Frobisher Smith
Fascinating and weird. The Ancient Greek theater was full of sex jokes and potty humor, easy pratfall gags, and so on. One can imagine portions of this playing out on late night television tonight. This play features an early version of a “celebrity freestyle battle” between playwriters Aeschylus and Euripides, as well as jokes and commentary on then contemporary military battles and politicians. This is all tied together by the overarching story of Dionysus making a parodical journey to the underworld of Hades.
The edition I read, translated and notated by Peter Meineck, was perhaps not the most traditional or faithful to the original translation, but the footnotes were very informative and helpful, as was the lengthy introduction. All in all, it was a great little read and a fun experience.
This was a challenging but really engrossing and utterly fascinating book on the philosophy of time and the “production of time” within capitalism. Here, the author describes how the transcendental subjectivation of time is necessarily tied up with the development of capitalism and the modern world, that the invention of the precision mechanical clock revolutionized not only industry, but likely made Kant's conceptualization of time possible in the first place. And from there, the further mutation of our understanding of time is also mediated by technology and capitalism, with Greenspan bringing in the Deleuzean understanding of Aeon and Chronos to discuss the Y2K bug as an Aeonic mutation point signifying an evolution of globally standardized clock-time to a post-global, increasingly decentralized, fully machinic “cyberspace time.”
The introduction from the Miskatonic Virtual University team expands this last point even further, showing how the appearance of Bitcoin's decentralized use of timestamp server networks is proof that cyberspace has mutated the production of time, including the fact that the timestamped blockchain acts as a kind of “timechain,” a purely quantified calendar of sequentially numbered blocks, whose ebbs and flows are determined by a difficulty-adjustment algorithm and totally divorced from cosmic motion and cultural seasonality. Instead, the intensity of mining operations on the bitcoin network is the primary variable for the algorithm: economic activity is the very pulse of the cybernetic calendar (time = money). If you are able to read the whole book without your mind getting blown even once, I'd suggest you didn't understand the contents.
It's an excellent little sword and planet novella. Brackett showing here why she was considered one of the best by fans and Hollywood alike, deftly weaving economical prose and larger than life characters. Very little actually happens in this story, but nonetheless it feels epic. The Cirsova edition I read with nice bold print and full-page illustrations turns this into a captivating light novel that is just what a boring, hot Summer calls for. And there's two more in the series! Definitely recommended.
This is the story of a 19th century gentleman visiting America who hails from the fictional Christian commonwealth of Altruria, a country which has managed to fully embrace a communitarian way of life in service to building Heaven on Earth. An excellent idea rendered pompously, filled with strawpersons, and which gives the rural poor in the tale an oversized natural-born morality which, overall, makes it a less-than-serious sort of novel. Given Howell's professional insistence on Realism over all other concerns, you'd think he'd be able to paint characters more real than those here. Still, I think he meant well, and there are plenty of enjoyable moments. Only if you are really trying to make a survey of Utopian literature is this a necessary read, however.
Very interesting stuff. At times a pulpy stream of lurid rumors about alchemists and magicians, at times a clear-headed expose of central banking. The real magic trick, as Twyman explains here in depth, is the transformation of time into money. I'm not sure how credible all of the information in this is, some of the claims she makes are quite wild! But she was clearly on to something.
A short, funny polemic against the “Degrowth Movement” and one of its main proponents, Jason Hickel. Peter Coffin comes at it from an orthodox Marxist perspective, showing how it's the same papering-over of the contradictions of Capitalism that Malthus, Galton, Herbert Spencer, and later the Fascists used to explain why there's never enough to go around.
I think he does a fine job of explaining why we can't degrow ourselves out of the problems we're facing, and why Hickel's worldview is a dissonant mess of contradictory notions. As with most self-published works, however, it could have used a bit more editing. That said, it was an enjoyable little book.
