a collection of essays. Some of it comes across as extremely utopian. Ostensibly it’s about bureaucracies but it presupposes that bureaucratic processes are bad and inefficient. If you like Graeber (and I generally do) I wouldn’t recommend it.

The Complete Annotated Book of Rules for Parking Validation. Enjoying it a whole lot.

comments, mostly :(

I finished Settlers and started The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. Even though he's Fr*nch, I wanted to take a look at post-structuralism and I like materialist philosophers so this seems like a good fit

I've been reading Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection by Leonard F. Guttridge. It's funny cuz he's a labor historian and his sympathies are clearly with the sailors in most cases, but it's published by a naval press and the intended audience is clearly officers. Also there's a chapter on the Kronstadt sailors.

I'm reading 4 books rn.

Blood in my Eye by George Jackson (1971) is a blassic, and a total banger. Prison Essays by Black Guerrilla Family founder. He's thinking very deeply about the solutions to many problems we still face today, in some ways it's tragic that this book is still so relevant. Poetic, fiery, contemplative. Here's a bit of text I came across yesterday:

• Prisons were not institutionalized on such a massive scale by the people. Most people realize that crime is simple a result of gross disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege, a reflection of the present state of property relations. There are no wealthy men on death row, and so few in the general prison population that we can discount them altogether. Imprisonment is an aspect of class struggle from the outlet.

Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020) is solid so far. I don't read scifi much because I often find the writing is weak, but this is pretty well-written. The first chapter is a banger standalone short story about a multi-day wetbulb in Mumbai - legitimate climate horror. The rest is about the downstream responses from different types of groups, from lib technocrats to radicals and revolutionaries. I like the approach that all the chapters have different styles, like one might be a poem, one might be a description of the biggest oil extraction corporations on Earth, another might just be a diary entry of an unnamed character we never met again. Apparently he a (democratic) socialist, which is cool.

The Progress of This Storm by Andreas Malm (2017) is an interesting project. It's an effort to take newer philosophical trends in critical theory (in opposition to dialectical materialism) and submits them to an analysis about whether they are clarifying or mystifying, activating or pacifying with respect to the climate crisis. If you're going to read some Malm I'd say this is probably his least urgent text, but he is often at his most fun when he starts swinging around his baseball bat wrecking shit, and there's a lot of that in here even though sometimes I wonder if he's strawmanning some of the philosophies he trashes.

• We should conclude...that building a new coal-fired power plant, or continuing to operate an old one, or drilling for oil, or expanding an airport, or planning for a highway is now irrational violence.

Climate Change as Class War by Matthew Huber (2022) - good title, but there's a lot of nonsense in this book.

I also just read Gabriel Rockhill's new essay in June's edition of Monthly Review: The Myth of 1968 Thought and the French Intelligensia: Historical Commodity Fetishism and Ideological Rollback. I think this guy has an interesting project and am looking forward to all of this being collected in his book so I can read it in one coherent thread. His basic push is to, bit by bit, examine all the theorists that are held up as "radical postwar thinkers" in the West and just feed them through the simple rubric of asking what actual socialist or anticolonial movements did they actually support, if any? His broader theory is that these not radical "radical theorists" play a functional role in capitalist hegemony to appeal to people open to considering an alternative to this system and redirecting them away from the actually effective project of scientific socialism.

I'm currently trying to comprehend bits and pieces from Anti-Duhring.

Information Technology and Socialist Construction by Daniel Saros

Good so far, but I just started. Saw it recommended by Morozov

Haven't been reading much. Just started Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa because of the Niger situation. Already Rodney goes incredibly hard:

But, contrary to the fashion in most prefaces, I will not add that “all mistakes and shortcomings are entirely my responsibility.” That is sheer bourgeois subjectivism. Responsibility in matters of these sorts is always collective, especially with regard to the remedying of shortcomings. The purpose has been to try and reach Africans who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation, rather than to satisfy the “standards” set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world.

I'm finally getting around to Earthsea. Reading Le Guin is just always a pleasure.

A copy of Please Kill Me that was annotated by hand by a former lover. It's been a ride of higher highs and lower lows.

Edit: Oh I also picked up a copy of Mage: The Awakening, 2nd edition because of my theory that World of Darkness doesn't actually work together.