Speculative Realism in the Humanities: My Essay in the LA Review of Books

“UNLESS YOU’VE been hiding under a rock, you know that saying things about rocks is now something humanists are allowing themselves to do wi...

CFP for graduate conference my place

MODALITIES You email submissions@modalities2015.com I'm helping the students organize this. Should be excellent with excellent food and ...

...and for My Next Trick

“Consider the case of milk. Greeks enjoy their fresh milk, produced locally and delivered quickly. But Dutch and other European milk produce...

Queer Green Sex Toys: Another Dark Ecology Snip

...that's the title of an essay I'm writing for a religion journal, haha--but it's also part of my argument in Dark Ecology : “I...

Now You Can Read My Dialogue with Björk

Thanks to Ashleigh Kane at Dazed and Confused magazine . We both decided it would be awesome to share the emails. When you read them, you g...

Another Dark Ecological Amuse-Bouche

Anatomy of ecognosis . Ecological awareness is like a chocolate with concentric layers. In the spirit of René Wellek I have mapped these lay...

How to Play Bass

...courtesy of Jeff Berlin.

Say "I'm not happy with the Anthropos of the Anthropocene" One More Time: More Dark Ecology

Fourthly, some of us are anxious that Anthropocene is hubristic, elevating the human species by assuming it has godlike powers to shape the...

Marx Brothers Upside Down: Another Dark Ecology Snip

But what if appearance were inextricable from essence? If such an entwining were thinkable, one could reverse the joke often cited by Slavoj...

Why Aren't You Here Doing This?

Namely, at the Whitechapel Gallery (great gallery) looking at the Hollow Earth by Emilija Škarnulytė and Tanya Busse. It's got the Arct...

Here Comes a Dark Ecology Snippet about Capitalism

“Capitalist economics is also an anthropocentric practice that has no easy way to factor in the very things that ecological thought and poli...

More Peeks at Dark Ecology

“There are some substitutes for the term Anthropocene . For instance, I have been advised to call it Homogenocene . But this is just a euphe...

Are You a Witch?

I hope you are. If you are, then you're going to enjoy Dark Ecology . A lot.

My New Idea

A new idea a day keeps the doctor away! This is a beginning exploration from  Dark Ecology : “The holism in which the whole is greater than ...

Tilting and Dragging

“Labour could have tilted to the center, but in fact they are being dragged to the left.” Said on the BBC radio 4 Today show this morning. I...

Should Extremism Be a Crime? Or Is That Going Too Far?

...haha... I doubt David Cameron will define austerity as a form of extremism. It should be.

Dark Ecology Epigraphs

Progress means: humanity emerges from its spellbound state no longer under the spell of progress as well, itself nature, by becoming aware o...

Mega Review of Shaviro's Speculative Realism on 7.28

... it will be in the LA Review of Books  and I like Shaviro's book so much, I've written a piece that could be some kind of forewor...

Separated at Birth

Scott Walker Sid Vicious

What It Feels Like Over Here Right Now

Josh Marshall nails it . Some of us were always aware that timing was essential to politics, just as it is with thought and with comedy, and...

The Obsession with Obsession

The paradox is that T.M. Luhrmann ( “The Anxious Americans,” July 19) reproduces the syndrome she identifies as a problem: the American obs...

Copy editing Dark Ecology

Like everything else recently on this book, it's turning out to be a very pleasant experience. I did enough work on the final draft to m...

Rhetorical Blunders

Pay attention, Euro-Thatcherites of Germany: Your propaganda has clearly been sinking in to the ordinary folks on the street . You really, r...

Economics Trumping Politics

...and this BBC opinion piece is painfully laughable: "But the point about this deal is - once again in the eurozone, it was a case of ...

Mockery

BBC--it's not Tispras whom the IMF is mocking. It is Germany . See? Tactics. Don't shoot the messenger.

Tactics 2

Syriza validated my intuition on BBC radio 4 today: there is a "the whole world is watching" vibe going on for sure. Italy and Fra...

Imagine this Sentence

“9/11 was an isolated incident of arson.” Now compare it with these sentences .

Thatcher Wins

...really, really big. I can't quite believe the irony, which would be delicious if it were not so painful. Here it is: Mrs. Thatcher...

Why Bees?

They are symptomatic of the murder-suicide culture created by the 12 000 year execution of the agrilogistical program. When they are finally...

