What I’m Reading
We woke up on Monday the 21st to the news of the Pig Scandal of Britain, and this piece by Rob Fahey, “The PM, the Pig and Musings on Power,” is one of the better analyses of the issues involved.
Terrell Jermaine Starr’s, “On Twitter, Bernie Sanders’s supporters are becoming one of his biggest problems,” made the rounds a lot this past week.
Sanders will be at the University of Chicago on September 28.
In some good news, performers in the arts are fed up with museums demanding free labour.
The Bijou, Chicago’s long-standing porn theatre and venue, is closing, and I am having all the Samuel Delaney feels.
You might have heard about Martin Shkreli. I’m among those who berated him on Twitter, and he appears to have backed down somewhat. This Atlantic piece gets at some of the big issues.
AK Press is publishing the second edition of Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, this time with a new foreword by Chelsea Manning. I have an essay in it, and the entire anthology is worth reading, of course. Contact Eric Stanley and AKP if you’d like to arrange an event and/or celebration.
This short piece by Topher McCulloch, on making something awful every, day is instructive.
Eve Ewing wrote this for the New Yorker, “We Shall Not Be Moved”: A Hunger Strike, Education, and Housing in Chicago,” which provides the backdrop for the Dyett strike.
Greg Grandin’s book on Henry Kissinger, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman
is definitely on my reading list.
1990 was the year of Karen Finley and her book Shock Treatment. This year is its 25th anniversary, and I just received a copy of the new edition. She’s also going to be at Women and Children First
in Chicago on October 2 , and the rest of the tour schedule is here.
The greatly vindicated Steven Salaita’s new book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom will be published October 6, and I’m eagerly anticipating my copy.
I just got my copy of Michael Javen Fortner’s Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment.
As many of you know, I’ve long had an interest in the questions surrounding marriage and singledom. I’m looking forward to reading Kate Bolick’s Spinster.
A year later, but I finally checked out a copy of Ain’t Nobody Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith.
While I’ve heard his name before, I haven’t read too much about Ed Mead, so I’m excited about this forthcoming book, Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead.
From the Archives
As I work to forge new ways of getting work done in the unexpected circumstances of actually getting more work assignments, I’m reminded of the ways in which we write and talk about the creative process. Here’s my very short, “Writing and Wanking.”
The Pig Scandal reminds me of this piece I wrote a few years ago, “Such Beastly Love: Animals and Affect in a Neoliberal World.”
Related to the Pig Scandal: here’s a piece by Stuart Hall, a reminder of what neoliberalism has wrought in the UK (and elsewhere), “The March of the Neoliberals.”
In case you missed it, here’s last week’s roundup.
And, finally, this is how I’m feeling these days, in the wake of several online conversations on race. More later!
