Bell Hooks’ critique of Madonna, her brand of feminism, and her bargaining with the right.
Bell Hooks’ critique of Madonna, her brand of feminism, and her bargaining with the right.
Last slog of the year, and I’m unsure even why I’m so intent in receiving top marks. Most Universities really like the course I’m doing, so much so that 90% of them only ask for a pass from this course in order to be qualified and to secure a place. I guess that just for the fact that this year has been so enjoyable, both academically and socially, that a vigorous working ethic has surfaced with ease.
It’s the last week, and I’ve only to complete my remaining four assignments. Then begins summer, thus begins an adjustment as all the time I’ve spent studying I’ll have free.
Some ideas
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets on Tuesday to commemorate the catastrophe which befell hundreds of thousands of them in 1948 known as Nakba Day. On Nakba Day Palestinians were thrown out of their homes by Israeli arms in the wake of the so-called Israeli Declaration of Independence. “There will be no peace in the Middle East until there is a right of return for the victims of Nakba, and their children and their grand children,” said George Galloway.
The former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, Rebecca Wade, was charged of three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over the phone hacking saga. Wade was charged along with six other people including her husband. Meanwhile, the Olympics torch is making its way around Britain for the 70 days run up to the Olympic Games. The flame of the torch was lit 10 days ago at Olympia in Greece.
(Plus discussions on Eurozone.)
Best commentary I’ve found thus far on contemporary issues.
Something that got me curious:
TED decided to not publish this talk, wherein rich dude Nick Hanauer explains things we are all already clear on - consumer demand creates growth + reaganomics is a myth. Economics 101 right?
So, why is this instantly receiving so much attention? “Yeah! Listen to this guy! Republicans equals dirt!” Because this is the juice that liberal news sources like Thinkprogress, Rightwingwatch et al thrive upon.
Vanillerising discourse. Agreement for agreements sake.
I’m reminded of the Question Time episode in London a couple of years back. One of the panel members - Nick Griffin, leader of the nationalist party - was subject to childish insults. No one, not one member of the panel, addressed the real issue of the Daily Mail’s propagated lie: the instability of capitalism is a non-issue; the source of the problem is the Burqa. In fact, in all of its dramatic irony the first question the panel received - “Given that the second world war was fueled by the need to disarm the oppressive and racist regimes, is it fair that the BNP has hijacked Churchill as its own?” Of course liberals are indifferent of the fact that Churchill ultimately would likely share the xenophobic views of Mr. Griffin. There exists anti-immigration populist views amongst misinformed white people in Britain, and no one addressed that.
No insightful discussion, just agreement for agreements sake. Makes ‘em feel good.
Don’t know entirely what to expect, and I’ve yet to read any of his essays or biographical work; I’m only familiar to some of his columns and interviews.
Definitely expecting social-democrat kinda dialogue though and nothing particularly radical. Here’s hoping that’s not the case, and I’m looking forward to meeting the old-labour veteran regardless.
This Week In History: On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was established, creating the largest refugee population in the world. According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, “Jewish forces expelled over a million Palestinians from their homes at gunpoint, massacred civilians and deliberately destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages”.
Palestinians who escaped persecution from Jewish forces fled to Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. As a result, there are now 4.5 million Palestinian refugees without the right to return to their homes in the land now called Israel. Many refugees still retain old deeds and keys to homes now occupied by Israelis.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is known as al Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe, and is commemorated on Nakba Day on the 15th of May every year, the day after Israeli Independence Day on the Gregorian calendar.
Throughout its 64-year history, Israel has denied that al Nakba — which happened just years after the Holocaust — ever took place, and last year the government passed a fascist law that allows the denial of state funding to NGOs that participate in Nakba commemorations. In 2009, it banned the use of the term “Nakba” in school textbooks.
Photos: Top: Thousands of Palestinians throng the beach as they are forced out of their homeland / Bottom: An elderly Palestinian couple during the mass exodus, Palestine, 1948 (UNRWA)
It is particularly amusing that those who protest loudest about the fraudulence or aridness or sameness of contemporary poetry that insists on being contemporary, dissident, different, and who profess, in contrast, the primacy of the individual voice, fanned by a gentile inspiration, produce work largely indistinguishable from dozens of their peers and, moreover, tend to recognize the value only of poetry that fits into the narrow horizon of their particular style and subject matter. As if poetry were a craft that there is a right way or wrong way to do: in which case, I prefer the wrong way—anything better than the well-wrought epiphany of predictable measure—for at least the cracks and flaws and awkwardnesses show signs of life.
Charles Bernstein, State of the Art
I’ve been interested recently in the cultural impact of film portraying class disparity. It is a medium which is often seen to be portraying a slanted representation, perpetrating a misconception in modern times. Many recent films including a plethora of highly popular films are shaped by processes which have, however implicitly or idiosyncratically, alluded to a certain class struggle. In a great number of cases, romantic film is one of the main genres where a classist ideology manifests itself. Romanic film is in some ways, an acceptable way of representing class if the situation is what the public or audience can relate to. If one was to analyse many of these romantic films, it can be claimed that there are several ‘layers’ of themes present: first of which, the protagonist is in a romantic liaison; the other being the class division between individuals in the film. In a lot of cases, the latter theme is, possibly unintentionally, introduced into the passive audiences subconscious. Therefore, the class division element is ignored, whilst the romantic liaison locates itself in the forefront of the mind.