There are some great facts and lore presented here to add to one's knowledge of ancient mysteries and mysticisms. Ultimately, this book is a bit scattershot and seemingly without any kind of main thesis to tie it all together. It is an overview of the dark Chthonic occult arts of Ancient Greece, not meant to be in-depth, though the author starts to run out of steam just as she gets to the most interesting parts. Oh well, to me it was enjoyable and interesting enough, and has enough intriguing little tidbits to make it worth owning.
A fascinating but challenging book to read. I don't think I can do it justice to try and explain it in a review, it is perhaps one of the densest things I have tackled in recent memory. Schelling moves deftly in an inter-disciplinary and wholistic fashion though seemingly the entirety of the fundamental considerations of Mythology writ large. While today we might see some of his assumptions and determinations as outdated and ultimately unsupported, as a whole it is surely a strong and durable piece of philosophy, one that must be reckoned with by any scholar of mythology and the history of religion looking for philosophical grounding in their studies.
It is a bit of a strange book, but extremely interesting from a number of different angles. The author's basic thesis is that the material of the Grail legends within the Arthurian romances originated as part of ceremonial reenactments performed in pre-Christian ‘Mystery' traditions, primarily those associated with the gods Attis and Adonis. Over time these became either de-sacralized, as part of the material for spring and harvest festival melodramas held publicly in villages across Europe, or as Weston argues, Christianized and transformed intentionally into stories fit for Chivalric ballads. Is it a slam dunk case? I don't think I know enough about these subjects to say, but Weston certainly was persuasive here, and undoubtably had done quite extensive research and scholarship to arrive at the position she presents in this book.
Beyond the main thesis, it is stuffed with interesting tangentially-related details about ancient religion, the Grail lore's symbolism, medieval Europe, and so on. She not unfrequently quotes other authors in their original French and German, which I could not read in their entirety, but I understood the gist in some of the German passages. Her intended audience for this book was clearly other European folklorists and philologists, but fortunately there is a lot of context around these quotes, so it certainly it does not make reading this impossible or pointless if you can't read them. Definitely a book worth reading and owning for anyone interested in the history of religion and folklore.
A very enjoyable collection of Samhain-themed short stories of heroic and dark fantasy and pulpy adventure. Everything is tinged with sinister weirdness, which made it a perfect light read for the Halloween season. Arcane cultists bringing forth unspeakable horrors, cunning men of action wielding steel and iron, and more than one storming of the gates to Hell await the reader! I personally liked every story in the collection, none of them fell flat to me.
I was not a huge fan of this overall. This had moments of brilliance, and quite a few good passages succinctly laying out the thoughts of Deleuze. But often it left me bewildered. We must move beyond “rhizomes,” I can agree there, but Culp goes on to suggest what we need then is the “destruction of the world,” and a “communism that wants to consume the flesh and blood of the entire cosmos.” I know he's not exactly being literal here, but perhaps for me, this Deleuze is too dark.
Excellent book. Details the players and misbehavers in the UFOlogy and Cattle Mutilation research scenes for over about five decades. This is the story of how much of what we call “UFO lore” today originated not from black ops whistleblowers describing real events, but purely from the imaginations of Air Force and CIA intelligence officers, and how they got these tall tales into circulation as “disclosures” believed by many to be true.
Adam Gorightly writes from lengthy experience within the conspiracy, esoterica, and paranormal research scenes (an overlapping grouping to be sure), and deflates many of the more sensational ideas of underground extraterrestrial-staffed military bases and sci-fi laser battles, while very much pointing to real evidence of counter-intelligence operations against potential Russian assets, top secret medical and technological experimentation on American citizens and their cattle, and the possible assassination of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro. It's a very clear-headed and quite interesting book, I enjoyed it a lot.
It is a very strange book. Written apparently for the cartography expert in mind it is a lengthy treatise on the analysis of a set of maps from late antiquity and early modernity which show some interesting features and anomalies. He seems to have uncovered that some ancient maps had been based on maps that had been originally laid out with an “oblate” spherical trigonometry. This spherical geometry is preserved in the errors of longitude and latitude that were created by the later map makers when copying them to a different projection. It suggests that in deep antiquity the maps had reached a point of sophistication not seen until the 17th century of the modern era, and then had declined to the state we understand it to be in during the Classical era of Alexandrian and Greek cartography. And then furthermore, there are geographic anomalies in some of these old maps that suggest they had been made using copies of maps that were first charted from ~4,000-7,000 BCE as source material.
