Tuesday 10 July 2018

Cuttings: June 2016

Mistaken Identity by Asad Haider: the best criticism of identity politics - review by Ben Tarnoff in The Guardian. "As [Haider] explains, the idea [of identity politics] has radical roots. It originated with ... an organisation of black lesbian feminist socialists ... in 1977: '... We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.' This is the original demand of identity politics, and it’s one that Haider embraces: for a revolutionary practice rooted in people’s identities as racialised, sexed, gendered and classed individuals who face interlocking systems of oppression.... But if anticapitalist revolution is where identity politics began, it ... is now invoked by certain liberals and leftists to serve distinctly non-revolutionary ends, Haider argues. It involves members of marginalised groups demanding inclusion, recognition, or restitution from above – a seat at the table. These demands are made in response to very real injuries endured by those groups. But their method, he says, ends up strengthening the structures that produced those injuries in the first place. Drawing on Wendy Brown’s idea of 'wounded attachments', Haider contends that identity politics causes people to become invested in their marginalisation as a source of identity, and to continuously enact that identity as a form of politics. This approach can extract occasional concessions from the system but cannot build the power necessary to transform it."

Top 10 books to help you survive the digital age - article by Julian Gough in The Guardian.  "Here are 10 of the books that [helped me write my new digital, high-tech novel]: they might also help you understand, and survive, our complicated, stressful, digital age. 1. Marshall McLuhan Unbound by Marshall McLuhan (2005)... 2. Ubik by Philip K Dick (1969)... 3. The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil (2005)... 4. To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell (2017)... 5. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)... . What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly (2010)... 7. The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore (1999)... 8. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)... 9. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier (2010)... 10. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks (2000)."

Coping with computers - cartoon by Tom Gauld in The Guardian. "Computer assistance for the modern novelist. 2015: 'There are some spelling errors in your novel, shall I correct them?' 2020: 'I have a few ideas that might improve this novel. Can I tell them to you?' 2025: 'I made some revisions to our novel, let me know what you think.' 2040: 'You go to bed, I just want to write a few more pages before I go to sleep.' 2035: 'How many times do I have to tell you not to interrupt me when I'm creating!' "

Rise of the machines: has technology evolved beyond our control? - article by James Bridle in The Guardian, based on his book New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. "Across the sciences and society, in politics and education, in warfare and commerce, new technologies are not merely augmenting our abilities, they are actively shaping and directing them, for better and for worse. If we do not understand how complex technologies function then their potential is more easily captured by selfish elites and corporations. The results of this can be seen all around us.... There is a causal relationship between the complex opacity of the systems we encounter every day and global issues of inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism."

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation and These Islands: the fate of 'bullshit Britain' - review by Christopher de Bellaigue in The Guardian. "No longer can a national intellectual such as George Orwell set down a few thoughts about our aversion to conscription and fascism and our liking for a drink, as he did in 1941 in The Lion and the Unicorn, and we will all nod because we recognise ourselves. What united the inhabitants of Grenfell Tower with the billionaires of Kensington Palace Gardens and the parishioners shuffling into the church of St Mary Abbots every Sunday, other than their residency of the same London borough?... Now we have Brexit to contend with and the pessimists think it will break us. Break what, exactly? Ask the historians, for the job of history is to explain our kinship with others and the structures that keep us civil. ... David Edgerton’s The Rise and Fall of the British Nation is for the most part a fierce and dazzling account of 20th-century Britain from the perspective of a historian of science and industry. ... Edgerton’s modern Britain didn’t emerge from the empire (itself a pretext for protectionism through imperial preference) but from free trade. In the Edwardian era almost anything could be imported into Britain duty free.... Beginning in the 1930s, accelerating after the second world war, this changed. From the introduction of national service to protection for car-makers and the rhetoric of nationalism employed by the Attlee government, Britain became more like the nation states of continental Europe. Here, then, is the 'rise' of the 'nation' – set to a jingoistic score. 'We now have the moral leadership of the world … and we shall have people coming here as to a modern Mecca, learning from us in the 20th century as they learned from us in the 17th.' The patriot who uttered these words was Nye Bevan, who was well to the left of Attlee and set up the National Health Service."

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