I’m happy to announce the impending publication of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence in Russian by Alpina Non-fiction. Below is the cover and you can find an excerpt here.
Czech review: Proč mají ženy za socialismu lepší sex →
A new review in Czech.
Summer Reading: Circe
This one was highly recommended by my daughter, and I enjoyed it. A feminist retelling of the Odyssey from the witch’s POV. Such a nice break from the heavier academic reading.
Какво е "истински" българ/ин/ка →
A new interview in Bulgarian about racism, xenophobia, and Black Lives Matter.
Iva Rudnikova, “Какво е "истински" българ/ин/ка” Kapital, 10 July 2020
Summer reading: Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind
““...the rightist totalitarian program was exceptionally poor. The only gratification it offered came from collective warmth: crowds, red faces, mouths open in a shout, marches, arms brandishing sticks; but little rational satisfaction. Neither racist doctrines, nor hatred of foreigners, nor the glorification of one’s own national traditions could efface the feeling that the entire program was improvised to deal with the problems of the moment.”
“The man of the East cannot take Americans seriously because they have never undergone the experiences that teach men how relative their judgements and thinking habits are. Their resultant lack of imagination is appalling. Because they were born and raised in a given social order and in a given system of values, they believe that any others order must be ‘unnatural,’ and that it cannot last because it is incompatible with human nature. ”
“Wherever there is a crisis, the ruling classes take refuge in fascism as a safeguard against the revolution of the proletariat.”
“Whoever would take the measure of intellectual life in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe from the monotonous articles appearing in the press or the stereotyped speeches pronounced there, would be making a grave error. Just as theologians in periods of strict orthodoxy expressed their views in the rigorous language of the Church, so the writers of the people’s democracies make use of an accepted special style, terminology, and linguistic ritual. What is important is not what someone said but what he wanted to say...”
“The reader of today is in search of hope, and he does not care for poetry that accepts the order of things as permanent.”
Summer reading: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
“We want to be the masters of the future only for the power to change the past. ”
“To see the devil as a partisan of Evil and an angel as a warrior on the side of Good is to accept the demagogy of angels. ”
“For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an undifferentiated universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. ”
“All of us are prisoners to a rigid conception of what is important and what is not, and so we fasten our anxious gaze on the important, while from a hiding place behind our backs the unimportant wages its guerilla war, which will end in surreptitiously changing the world and pouncing on us by surprise. ”
“The best progressive ideas are those that include a strong enough dose of provocation to make its supporters feel proud of being original, but at the same time attract so many adherents that the risk of being an isolated exception is immediately averted by the noisy approval of a triumphant crowd. ”
“It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly, and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense. ”
Summer Reading: The Light That Failed
“After the fall of the Wall, across-the-board imitation of the West was widely accepted as the most effective way to democratize previously non-democratic societies. Largely because of the moral asymmetry it implies, this conceit has now become a pre-eminent target of populist rage.”
“...even for the inhabitants of economically successful countries such as Poland, the project of adopting a Western model under Western supervision feels like a confession of having failed to escape Central Europe’s historical vassalage to foreign instructors and inquisitors....A feeling of being treated disrespectfully was also fomented by what can be reasonably identified as the central irony of post-communist democracy-promotion in the context of European integration: the Central and East European countries ostensibly being democratized were compelled, in order to meet the conditions for EU membership, to enact policies formulated by unelected bureaucrats from Brussels and international lending organizations. Poles and Hungarians were told what laws and policies to enact, and simultaneously instructed to pretend that they were governing themselves.”
TikTok shout out →
So I do not have this app nor really understand how it is different from Vine, but I scored some major points with my teenage daughter for getting name checked in this TikTok. So thank you Sally for this very important public service announcement!.
A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times by Anand Pandian
Just finished this wonderful little book by Anand Pandian from Duke U Press.
Nice quote: "Anthropology teaches us to seek out unseen faces of the world at hand, to confront its openness through experience and encounter, and to take these openings as seeds of humanity to come." (page 3)
What is the pragmatic value of anthropology in the 21st century? Pandian argues that we need new ways of seeing the world. He argues that "stories like ours can be tailored for times of darkness: for moments of profound and unsettling disquiet; in the face of intractable forms of injustice and neglect; as resources for assurance and imagination when the light begins to fade each evening, as it will." (page 120-121)
Writing anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment
So happy to be a part of this excellent and valuable collection of essays on writing in the field of anthropology, just out from Duke University Press. Huge shout out to Carole McGranahan for pulling it all together.
Mock up of the future French cover
Forthcoming in October with www.luxediteur.com.
Thanks so much to the Houston Review of Books! →
I am so honored to be the subject of this thoughtful review!
Interview in the Black Agenda Report →
I'm thrilled that the Black Agenda Report Book Forum just published this interview that I did with them last year.
The Slovak cover
So glad to see Valentina Tereshkova’s face floating like a moon in a sky of pink, but it is funny (and not surprising) that the Slovaks cut off the part of her helmet that read “CCCP.”
Another afternoon at Chanticleer
Being outside in the sunshine was such a joy yesterday, that I went back a second time. I’ve been cooped up in the house for so long that I couldn’t resist the lure of Chanticleer on an almost perfect day. I’ve been trying to find some headspace to help me process all of the ugly injustices happening in the United States right now.
An afternoon at the Chanticleer Pleasure Garden
We are finally in the yellow zone here in Philadelphia and that means that things like stores and gardens are opening up. Today was the first day that people were allowed to return to Chanticleer. I grabbed my camera, enjoyed the sunshine and the gorgeous flowers, and tried to forget about all of the miserable crap happening in the world for a few hours.
My review of Soviet Signoras in the Times Higher Education Supplement →
A fascinating ethnographic account of postSoviet women working in Italy.
New interview with the Hotbed Collective →
I did this one months ago, pre-pandemic, but they have finally posted it now.
Social distancing (kind of) and protesting
Under both lockdown and curfew
Received this alert from U Penn today. So now we are not only under lockdown by order of the governor, but also under curfew by order of the mayor. It feels like I am living in a country that is imploding. How long, I wonder, until Trump declares something like martial law and suspends or postpones the 2020 election?