I think there is a lot of intriguing ideas and evidence in this book, but it is extremely difficult to read. I eventually gave up trying to understand all of what he was saying and would skip to passages where he summarizes his findings. However, half of the book is also an extensive appendix of notes, which contain a great deal of interesting reference information. This is certainly a book worth owning and skimming through. Not sure I can recommend reading the whole thing though!
Hoffmann's original is a fascinating read. A little dark, very strange, and yet very full of whimsy. One has to believe that there is something deeper to this little fantasy children's tale, since we see elements of it in so many things that have come after and it has inspired retellings, and then musical suites and ballets based on those retellings, which have taken on a life of their own within Christmas neoclassical rock extravaganzas and Disney films. Perhaps even the children's board game Candy Land has its roots in The Nutcracker's fantasy world of sweets. This has proven to be very influential, indeed, and is still a fun read, although not without some creaks from age.
Fantastic little book. It is a collection of Lévi-Strauss's spoken answers to a set of interview questions. Yes, it would be very nice if it were twice as long. Given what it is, depth and detail is sacrificed in the name of accessibility and clarity. And even at that, Lévi-Strauss manages to cite numerous books and monographs here. Perhaps most memorable and interesting in this short collection of spoken essays is the last, which is a discussion of how myth and music are very similar branches of the original art and technology of language. Very stimulating stuff, and I would say a good, short introduction to the French structuralist perspective on mythology and culture in general.
A very dense, very intricate, very in-depth discussion and thesis on the real structure of totemic, “primitive” thought and organization of such culture's worldviews. There are a lot of concepts and structures here that Lévi-Strauss employs with a wide range of application in other areas that have since come into use by various other scholars and academics. This in of itself proves that “savage thought” is actually quite systematic, dialectical, and advanced in important ways, although Lévi-Strauss himself demonstrates this continually throughout the book.
This took me a long time to read. I put it down for a while after finishing with the first three chapters. But then, I persevered, and it was quite rewarding actually all the way through (especially the last two chapters), even though it was often quite an exercise to my brain in understanding what he wrote. This book is very important not only because of its perennial relevance to post-structuralist theorists, but on its own it stands as a major work of 20th century philosophical anthropology.
A very dense, very rewarding text by Lefebvre. This is the general theory of the space-time of the everyday: the relative and rhythmic interactions of subjects and objects in space and time, as experienced in everyday, human dimensions. It is wonderful compendium of fascinating thoughts on the rhythms of life, and I think it's quite valuable today for anyone who wants to encounter some deep thinking on how rhythms connect, shape and in many ways, both produce and are produced by the human condition.
This was a very challenging book. I put it down and read other things several times while working my way through it, not because it isn't interesting, but because sections would often get into very deep discussions on formal mathematics and mathematical logic that are beyond my understanding. The book is also structured oddly, not like a normal memoir, biography, or philosophical overview would be and this results in some sections that are exceedingly dry and technical. However, I am overall glad I read it, and it contains many fascinating details about Gödel and his life and work. Everything discussed here is at a depth and level of detail missing from most other accounts. This is not an introductory work, to say the least!
An unsettling and penetrating critique of Neoliberalism and its structures of control. Han argues that under the data-mediated “psychopolitics” of the current Late Capitalist order in the West, the individual person oppresses themselves through gamified, emotional devotion to achievement and self-improvement. We become an “achievement-subject” that self-subjectifies. Unlike the Disciplinary society outlined by Foucault, the Neoliberal society is focused on positive reinforcement and the pleasure principle. The Disciplinary society features biopolitics and physical control, while under Neoliberalism the society operates through psychopolitics and emotional management/exploitation.