Actions Pertaining to Bees

The Saving America's Pollinators Act is working its way through Congress. Central Texas Bee Rescue . The Honeybee Conservancy (mostly ...

Insta-Affect: The New Age of Sensibility

Yes, that's right. Everyone's partying like it's 1779. For someone who cut their intellectual teeth studying that period, it...

I Think It Happened in about 2001

The idea that the internet was a libertarian freedom space where you could be anything was a charming illusion. Now that everyone has it, ro...

Unwritten Rules of The Young Curmudgeons: A Series of Impossible Demands

WARNING [unbelievably one has to issue one, see below]: the following words are ventriloquism with extra added unconscious stuff rendered as...

Genius

The Onion likes to focus on micro moments that are full of significance. This is a perfect one .

Ever Heard of Tactics?

The hysterical hand wringing on the tabloid mild left of center ("What has Tsipras done?!?!") is a symptom of our superego-positiv...

Beeing and Time

Everybody do something nice for bees, now.

Varoufakis

" Varoufakis is a very different commodity. He is made of much sterner stuff -- intellectually, emotionally and morally. He has a power...

Psychosis and Excluded Middles

New research: when you smoke you might not yet have psychosis. People with psychosis smoke. More people who smoked before psychosis [was dia...

Mark Your Dark Calendars

For the book will appear on APRIL FOOL'S DAY.... Hahahaha!

New Horizons Pluto Flyby

Uncannily it began yesterday , which was the first day I looked into Richard Grossinger's Pluto book ...

More on the Pluto Book

...next week, the New Horizons space probe will reach Pluto. So now is a great time to get this book, you will read things you've never ...

Staying Alive: The New British National "Living" Wage

Who did Osborne hire to calculate it? Agamben? Should be called the Bare Living Wage, no? "The Living Wage: Because Living, No Matter W...

The Story of O(OO)

This just happened in NYC and I had no idea ! But luckily Lynn Randolph's husband just interviewed me (fantastically well) and he told m...

Mellower

Last year I gave 19 lectures and published 22 essays. The summer was a bit stress because of that. This year it's 14 lectures and 12 ess...

"It is a powerful hyperobject": Pluto

What a good book this is . Crammed with history, science, philosophy, speculation, mysticism, you name it. It's been published to commem...

Propaganda

Scotland vote for independence: 45% yes, 55% no. BBC: “A clear majority...puts the debate to an end.” Greek vote to accept more austerity: 6...

...and now I've heard it all...

BBC Radio 4, you just quoted the dominant (Thatcherite, austerity-addicted) political class of the Baltic in support of the status quo again...

Are You Getting It Now, Europe? Austerity is WRONG

Britain: the fact that Osborne is still at it, trying to cut his way to growth, is evidence of his failure  not his success (pace BBC radio ...

Thank Heavens

“we have just witnessed Greece stand up to a truly vile campaign of bullying and intimidation, an attempt to scare the Greek public, not jus...

Put That In Your Austerity Pipe and Smoke It

Byron, “The Isles of Greece.” Byron knew a thing or two about Greek liberation. He fought and died in the Greek War of Independence. T HE  i...

The View from the BBC

"In the northwestern corner of Europe it's okay to say No and renegotiate all the terms of membership. "In the southeastern co...

Opening Theme Tune

...for a pic having to do with anyone from my generation in the mid-eighties. Peter's Friends  used “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” ...

Greece: NO is better by far than YES

One of the great risks if the Greek public votes yes — that is, votes to accept the demands of the creditors, and hence repudiates the Greek...

The Fish

Not ready to talk about this yet.

"We Don't Know What Percentage"

This is the new right wing tactic: "We don't know what percentage is caused by humans." Actually we do. Quite precisely. Prett...

"Climate Change Skeptic"

Can we stop using this phrase to refer to denialists? A skeptic is someone who doubts something. Not someone who doesn't believe in some...

...and at least the NSA is good for something

Like showing Merkel was aware that they were saddling Greece with absurd debt.

Stop This Austerity Nonsense

I'm glad it's not just me . How long does a zombie concept based on an error in an Excel file have to stagger on destroying everythi...

The Last Night

...and speaking of Campagna, if you haven't read this , then you might want to, a lot. It's so lucidly written, and it shares a lot ...

Suicide and Economics

...economics being how you organize your enjoyment. And if it's only organized anthropocentrically, you are limiting it already, right? ...