Some of the best art exhibitions today show that the socially engaged art world is undergoing two shifts that some of us in the environmental humanities have been advocating for some time: they ecologize and they decolonize. An excellent example of this is the second edition of the Toronto Biennale of Art, currently wrapping up […]
Archive for the ‘Cultural politics’ Category
Eco+Deco, a manifesto in progress
Posted in Cultural politics, Eco-theory, Manifestos & auguries, Science & society, tagged colonialism, coloniality, decolonialism, Decolonization, ecological science, ecologization, ecology, indigeneity, indigenization, land, Latour, manifestos, Ontology, postcolonialism, reindigenization, Toronto Biennale of Art on May 31, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Reindigenization & allyship, part 2
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged Abenaki, Abenaki of Vermont, Darryl Leroux, identity politics, indigeneity, Indigenous identity, indigenous peoples, Odanak First Nation, Pretendians, race-shifting, self-indigenization, Vermont on April 8, 2022 | 6 Comments »
I have been hesitant to follow up on my post of last summer on “Reindigenization and Allyship” because of the complications surrounding this issue, especially in my state of Vermont. The following can be considered part two in a series, as I continue to think through the politics of indigeneity, identity (including its malleability), territoriality […]
Ukraine, the “migrant crisis,” & the future
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged borders, Climate change, critical zones, cultural politics, ecotopia, futurism, green politics, liberalism, migrant crisis, migration, Putinism, refugee crisis, refugees, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine, xenophobia on March 14, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Here are some thoughts on the humanitarian, historical, moral, and environmental implications of the crisis of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They were prompted by questions asked of me by a public radio interviewer. I’m still working on the answers (and the interview has not aired, as far as I can tell). Comments […]
The feeling of the world
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged affective politics, Anthropocene, conspiracy culture, COVID-19, global cultural studies, global middle class, illiberalism on January 18, 2022 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a working thesis on the present global moment: 1. For many people around the world, life has always been precarious. But for a certain class — the global middle class (and up) — the world had felt more or less secure and comfortable, as long as one knew how to navigate it: play by […]
Reindigenization and allyship: starting points
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged Abenaki, allyship, Darryl Leroux, El Nu, Indian country, indigenization, indigenous peoples, Indigenous solidarity, Indigenous studies, Koasek, Land Grab universities, land-grant universities, Métissage, Missisquoi, Nulhegan, Odanak, self-indigenization, University of Vermont, Vermont, W8banaki, Wabanaki, Wolinak on July 30, 2021 | 7 Comments »
I often “think out loud” on this blog. That’s been very useful as a way of getting feedback on work in progress; it also forces me to be both honest and careful with my words. The following is being shared in the same spirit: it’s related to teaching and writing in progress, but also to […]
UFOs, anomalistics, and “wild science”
Posted in Cultural politics, Science & society, tagged Anomalies, anomalistics, conspiracies, conspiratistics, conspiratology, Luis Elizondo, media, military issues, nuclear power, UAPs, UFOs, unexplained things on June 9, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
Of all the theories of what UFOs might be—optical illusions and misperceptions, hallucinations (solo and mass), hoaxes, et al—the one that raises the most epistemically troubling questions is not the Extraterrestrial Visitation Hypothesis (EVH) but the Inter-Dimensional Hypothesis (IDH), popularized by astronomer, computer scientist, and venture capitalist Jacques Vallée. Once you open up to the possibility that there are other dimensions that interpenetrate with ours, all epistemological hell breaks loose… Not only do all religious and folk beliefs become plausible, so do all manner of interaction between the imagined and the real: from human-experimenting reptilians and human-reptilian hybrids (like those Hollywood personalities and high-level Democrats that QAnons go on about) to time-traveling benevolent and malevolent forces, Pleiadians and other star people, and anything else that might pop out of anyone’s cognitive closet. All they need is the technology to “materialize” and “dematerialize” in and out of our reality. Lordy mama help us then.
Letter to a vaccine skeptic
Posted in Cultural politics, Science & society, tagged Anomalies, anti-vaccination movement, anti-vaxx, climate crisis, conspiracies, conspiracy culture, conspiracy theories, conspiratistics, conspiratology, COVID-19, emergency brake, Letters to..., pandemic politics, pandemic response, vaccine science on April 12, 2021 | 1 Comment »
The following distills the essence of my responses to questions from a vaccine (and Covid) skeptical friend. I share it in case it’s useful for others (and because it updates a few things I’ve written before on the topic). I’m not an epidemiologist and the comments on the science of the pandemic are those of […]
Civil crisis, media, & the future of hegemony
Posted in Cultural politics, Media ecology, Politics, tagged cultural hegemony, culture wars, Fairness Doctrine, George Lakoff, illiberalism, media ecologies, media ecology, media hegemony, media regimes, political polarization, Trumpism, Walter Cronkite on January 12, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
There’s a fairly straightforward narrative about media and cultural hegemony in the United States that most scholarly observers have come to largely agree on (with the usual spectrum of variations in emphasis), but that more of the public ought to be aware of. It accounts for how we got here, into this situation where media […]
Mob politics, killer selfies, and the future of social media: an ecotopian perspective
Posted in Cultural politics, Media ecology, Politics, tagged bioregionalism, Capitol insurrection, cell phones, ecocriticism, ecocultural theory, ecopolitics, ecotopia, ecotopian criticism, Googlization, media ecologies, media ecology, media politics, QAnization, surveillance, surveillance capitalism, Trumpism, twitter, voluntary mass self-surveillance on January 10, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
Two points of social media use call for more attention as we make sense of this week’s events at the U. S. Capitol. 1) Videos and selfies from Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rallies are circulating online and making it easier to identify those who participated in the attempted coup at the Capitol. Images created and […]
America is waiting: Meme magic & the spiritual practices of the Interregnum
Posted in Cultural politics, Manifestos & auguries, Spirit matter, tagged alt-right, America is Waiting, Byrne and Eno, election interregnum, election magic, Interregnum, Interregnum before the Interregnum, meme magic, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Paula White, power of prayer, prayer, remix culture, spiritual practices, Trumpism on November 6, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
One of the things I study is spiritual practices – which I’ll define (for simplicity’s sake) as the things people do to enhance their capacity to live in accordance with chosen ideals. Those ideals can be defined in religious terms (for instance, as salvation, enlightenment, or unity with God) or in more secular and philosophical […]
The secret ballot “id”: affect & electoral politics
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged 2020 election, affect, affective politics, Donald Trump, electoral politics, emotional politics, id, Joe Biden, political id, presidential debates, secret ballot, U.S. cultural politics on October 23, 2020 | Leave a Comment »
Last night’s presidential debate was, in many ways, superfluous: if a U.S. citizen had not already made up their mind who they will vote for (or not already voted), it’s because they haven’t been paying attention. But there is one factor pollsters and predictors of every stripe have not gotten good at accounting for, which […]