2000s notes
Ground Truth
Notes:
Very interesting book which takes an epistemological critique to Geographic Information Systems. Arguing that the seeming neutrality of GIS actually a whole series of political, social, and ethical assumptions, the authors in this volume argue, in various ways for a politically realist usage of GIS.
The book is heavy on theory and critique, and light on practice. The last chapter is the exception, in which the authors describe utilizing GIS as a participatory vehicle for addressing land dispossession claims in post-apartheid South Africa.
The book will probably be of interest to GIS users who want to move beyond the nuts and bolts of making and utilizing spatial databases, and into the more nebulous terrain of why they are used, and how they might be used to further social equality.
Glazed America
Notes:
Mullins uses a donut to explore Western society’s ambivalence about consumerism. Using social history and cultural analysis, Mullins asks what it is about our world that makes donuts a huge industry and simultaneously a target for all manner of negative stereotypes about health, social class, and sprawl. He draws on a variety of sources, from interviews with donut consumers and producers, to historical documents, to discussions of that most mighty of donut consumers–Homer Simpson. In the end, Mullins finds that the donut is a kind of blank slate, where people have ascribed a whole series of cultural meanings and ideas reflecting their vision of who they are, and what they want to be.
HP Lovecraft Against the world against life
Notes:
It’s an extended essay on the human condition disguised as a biography of H.P. Lovecraft. Houellebecq’s vision of the world is ultimately as nihilistic as most of lovecraft’s anonymous protagonists, but he lays out a convincing case that Lovecraft was ultimately an anti-rationalist–he was a profound believer in science, but saw no hope in science’s ability to save or uplift anyone. And this pessimistic contradiction was confounded (or augmented) by Lovecraft’s virulent racism, which located the worst aspects of the human condition in the non-white blacks and immigrants that Lovecraft encountered while living in New York. Houllebecq paints Lovecraft as a hater of life, and that, in that hatred, he made great art.
There’s also a pretty good introduction by Stephen King, and reprints of two of Lovecraft’s classic texts: The Whisperer in the Darkness, and The Call of Cthulhu.
The Archaeology of Collective Action
Notes:
Concise and powerful…this is a small book on the archaeology of the Ludlow Massacre, which was part of the Colorado Coal Field War, the most violent labor struggle in American history. A tent colony, set up by the United Mine Workers for the striking miners has been excavated for several years now by a multi-disciplinary team, and this book uses that excavation as a touch-stone to talk about how to do politically engaged, theoretically rigorous archaeology. The first three chapters lay out, in more concise terms than I’ve ever seen in print, the theoretical framework for doing archaeologies of race, class, and gender, based on a pragmatic approach that sees truth as a form of inter-subjective knowledge. That’s basically a fancy way of saying that we come to understand the world based on the social relations that we’re embedded in. It’s a powerful book, sophisticated while straightforward, and would be of use to anyone interested in political/radical archaeology, labor history, or even philosophy of science.
Autobiography of an ex-white man
Notes:
“Short and sweet, and very powerful. This book is the story of Robert Paul Wolff’s experience of moving from a philosophy department to a department of African American studies. Specifically, it’s the story of how his outlook on the United States changed when he read the 50 books that the department assigns its new grad students to read for their degree. In the process, he analyzes the ““master narratives”” of american history and shows how those themes (particularly ““exceptionalism””, and “freedom”) only make sense if you tailor that history to avoid discussion of black folks and their experience. The book is written in a compelling and lucid style, that foreground Wolff’s experiences over complex or overly-analytical analyses of the works he highlights. In that sense, some of it’s conclusions will not be particularly revelatory, especially for people steeped in African-american culture, politics, or history. Still, it is a very moving account of how, if one takes the time to look at them, the experiences of black people provide a VERY different outlook on the world we live in, and how it came to be.”
Main Lines Blood Feasts and Bad Taste
Notes:
In some ways, much broader in scope that the other Bangs collection “Psychotic reactions and Carburetor Dung”. It contains Bangs' ruminations on Jazz, folk, and heavy metal, along with travel pieces on Austin, California, and Jamaica (the book is almost worth it for that article alone). But the real whirlpool here is the lengthy “Bye Bye Sidney”, where Bangs begins with the Sid Vicious murder/suicide and uses it as a vehicle to take us through a powerful critique of media-culture, punk rock’s dalliance with nihilism as a lifestyle, and then ends with a defiant to re-affirm life and struggle. It moved me to tears when I first read it, and continues to inspire.
