Metal Reviews

Finished Black Skin, White Masks. Sadly it wasn't as good as I expected, having only a few parts which were really insightful while the rest was just kinda psychoanalytic fluff to get to those parts. Fanon also seemed rather homophobic and sexist which was a turn off but definitely a product of his time, the 50s.

Read my highlights and notes in Once as Tragedy, then as Farce and decided that it is my most favorite book ever.

Then started Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I'm not big on utilitarianism but he makes such good arguments for it while latently kicking dirt at Kantianism which I tend towards. One big turnoff is his stereotypical embrace of non-violence while championing MLK and Gandhi. That pisses me off 'cause it's such an ahistorical account of how change came about in those different struggles, ignoring countless victims of violence and murder at the hands of the state for engaging the state head-on in protest rather than through civil disobedience. It's kinda sad reading Animal Liberation because no matter how much I agree with it, I'm not going to stop eating meat 'cause I kinda hate vegetables.

How can you hate vegetables?

Yeah, because less people would have died if they used violence instead.

Yeah, the RAF were so much more effective than MLK's jesus freaks.

No actual change would've happened without both non-violence and violent techniques. Violence brings things to people's attention. Spectacles can lead to quicker reform, saving lives and preventing further oppression. You have to have two edges on your sword.

We always argue about this, don't we? The mere fact that one side isn't using violence tips the balance in their favour and stops it being just two violent groups, as far as I'm concerned. Using violence against violence means that you've lost the moral argument, whereas nonviolence is what gets peoples' attention and makes them outraged at the oppression of the underdog. The Palestinians should use nonviolence; would get them much farther against Israel than Hamas do.

Why can't they just use both? I know we've argued about this before but nonviolence without physical struggle and protest, disruption of the social order, will not make a splash. Did Tiannamen Square honestly change anything and bring democracy to China? No. You could maybe say it opened the door but globalization and the internet are more to blame.

Would MLK have been as successful without Malcolm X advocating full-on revolution against white oppressors? I think both routes are necessary but to paint Gandhi and MLK as single-handedly ending their respective forms of oppression without anti-colonial guerrillas and the active militant black liberation movement, respectively, putting pressure on those in power, the authorities might not have been so receptive to the peaceful demonstrations of MLK and Gandhi. I probably should chop that sentence in half but I'm going to leave it.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about the moral argument because most times being morally right doesn't gain you any favor in politics. As for nonviolence, in the Israel struggle, I don't know about that; Israel seems pretty bent on genocide and I doubt putting people in front of tanks would stop them from moving forward. Nonviolence wouldn't have worked for the Vietnamese is how I look at it.

Anyways, tossed the Animal Liberation to the side when it became all tired stories about animal experimentation; I was more enjoying the moral arguments. I picked up Zizek's The Fragile Absolute and Enjoy Your Symptom at the bookstore. Started Fragile. It's about how Marxism should embrace fundamentalist Christianity.

IMO it's pointless sitting in judgement about moral argument's etc. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the morality of violent action in a given situation, I would say in many situations there is always the (possibly unspoken) POTENTIAL THREAT of violence.

One comparison would be strikes: strikes are destructive (sometimes violent) things for all concerned (in the old days, at least). However, in a given situation, the (usually unspoken) threat of strike action is the only thing that actually backs more "constructive" arguments/negotiations/protests and makes people listen to them.

EDIT: In other words, it is pointless taking two arbitrary things (RAF and MLK, thanks, Fridge) and pointing to different results to prove a point. Specific movements and their tactics are often just visible manifestations of wider societal processes.

Just received an advanced copy of The Passage by Justin Cronin. I won it through a Good Reads giveaway. Hopefully, it's good.

I use good reads and knew nothing about giveaways.

So for school I am now reading:
Tons of essays on philosophy and sociology
Idea of History by RG Collingwood
The Whole World Was Watching by Gitlin

Yeah, they have tons of them. I just go through and enter for anything that looks remotely interesting. Might get me reading some stuff I would miss otherwise. This is the first I've won.

Bravely ventured down to London yesterday, and despite being regularly ripped off (£10 for fish and chips; £45 for a return ticket to Oxford, etc) found an awesome secondhand bookshops where I got the following pretty cheaply:

Backunin: A Biography by Mark Leier. Goes into detail on Hegel and idealist philosophy and it's influence on Bakunin, which is a pleasant surprise. Haven't read it yet, but Leier basically seems to be saying that everything I thought I knew about Hegel is complete nonsense

The Legacy of Ernest Mandel, by various.

and

Black Workers Remember- An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle by Various

It'll be an important stepping stone to realizing that Hegel is just nonsense in general.

I'm almost done with A Song of Fire and Ice and I'm wondering: is it true that George RR Martin isn't going to write any more books in the series?

Heh, according to this guy everything that everybody thinks they know about Hegel is wrong He seems very pro-Hegel and says he's the most misunderstood figure in history, basically, but I'll have tyo actually read it and let you know what he's saying.

I finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and am now reading a book about Stoicism's influence on Renaissance Literature and perusing Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

China Mieville- The City and the City

Just finished The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan, which fucked me up a little. I'll be starting Erasure by Percival Everett sometime this week if all goes well.

The Cement Garden was pretty fucked up with some sibling philandering and burying parents. I've been wanting to read Comfort.

Just picked up Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature for my environmentalism research paper. So far it seems really bland and uninteresting, outlining the history of materialism in science.

Decided I felt like doing some non-school reading last night and got 40 pages into Darkness Visible by William Styron. It is quite good.