Dive into the archives.
- “The International”: Debriefing the Movies
A movie review: sometimes, the irreality of the movie is enough to provide a moment’s respite from the irrealities of daily life. The International is like that. Its about the unwinding of a super-intelligent plot by fiendish banks to dictate international politics. Ok, that’s banal enough: especially when Goldman Sachs says it’ll repay TARP loans [...]
- Them were Us, Yesterday: Not Coping With Recession’s Realities
Long ago, in another era, I worked as a volunteer following the 9/11 attacks. I began my work serving on a telephone information bank, manned by mental health workers, for the purpose of identifying 9/11 survivors. Working there, I noted an increasing kind of desperation. For example, on that first night (9/12), one of our [...]
- Obama’s Outrage and AIG
Outrage? The New York Times tells us that President Obama’s economic team was “on message” delivering the news that $165 million in AIG bonuses to derivatives traders who helped precipitate AIG’s financial hemorrhage, could not legally be blocked. But the public’s response to the news (“the growing outcry”) caused the President to change tactics, with [...]
- The Madoff Metaphor
While the sentiment of moment is harshly judgmental, it is difficult not to think about Madoff as a metaphor of recent times. He has played his role well in the public drama of shock and blame: stoically bearing guilt within the rituals of censure and condemnation. His decision to turn from trading to the fabrication [...]
- Bartleby and the Avoidant Personality
I woke up one morning last week, thinking about Bartleby the Scrivener. It was a few days after my last posting, which had related to Bartleby via two Welsh Academics and one Slavic Lacanian, which is an oblique route to Herman Melville, and Bartelby— who worked, as it happens, in an establishment very close to [...]
- On Zizek’s Melville, Freud, and Meaning in the Downturn
I’m not sure if I understand correctly, but a recent article on Zizek’s “Bartelby” politics, named after Melville’s scribe whose preference is “not to”, aims at turning from the meaninglessness of societies predicated upon the empty non-deliverables of enjoyment or pleasure, and opening up a “space” from which we might critique the aimlessness of social [...]
