Check out Steve Shaviro’s comments on Jonathan Beller’s book The “Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle” published late last year. I am a fan of Beller’s work. I rearticulate some of the comments I made here in a slightly different way in the comments to Steve’s post.
Looks like a must read.
Battlestar Galactica presents a collage of stratifications, thresholds, and foldings — non/human, non/military, non/political, non/religious, etc. — which don’t always correlate with everyday life, but which may capture a social antagonism that does correlate. Of course, this is part of the science-fiction poetics of the show, and one of the joys granted to viewers is as a resource and the opportunity to explore the various dimensions of these stratifications, thresholds and foldings on an intellectual level.
The most recent episode highlighted very real stratifications involving social determinations of place and class. In terms of its focus on class antagonism, I have never seen anything like it in a reasonably mainstream television show. I wonder how many people will be inspired to discover more about class? Especially in the US where it seems as if people are more interested in the non-reality of stupid bourgie f’cks on shows like the OC or the fabricated contingencies of reality television. Considering how hard the until-now triumphant forces of neo-con, neo-liberal hegemony have worked, this is not too surprising. Maybe this episode of BSG will be the first time many people are even exposed to such an antagonism according to such a locality- and class-based problematic?
I guess I’d better add that a very interesting movement below the dynamics of the class antagonism in this episode is a much more conventional gendering of roles than what has until now been the mainstay of BSG. Although romance and sex have been sources of antagonism, it has been in a weirdly non-gendered way, with many of the burdens of expectation relieved, extinguished or distributed across the players in different ways. This class-based episode is attractive to me as someone of a perverted neophyte of actual non-suburban social relations. Mother with the baby, wife egging on the acting-husband, battle of men, images of fisted-hands at cock level, and so on. This raises questions about the non-separation of gender and labour in class.
you need a haircut
EDIT: How awesome? F’ckin awesome. Muscles, you rocked that shit. (Check the third track in the myspace player.)
Some dude knew my scary go round t-shirt! s/cultural capital! full effectz!
I bailed after my aquaintence had left me, headed to The Clare with some dudes I met at the BKRC. Shouts to Al; so do it, mofo!
Then, this morning, how stoked am I that I go to gym all the time? Stoked like Thomas the f’ckin tank engine, that’s how.
EDIT: Yeah anyway, what? Enthusiasm? Why:
So the book in which I have a chapter is being launched April 4. I hope I’ll be working the event (it is at Gleebooks).
Would that be making too much of a ‘statement’?
You know, regarding the precarity of young scholars in the neo-liberal university system, the example being of such a young scholar that has to work in the bookshop on the night of their own book launch?
i am stupid. i am so utterly stupidly stupid i can’t believe it.
i am glad i haven’t finished my PhD, or have it ready for submission, because if i had missed what i almost missed i would deserve to fucking fail it.
sometimes being a little bit smart is dangerous because you stop doing things that a normal person would do as it is sometimes easier to think yourself out of problems. however, being a scholar is not determined by how much you can think.
i am stupid, and feeling a little bit sick, and probably need a cry, but i am not sleeping until i have written enough to punish myself for being this stupid, because i can write my stupidity out, and go to fucking war against it, and get sinister with myself and my stupid little peanut brain. i really feel sick.
real stupidity jumps you like being on public transport only to suffer someone else’s surprise sneeze, it is an accident, and renders visible the contingencies of intellect. this is a bitter feeling.
(however, i am a little relieved i found what i did now, and not later, because later would’ve been beyond stupid into the terrain of something else truly scary.)
no 3:27 happy dances this morning, only coffee and war. and maybe a little charismatic insanity, but that would be sad (or the music).
EDIT: OK, so that reads like the blog post equivalent of an Imogen Heap song. It’s all good.
EDIT: 84,000 words.
I am going to be late, get there for the last bit, as I have to work first!
From James Arvanitakis:
Hi everyone…
… and happy 2007!
Well, it is time for us to re-launch Beers without Borders (BWB) for 2007 – in a new year, a new venue and also a new night of the week.
The next BWB will be held on Thursday, 1 March 2007 at the Edinburgh Castle with details as follows:
Time: 5.30 pm to 9.30pm
Date: 1 March 2007
Location: Edinburgh Castle
Address: 294 Pitt St, Sydney (corner of Bathurst St).
The re-launch of BWB comes at an exciting time for a number of reasons. You may remember that the thinking behind BWB was both to begin conversations towards long-term social change, and to celebrate what everyone’s doing already. The looming federal and NSW state elections are reminders of how important these original goals remain.
The issues of climate change, David Hicks and the war on terror, Iraq, mandatory detention, water, education, health, debt, the gutting of the ABC and attack on media diversity, as well as the undermining of multiculturalism are all issues that we need to pursue.
In addition, this BWB will be a fundraiser for a new progressive think tank – the Centre for Policy Development. Everyone who signs up to join the Centre on the night will enter a draw to win cool prizes.
We ask you to come along and find out more about our plans and, as always, enjoy the company of other people who are concerned about the direction this country is taking. Remember BWB runs on the Amway principle – bring two friends (and ask them to bring two friends), and together we’ll change politics (and maybe drink the pub dry).
One of my old creative writing lecturers, Elizabeth Jolley, died this morning.
I didn’t know her writing work much at all. I think I was from the wrong generation. But I had her as a lecturer for the same class three semesters in a row because I kept having to pull out of it or whatever. We read a bad translation of Medea that had early 20thC English expressions throughout it (i.e. ‘by golly’ ‘dear god’, etc). She was a pretty harsh marker. Plus, her ‘old lady’ performance was total bullshit.
Stallone in Sydney for Rocky Balboa opening:
“Everything you can do wrong, I did. I started to believe that I was this superior person and I was entitled to everything. You may have the ability to write or act, but it’s just a personal strength: it doesn’t make you any better than anybody else.
“You can’t make a movie without the electrician, make-up artist and transportation guys.
“Looking at the guy driving the truck and thinking you’re better than him because you’re the big actor – guess what? If he doesn’t drive that truck, you could be sitting under a tree all alone waiting for the crew.”
(I’ve already posted this once. I hope this doesn’t mean someone is hacking my blog. That would suck.)
From a bbq conversation.
A gen-X Michael Leunig?
