speak with plain dialectics.

Now that the library stocks the London Review of Books I finally feel like I go to a real school. Since i've been here they've had AIPAC's Near East Report newsletter and its Cuban counterpart, Gramma Internationale so I guess that after Obama won they pretty much had no choice but accept change.

A few points:
1. The LRB is ridiculously oversized. I had pretty much been able to forget this because I've become so used to reading it online but yesterday I felt like a total asshole, showoff carrying it up to the third floor. I can't believe I used to read this thing on the subway.
2. Compared to reading the LRB online, reading the magazine in print feels kind of like going through a revolution in reverse. Before I could start reading an article by Said about his encounter with Sartre. Then, after just a few more-or-less random choices I could wind up here:

Waking to find myself a touch genocidal, I would, I imagine, be uncertain how to proceed. An unprovoked attack on my target group with whatever weapon came to hand might take out a few of them, but also bring my venture to a premature end. Reflecting that few are lucky enough to be in a position to do the job themselves, I could either confine myself to advocacy, or else embark on the difficult and protracted business of getting into a position in which I could expect others to obey my orders.

3. I guess this is kind of self-evident, but I'll write it anyway. The LRB is New Left Review for quitters.

The first thing I did after finding the review was to read Elif Bautman's article titled On Complaining.  . Yes, the article is now available online for free, but in the spirit of this post I won't link to it. Bautman's essay is a critique of a recently published Foucault, Althusser, and Derrida apologetic that seems especially dumb. I'm not going to put long quotes from the article here, although I initially wanted to, because I think that I have already done enough to spoil the fun of reading Bautman by telling you all the stuff I learned about Althusser from it.

I wasn't familiar with Bautman before reading "On Complaining." I did some research and found out a few things. 1) she has a website that is inappropriately awesome for someone not that well-known. Still, I like it, and I am happy that it exists. 2) through this website you can find out that she knew about the band Vampire Weekend before anybody else. Status aint Hood had some nice things to say about this band, so, as Status would say, 3) Bautman just finished a PHD in comparative lit. and i think I find its basic ideas intelligible. The first chapter is available for download from her website. 4) The LRB review was so scathing that I'm sure the author of the book under review will have to respond. My revolutionary subjectivity tells me that a mixtape with a cover that looks something like this

Real Talk.

Yeah, it's kind of like this.

About 3 months ago I predicted on this blog that Slavoj Zizek would start taking shots at Noam Chomsky.*Anyone who knows how competitive the contest for the title of world's most revered public intellectual is could have seen this coming. And after seeing both Zizek! and Chomsky's own Zeitgeist films produced documentary Manufacturing Consent I was shaken once again by this epiphany. A day later, Zizek did the predictably dramatic, or REAL dramatic, thing and gave this piece of wisdom away for free on the LRB website

Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ‘without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ‘Bush with a human face’. He will pursue the same basic policies in a more attractive way and thus effectively strengthen the US hegemony, damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years.
There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with this reaction – a key dimension is missing from it. Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more.

Blam! Blam! Ether!!**

Zizek continues with this typically thoughtful and deeply contemplative judgement:

This is why an American friend of mine, a hardened leftist with no illusions, cried when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, for that moment each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.

I wonder how Chomsky is going to respond. I don't want to push this rap beef is like the London Review of Books analogy too far, but I suspect Chomsky is gonna drop a mixtape of a lectures in which he shoots back at Zizek REALly soon. The image on the cover will probably look something like this...





*Footage not found.
** Rap jargon you won't understand. Consult your Urban Dictionary.

not so much.

Check this:

It's 7 pm EST and this just in from ABC News: "Despite the possibility of Barack Obama being the nation's first black president, the turnout of black voters as a percentage of the national vote was at 13 percent, just slightly higher than in 2004, according to early exit polls."

What is the point of this story when it's 3.30 pm on the West Coast, there are 3 states where polls are closed and the highest percentage of precints reported in any state is 12%? Yeah.