Metal Reviews

Just saw that book a few days ago on Amazon. What's the subject matter? Is wholly on different subjects or is it concentrated?

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. sister wouldn't stfu about it.

They are just a collection of Foucault's interviews. He is lucid insofar as he is chatting to folks; they really press him to clarify his thoughts and work to clear up ambiguities or common misreadings and it in this way it points to where his concerns actually lie. He is being political insofar as he is chatting with Maoists and discussing what to do with his thought. The opening interview is about popular justice, the role of the state, and the people's will. He ends up taking a very quasi-anarchic democratic position that is really interesting to watch dogmatic Maoists try to refute. He is placing himself in an interesting relation to Marx by embracing Marx but challenging basic Marxian premises and refuting dogma. As a Marxist, it poses a lot of thoughts and questions that are difficult to think through but not wholly impossible to reconcile with Marx. This book has influenced my reading of Foucault's thought as a crucial supplement to being able to understand Marx. He is chatting about what is to be done in an interesting way in that unlike his actual books; he talks about politics and challenging bourgeois ideology. Mainly, it acts as a summary of lot of what he has written and so would maybe save people time if they don't want to dredge through all of his texts. It puts all his texts in direct relation to one another that is so productive to understand his thought as a whole, which could take years of studying but this book creates a solid foundation for that possibility if not does it in itself.

Finished Oblivion. I enjoyed it, but I felt like almost every story had a "Why was this story written?" that was just barely eluding me. Now reading Robin Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. It's cool being a jazz fan and liking the big names because there's actually stuff written about them and their music scene. Never had that opportunity with metal other than the Anvil documentary.

book fair in Lisbon, with some stuff on 50% discount!!

bought
Gonçalo M. Tavares - Histórias Falsas
José Saramago - A Viagem do Elefante (The Elephant's Journey), which apparently is not one of his best...

tomorrow i'll go there again, thinking of picking up José Saramago's "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis", "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" and "Blindness", as well as Gonçalo M. Tavares' "Canção Mexicana".

Read John Fante's Ask the Dust. Bukowski raved over the guy is why I picked it up. It was decent proto-beat stuff. A struggling writer in an on and off relationship with a woman who will never love him.

Charles Mills' Racial Contract. Pretty generic intro to social contract theory from a critical race perspective.

Owen Jones' Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. Twenty pages in and it's super interesting. It's an interesting look into English society and I'd be curious about Charles' or Zad's opinions on it. With stuff like this (http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/2012/04/hail ... -sussex-2/), it quickly becomes apparent that something problematic is happening. Jones is avoiding theory so he ends up saying some oddly formulated thoughts, that is, without a notion of Whiteness to distinguish a problematic ideological trend that is to be distinguished from white folks, he sometimes appears as defending whiteness and emphasizing oppression of chavs over other minorities. I don't think it's intentional; it arises from how he frames his project.

Not a fan myself of OJ (surprise, surprise) although haven't read Chavs... am not actually sure what Charles thinks of Jones, would assume it's more positive.

I know nothing about OJ prior to seeing his book on the Verso Publisher's site and the topic seemed interesting. The first 50 pages have been Tory, Cameron and Thatcher bashing. I'm kinda playing catch up on the British policies and what not but his argument seems legit thus far albeit rather simple so far and what not.

Have only just realised you don't need a Kindle in order to read books on the go. Downloaded the Android reader and Moby Dick, here I come!

I read some of Wilde's short stories a month or two ago. They were clever and I've been meaning to read Dorian Gray since.

Bought the first four Ice and Fire books. Nerdgasm.

Attawalnut.

Thomas Pynchon's V. and Les Miserables. Looking up lots of words in the dictionary but golly the writing is good.

yay DevWal

finished Blindness. very good up to the last quarter, then it gets a bit lame, but overall a very enjoyable read. READ JOSÉ SARAMAGO, YOU GUYS.

borrowed A Clockwork Orange and The Prestige from my friend, going to start with ACO.

A Clockwork Orange takes a bit to catch the lingo but it gets really good.

Reading Kant's Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals because I have to teach it in a week and a half :(

All the best with your Kant, Trapt! Kant's philosophy of mind is most excellent but his morals not so much.

Reading:

Writing and Difference (Derrida)
Science of Logic (Hegel)
Spinoza's Metaphysics on the internet encyclopedia of philosophy.

Really? I don't mind his morals. Eh, but either way Kant isn't my cup of tea.

Derrida is just fucking wrong on his response to Foucault, though. And that Hegel is ridic. But all Hegel might be. And given that I love Spinoza, I would recommend you drop what you're doing and focus solely on Ethics. So fucking good. Third and Fourth section are epic.

I have his Ethics and I have read it several years back. It was just a brush up on his Metaphysics, so to speak. Spinoza is fucking fabulous. As for Hegel, you can cannot deny the fact that he is immensely influential and regarded as a supreme giant in the history of philosophy. The whole aspect of the formation and the movements of the mind in shaping a thought, the ideas of becoming and nothing are most extraordinary to this mind. Derrida, I have not yet read his interpretations of Foucault but I'm sure it would be something so grounbreaking that it would indeed as you have said just be plain wrong. French post-modernism is philosophy at its most creativity and imagination to its widest stretch. The art of creation into constructing one's reality is the very aim of philosophy for me.