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Dynamite, anyone?
Seems “propaganda of the deed” is already a slogan: Propaganda of the Deed or Propaganda by Deed was an anarchist doctrine that promoted the decisive action of individuals to inspire further action by others. As a doctrine-in-practise, its heyday was the period between 1881 and 1901, starting with the assassinations of Russian tzar Alexander and…
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The propaganda of the deed
Made curious by Marika’s enthusiastic post a while back, I got hold of John Durham Peters’ Speaking into the air: a history of the idea of communication on interlibrary library loan (thanks to the alma mater). Lucky. Because I was feeling more than a little jaded about new economy/new media hype, more than a little…
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Forget you ever saw this post
A new book across my desk: OBLIVION Marc Aug? Translated by Marjolijn de Jager Foreword by James E. Young University of Minnesota Press | 136 pages | 2004 ISBN 0-8166-3566-8 | hardcover | $56.95 ISBN 0-8166-3567-6 | paperback | $18.95 ?Remembering or forgetting is doing gardener?s work, selecting, pruning. Memories are like plants: there are…
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this is not (only) music consumption
I’m feeling a bit serious about music today. This is the christmas playlist I put together on a whim yesterday morning, when I woke up and realised I had free rein over the construction of christmas day for the first time in years. Which, thank god, got me thinking again about the ways in which…
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Hackers are Cool, Conviviality is Warm: Some half-baked thoughts
As avid blog-readers will know, I’ve been reading Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality – a fascinating manifesto which, in the edition I’ve got, comes in a slim paperback volume bound in Revolution Red and lettered in stark bold type that is set on a provocative diagonal. It has occurred to me after reading various discussions…
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..and other sad news
Jacques Derrida has died of pancreatic cancer: … from the invisible inside , where I could neither see nor want the very thing that I have always been scared to have revealed on the scanner, by analysis – radiology, echography, endocrinology, hematology – a crural vein expelled my blood outside that I thought beautiful once…
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Discipline, Dissonance, Disconnection 1
A rant in two parts Part 1: Internet Studies, Cultural Studies The delightful Kris has just come back from AoIR, and reflects on the lack of connection he felt with the approaches of many people there; people with whom he shares a common subject of study (weblogs), but whose objects of study, and methodological frameworks,…
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The Italian Effect, Again
Just a few days after reading all about the Italian Effect conference (and shrieking with glee over Mel’s unique performance of geeky theory grrrl rebellion), I discovered this passage at the end of Steven Shaviro’s summary of Hardt and Negri’s Multitude: There’s a wonderful passage in Multitude (190ff) where Hardt and Negri write of the…
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Creativity+Politics=No More Howard?
It’s hard not to be cynical and depressed about the upcoming federal election: there seems to be such a slim chance we will see a change of government – ever, it feels like. But a bunch of designers seem to be convinced that the combination of viral marketing, street culture, and archly hip design might…
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Real thesis thoughts
Late in the day, two readings from my own field helped me to place some bricks in the hole where my sanity and my conviction about the political importance of “ordinary” grassroots cultural production used to be: Jim McGuigan’s The Cultural Public Sphere (MS Word), and Chris Atton’s The Mundane and Its Reproduction in Alternative…