there's our catastrophe

May 4

lisafrankfurtschool:

This is how one pictures the unicorn of history. Its face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, it sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of its hooves. The unicorn would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in its wings with such violence that the unicorn can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels it into the future to which its back is turned, while the pile of debris before it grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

This is how one pictures the unicorn of history. Its face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, it sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of its hooves. The unicorn would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in its wings with such violence that the unicorn can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels it into the future to which its back is turned, while the pile of debris before it grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Mar 30

“The hereafter is emptied of everything which contains the slightest breath of this world, and from it the baroque extracts a profusion of things which customarily escaped the grasp of artistic formulation and, at its high point, brings them violently into the light of day, in order to clear an ultimate heaven, enabling it, as a vacuum, one day to destroy the world with catastrophic violence.” Walter Benjamin (via spiritandteeth)

(via adornoble)

tanacetum-vulgare:

Damn, I just discovered this book in trying to track down an obscure article I never knew the source of before…. and I wish I had a chance to track down a copy and use it for my paper but I don’t. Oh well, future reading list I guess. Pun not intended.

We live in a world saturated by futures. Our lives are constructed around ideas and images about the future that are as full and as flawed as our understandings of the past. This book is a conceptual toolkit for thinking about the forms and functions that the future takes. Exploring links between panic and nostalgia, waiting and utopia, technology and messianism, prophecy and trauma, it brings together critical meditations on the social, cultural, and intellectual forces that create narratives and practices of the future. The prognosticators, speculators, prophets, and visionaries have their say here, but the emphasis is on small narratives and forgotten conjunctures, on the connections between expectation and experience in everyday life.

In tightly linked studies, the contributors excavate forgotten and emergent futures of art, religion, technology, economics, and politics. They trace hidden histories of science fiction, futurism, and millennialism and break down barriers between far-flung cultural spheres. From the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the forests of Java and from the literary salons of Tokyo to the roadside cafés of the Nevada desert, the authors stitch together the disparate images and stories of futures past and present. Histories of the Future is further punctuated by three interludes: a thought-provoking game that invites players to fashion future narratives of their own, a metafiction by renowned novelist Jonathan Lethem, and a remarkable graphic research tool: a timeline of timelines.

Contributors. Sasha Archibald, Susan Harding, Jamer Hunt, Pamela Jackson, Susan Lepselter, Jonathan Lethem, Joseph Masco, Christopher Newfield, Elizabeth Pollman, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Rosenberg, Miryam Sas, Kathleen Stewart, Anna Tsing

Mar 22

Scientists find visions of a benevolent future society motivate reform | The Raw Story

monetizeyourcat:

great dystopias tend to come from eras of retrenchment and darkness too

leftists have gotta stop promoting doomday scenarios I think

it makes people depressed and anxious and more likely to accept the necessity of, like, radical austerity programs and repressive state intervention and stuff — ads without products wrote a good thing about this

the whole “state of emergency” mentality is not a good place to organise from — it promotes an attitude of DON’T THINK, DON’T CRITIQUE, JUST ACT, KONY 2012 — I believe iinventedeverything has written quite a bit about this

katie mccay bryson wrote a good thing about apocalyptic mentality in environmentalists and population alarmism

I just really think people are most motivated to act by hope, not fear

Mar 2

it’s like staring into the glaring eye of the future (as seen from 1995)

Jan 13

Julia Caron interviewed me for her critical fashion blog A L'Allure Garconniere

patchthatsweater:

talkin bout people who inspire me, comics, fashun, sequins, the end of the world. thanks julia!!!

Nov 10

look at this thing that I just bought

slowly turning into my blog

Nov 2

The Population Myth, part 1//Murray Bookchin

saltmarshhag:

themalliscrappy:

servile-masses-arise:

Part 2

I’m sick of hearing about overpopulation devoid of any class or decent economic analysis. I’m particularly sick of the overpopulation myths being trotted out with accompanied pictures of masses of poor people in India, Bangladesh, Sao Paulo etc.

These people consume next to nothing. Stop implying that they are the problem. They are the victims of this crisis, not the cause of it. They are not a drain on resources. They are the ones being drained, drained of their humanity, drained of the substance of their lives to service a system that already produces enough food for everyone on the planet. There is a massive problem here, but its solution is the overthrow of the system that created it, not ‘less people’.

To all the fear addicted reactionaries who tut tut at another baby that is born into a slum, turn their noses up in disgust at the birth of another ‘useless eater’ here to upset your middle class ‘garden of eden’ bullshit idyll … You should fear this child. You should be afraid when you look at pictures of the sheer mass of urban poor, seething and growing and building all over the world. Because when they organise and claim what’s theirs, you and your hand wringing eco-fascist pals will do fuck all to stop them.

there’s a Godwin in this (and I’m tired of that sort of thing), but reblogging anyway

i don’t know that “eco-fascist” counts as Godwin. it’s not an analogy to Nazi Germany or the Holocaust, but a reference to the ample crypto-genocidal/bunker-survivalist tendencies of certain ideologies within the left that focus on overpopulation/collapse/etc.

I like Murray Bookchin and I like this article. I don’t see how you can say that the connection between Malthusianism and fascism is in any way tenuous or unjustified. It’s extremely well-established.

Godwin’s law (that whoever makes the first Nazi comparison loses the argument) is fucking ridiculous and ahistorical. I mean, I get that comparisons to Nazism and the holocaust are often used in really inaccurate, appropriative, sneaky ways. but I’ve been accused of breaking Godwin’s law for bringing up actual links to currently active neo-Nazi groups. Nazism had a historical context, its impact is ongoing, and there are many people today who hold explicitly Nazi beliefs. There is nothing to be gained by exempting it from any kind of analysis or comparison to other events. It doesn’t help us to crystallise it as an example of the most incommensurable evil, qualitatively beyond any other genocide or atrocity. it’s not, ok? that’s the kind of thinking that stops us from understanding it and preventing future atrocities. it’s also the kind of thinking that allows the unscrupulous to use it as an unanswerable slur. we need more critical analysis of the ongoing impact of Nazism and the Holocaust, not less.

(via saltmarshhag-deactivated2013011)

Aug 19

A: [Timidly.] What if he were to … were to … raise his head … an instant … show his face …
just an instant.
D: For God’s sake! What next? Raise his head? Where do you think we are? In Patagonia? Raise his
head? For God’s sake! [Pause.] Good. There’s our catastrophe. In the bag. Once more and
I’m off.
A: [To L.] Once more and he’s off.
[Fade-up of light on P’s body. Pause. Fade-up of general light. ]
D: Stop! [Pause.] Now … let ’em have it. [Fade-out of general light. Pause. Fade-out of light
on body. Light on head alone. Long Pause.] Terrific! He’ll have them on their feet. I can hear
it from here.
[Pause. Distant storm of applause. P raises his head, fixes the audience. The applause falters, dies.
Long pause.
Fade-out of light on face.]

there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀

Scientists find visions of a benevolent future society motivate reform | The Raw Story

Julia Caron interviewed me for her critical fashion blog A L'Allure Garconniere

The Population Myth, part 1//Murray Bookchin

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

⚑ ♀