Han also brings in notions of horizontality and verticality. He points out that Neoliberalism's most optimistic hopes for Big Data will certainly fail to come to fruition, because Big Data is an entirely horizontal framework. This echoes the use of these terms by Wolfgang Smith. It could be said that Big Data can only deal in horizontal causality: the predictable and observable unfoldment of cause and effect. It cannot foresee what Han calls the event: the unpredicted, unforeseeable occurrence. The event is the result of what Smith would call vertical causality, a causation which preempts and supersedes the horizontal development of situations, which he said was only accessible by Humanity and God. Both Wolfgang Smith and Byung-Chul Han would agree that computers and algorithms have no access to this sense of verticality, and so cannot predict or comprehend the event, or totalize knowledge to the degree that would make it visible through computation.
Finally, Han argues that a possible position to hold in revolt of this psychopolitical regime is that of the philosophical, Socratic “idiot.” For Han, this specific idiot is the one who presumes nothing and doubts more than seems reasonable, such as Socrates and Descartes. The idiot remains outside of the anticipatory cycle of the emotionalized market, and so this philosophical idiot is a radical, whose existence is a problem for the logic of Neoliberalism. Han argues at the end of this work that taking on this position of ‘idiocy' is potential way to reclaim freedom and de-subjectivize oneself.
It's an interesting and very thought-provoking work that I think successfully reframes and clarifies our situation today, moving beyond limited ideological positions and is well worth the read. While it is short, under 100 pages, it is very dense and rewards thorough, engaged reading.
This is a short but highly compelling collection of some of Camus' short writings on subjects such as the second World War, the death penalty, and what it means to make art in these contemporary times. His powerful defense of Humanism and the importance of the individual spirit contains a depth of experience and wisdom that is missing in many such attempts.
To Camus, the meaning we humans make in the world for ourselves is the only real meaning that exists, and it is this humanistic meaning that he dearly values above any overriding ideological concern. The values arising from this existentialist humanism shine through in all of his points and argumentations in these essays and speeches. In many cases, these values can appear as underwhelming and naive, but here with Camus they are cogent, rousing, and inspirational.
This is a very interesting little book. Muammar Gaddafi makes a lot of compelling points in places, and at other times seems like a naive and zealous utopian. He is very strong when he critiques representative democracy from the standpoint of direct democracy, and when he compares the differences between constitutional law and natural law and the deficiencies of constitutions. Gaddafi's system of councils and committees is a very interesting and inspiring model of a broadly participatory, horizontal structure to the governing of society. It is his claim that mankind will inevitably come to adopt this structure, and that the political states of the world will eventually wither away and with them all serious social problems, that he seems to veer off into the realm of religious dogma, and not cultural and political theory. Similarly, his discussion of families, tribes, and the sexes demonstrate a kind of unquestioned biological essentialism that could have used a healthy dose of cultural realism.
Caleb Maupin's introduction is a welcome addition to the text. He paints a sympathetic, but not inaccurate, portrait of the revolutionary Libyan leader, that includes a great deal of context one won't find from say, CNN or the New York Times. I don't think any of his crimes or abuses should be ignored, but Gaddafi should also be understood as a synthesizer of a unique kind of Islamic socialism, who fought against Imperialism in Africa and worked hard to improve his nation. Painted as little more than a raving monster in much of the Western press, reading this will definitely give one a fuller picture of the man and his vision.
An interesting and influential work of philosophy, history, and economics. He focuses a broad discussion of “general economy” on the aspect of expenditure, which he argues is a key aspect ignored for too long in favor of the theoretical concern over production. Expenditure and loss of the surplus of energy and production is the de facto state of the natural systems which form the base of economic activity, and this situation carries to some degree all the way up to human civilization. Bataille points out in repeated historical and anthropological examples, quite a bit of human culture, historically speaking, was centered around providing meaning and social value to this expenditure of surplus, and only recently have the value systems which favor the attempt to preserve surplus for future use become the standard for humanity.
Bataille is an artful writer even when dealing with relatively dry matters, and although it can be difficult at times to discern exactly what he means, the poetic quality of how he states things cannot be denied. Well worth reading and doing so surely puts one in a position to better appreciate Bataille's influence on later theorists and philosophers.