These layers of themes are presented in one of the most successful films of recent years - James Cameron’s Titanic (1998). Is the story really about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg? One should be attentive to the precise moment of the catastrophe. It takes place when the two young lovers (Di Caprio and Winslett) return to the ship’s deck immediately after consummating their amorous link in the sexual act. This however, is not the entire subject matter. If it were, then the catastrophe would have been simply the punishment of fate for the double transgression (I.e. the illegitimate sexual act, or crossing of the class divide). What is more crucial is that on the deck, Winslett passionately says to her lover that when the ship will reach New York the next morning, she will leave with him, preferring poor life with her true love over the false corrupted life among the rich. At this exact moment the ship hits the iceberg. What the film portrays is that this event prevents what would undoubtedly have been the true catastrophe, namely the couple’s life in New York, that soon the misery of everyday life and the class disparity would destroy their love. It is important to note that this may of course not be the case in reality, although it is the message that the film conveys. The catastrophe thus occurs in order to save their love in order to sustain the illusion that, if it were not to happen, they would have lived “happily forever after”. This symbolically represents the unacceptability of love between those of different social status in the eyes of society at that time, as even the forces of nature seem to deny the relationship. Additionally, the natural catastrophe (that of the ship crashing into the iceberg) keeps alive the hope that their relationship would have flourished had the catastrophe not have occurred. They wish it were possible to be lovers in spite of their different social standing within the society in which they lived, though inevitably (according to the films symbolism) it is doomed to fail. The equilibrium of the continual hope exists and is maintained alongside the obstructive disapproving reality.
But even this is not the entire picture, as there is a further clue provided by Di Caprio’s final moments. He is freezing in the cold water dying, whilst Winslett is safely floating on a large piece of wood. She is aware that she is losing him, and cries: “I’ll never let you go!”, and while saying this, she pushes him away with her hands - why? Beneath the romantic thread, Titanic tells another story, the story of a spoiled high-society girl in an identity crisis. She is confused, and does not know how to come to terms with her arranged marriage. Much more than her partner, Di Caprio is a kind of “vanishing mediator” whose function is to restore her sense of identity and purpose in life. Once this task is complete, and once he has vitalised her self-image (quite literally: he draws her image) he can disappear. This is why his last words before he disappears in the freezing North Atlantic, are not the words of a departing lover’s. Rather his words are a moralising final message telling her how to lead her life, how to be honest, and how to be faithful to herself, etc. What this means is that Cameron’s superficial ‘Hollywood Marxism’ (I.e. his all too obvious privileging of the lower classes and caricatural depiction of the cruel egotism and opportunism of the rich) should not deceive us, as beneath this sympathy for the poor, there is another narrative. It is the profoundly reactionary myth first fully deployed by Kipling’s 1937 film - Captain Courageous, which depicts a young rich person in crisis who gets his (or her) vitality restored by brief intimate contact with the full-blooded life of the poor. What lurks behind the compassion for the poor is their almost ‘vampiric’ exploitation. This association with the innate courage and morality of the working class / the association with the evil corruption of the ruling class, is prominent in society and is displayed so in several studies.
In an ICM poll commissioned by the Radio 4 Today programme early in 1998 (only a year after the release of Titanic), 55 percent of those interviewed identified themselves as ‘working class’, which is 12 percent more than in 1949. In a very general sense, as Andrew Anthony (1998) argues in his article on class in the Observer - class is a matter of perception, but it is nevertheless extremely surprising that at a time when class seems to have almost no political salience and ‘Middle England’ is seen as being virtually synonymous with being middle class, so many people should describe themselves as ‘working class’. Perhaps on the 164th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto (1848), the class antagonisms have become simplified again and society ‘is more and more splitting up into two hostile camps’ (pg. 49). This is not very probable, as the term ‘working class’ is more likely to be seen as an occupational, gradational descriptor rather than as a relational feature of an antagonism or of a class struggle. Nevertheless, it does suggest perhaps that the public in majority prefer to view themselves as ‘poor and courageous’ proletarians, as opposed to ‘evil and rich’ bourgeoisie.
My task?
- Dispel the basic misconceptions of (C)communism.
- Explain Leninism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism.
- Talk about Socialist Realism a bit.
- Basically, encompass 20th century (C)communism. In its entirety.
- All within 10 minutes.
rhinest0nes asked: I loved your post on the Absurdism and the Myth of Sisyphus. I find philosophy - especially this topic to be really fascinating. Although, I have a really hard time understanding it. My question to you is, how does an absurdist refrain from suicide?Just trying to wrap my head around the "absurd" concepts. From personal experience, there have been times where I was close to taking my life. I personally know that life is absurd. But how someone like Camus live life knowing it is absurd?
Well, personally I kept expecting the essay to eventually manifest into an ‘argument against suicide’, but it never seemed to reach such a conclusion. “Suicide is the solution to the absurd.” It settles it, it solves the problem. But, it is an illogical solution for one to accept the absurdity of life in such a way instead of revolting against it. A colleague I study with (who had also recently read The Myth of Sisyphus), read my summary, and we held conversation alongside it, and he correctly informed me that I failed to discuss the importance of revolt and what that entails.
One who fails to recognise the importance of revolt is unconcerned. The absurd man revolts against the uncaring universe and of its lack of reasoning (Important: inspite of recognising this as fact); in doing so one is capable of achieving absolute greatness, and one who follows the tenets of absurdism is concerned with the dignity of life and maintaining the unremitting love between his or her fellow beings. It is to focus on one’s passion, self, and those around him. It should be also be noted that Camus wrote The Myth of Sisyphus in the bleakest days of the Second World War, and should be further congratulated and celebrated in doing so.
I’m not sure if you’ve read it yet, but I certainly recommend you do so if you ever get the time. I doubt I’ll ever personally have the capability of clarifying his philosophy effectively. Thank you for your compliments, your incredibly interesting question, and for sharing your past experiences.
This website is fantastic at times when it supplies the tools to connect people in such a way.
Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez, 1656
