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Archive for February, 2011

Elixir as child’s play

Posted in Eco-culture, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , , on February 28, 2011 | 7 Comments »

Marina Zurkow’s Elixir videos are wonderful, as is her Renatured blog. (Thanks to Tim for posting about her work.) There is something sad and elemental about them, in their depiction of the self-containedness of our worlds and their ultimate vulnerability in the face of the chaos beyond. At the same time, the title suggests an […]

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Revolutionary democracy

Posted in Media ecology, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on February 27, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Here are a few thoughts after watching Frontline’s Revolution in Cairo, which is a very good 24-minute summary of how this particular democratic moment occurred, and after reading Badiou‘s, Hardt & Negri’s, Hallward‘s, Amit Rai‘s, and some other takes on the events. (1) The recipe: Tools + Techniques + Events + Vision = The revolution(s) […]

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s(S)peculative r(R)ealism & philosophy-as-life

Posted in Academe, Philosophy, Process-relational thought, tagged , , , , , on February 27, 2011 | 7 Comments »

It’s nice to see Speculative Realism capturing the attention of SF writer and all-round idea impresario Bruce Sterling – see his Speculative Realism as “philosophy fiction.” As a long-time SF lover, the idea of “philosophy fiction” has always appealed to me. Some of the best writing in the genre has been profoundly metaphysical, which is […]

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Geniuses ‘r us (vegetarians)

Posted in Uncategorized on February 26, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Quick, name five genius scientists and inventors… Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison. All vegetarians? Of course. Elephant journal includes five others on its list. How about philosophers and cultural innovators? Pythagoras, Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, Leo Tolstoy, Marsilio Ficino, Plato by some accounts… See here for a longer list.

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Here & there (or democracy is coming, sort of)

Posted in Academe, Eco-culture, Music & soundscape, Politics, Visual culture on February 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

To the USA, perhaps… But mostly neither here nor there… There’s an interesting flare-up occurring over Moammar Gaddafi’s son Saif’s Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, involving respected political theorists David Held and Benjamin Barber, among others. (See Eric Schliesser for more.) The issues it raises are as old as the oldest profession: universities’ […]

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Tax evasion & the dismantling of the public sector

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2011 | 8 Comments »

Johann Hari’s article in The Nation on How to Build a Progressive Tea Party is one of the more exciting and inspiring pieces of news I’ve read recently. Hari recounts how a group of Twitter-linked citizens outraged by David Cameron’s £7 billion cuts to social programs when a single company, cellphone giant Vodafone, was allowed […]

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Spreading revolution

Posted in Media ecology, Politics, tagged , , , on February 15, 2011 | 3 Comments »

The New York Times has a couple of nice pieces on the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions: an interactive account of the key events and a more detailed piece outlining the role of the different protest groups, bloggers and Facebook-ites, nonviolent resistance tactics, and the Obama administration. A few quick thoughts: 1) Max Forte is right […]

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More thoughts on Egypt

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , on February 11, 2011 | 6 Comments »

Max Forte at Zero Anthropology* has a perceptive assessment of what he takes to be a (Hillary) “Clinton doctrine,” which he describes as the U.S. hedging [its] bets by keeping a foot in almost all camps, by maintaining contact with diverse sectors in a society critical to U.S. national security interests, emphasizing “stability” when regime […]

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Examining life, trash, & radical nature

Posted in Philosophy, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , on February 11, 2011 | 6 Comments »

I enjoyed Astra Taylor’s film Examined Life when I first saw it a couple of years ago, and, having just watched it again, I’m glad to see that it bears re-viewing. As one might expect, some segments are more lasting than others. Slavoj Zizek wearing an orange safety vest talking about ecology at a London […]

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Not ‘uncontacted,’ just ‘free’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The fuss over Survival International’s “uncontacted tribes” (see my earlier piece) hasn’t ceased — the Huffington Post and others continue to spread the original news largely uncritically. (William at the excellent Integral Options Cafe shared that news, but has now kindly amended his post in response to my own comment regarding it.) Now Greg Downey […]

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Whitehead & media theory

Posted in Media ecology, Philosophy, tagged on February 8, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Jussi Parikka at Machinology is reporting on media theorist Mark Hansen’s move from a focus on media objects to a Whiteheadian focus on media processes. A few quotes: “Well known are the Whitehead writings of Massumi and Manning in Montreal, and of course the recent Whitehead writings of Steven Shaviro, the debates around object oriented […]

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Climate change as a ‘multiple object’

Posted in Climate change, Philosophy on February 8, 2011 | 8 Comments »

The “integralists” have waded into the climate change debate with an impressive looking article entitled An Ontology of Climate Change: Integral Pluralism and the Enactment of Multiple Objects (click for an excerpt). It’s by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, one half of the duo that authored the mammoth Integral Ecology. (The other half is Heideggerian-turned-Wilberian ecophilosopher Michael Zimmerman, […]

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