1,731 words
In Darren Aronofsky’s new film The Whale, Moby Dick gets referenced a lot, but its subject isn’t an actual whale. Charlie (Brendan Fraser), the protagonist, is rather a monstrous human leviathan whose massiveness can easily disgust others, much like the monstrously-deformed John Merrick, who was depicted in David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man. Merrick had to live masked and wrapped in canvas so as not to shock people. (more…)
Ron Jones
5,778 words
In the faraway year of 1967, a unique social experiment took place in Cubberley High of Palo Alto, California. It was devised by Ron Jones, an innovative history teacher who had graduated from Stanford a few years prior. This classroom exercise spilled over into the rest of the school — to some degree, at least. It sometimes gets compared in retrospect to infamous studies in brutality such as the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. (more…)
Graffito in a University of Lyon classroom during the 1968 student revolts.
2,890 words
“Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” — Motto of Harvard University
In a previous Counter-Current essay, I asserted that “universities are the fons et origio of much of our current misery.” For a little taste of it, click on this UC Berkeley link. (more…)
116 words / 2:07:02
Marko of Zentropa was host Nick Jeelvy‘s guest on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc, where they took a look inside Serbia: its internal politics, the current Kosovo crisis, and the country’s geopolitical alignment. It is now available for download and online listening. (more…)
3,226 words
Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 2 here, Chapter 11 Part 4 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Intellectual labor, say Hardt and Negri, is intrinsically associated with sharing and common production. This “common,” consisting in information, knowledge, and emotional and affective relations is both the condition and the result of today’s predominant form of labor — but of course it has nothing to do with what is generally understood under this term. It does not found a community, for it has neither unity nor identity. (more…)
Antonio Negri (left) & Michael Hardt
5,250 words
Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 1 here, Chapter 11 Part 3 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
“The Empire is constructing a biopolitical order because production has become biopolitical,” states Antonion Negri.[i] That means that the emergence of the Empire as a paradigm of biopower is indissociable from the appearance of a new form of production, viz. “immaterial” labor, which is defined by Hardt and Negri as “labor which produces a non-material good such as a service, a cultural product, knowledge, or communication” (more…)
Antonio Negri (left) & Michael Hardt
5,027 words
Introduction here, Chapter 10 Part 2 here, Chapter 11 Part 2 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published a book intitled Empire (E.) in the United States in April 2000, followed four years later by another essay, Multitude (M.). (more…)
2,687 words
As I was doing my usual TV-watching in 1965, waiting for the Three Stooges to pop up, the screen suddenly erupted with a flashy, peppy ad for The Secret of My Success. Revolution! Suspense! Giant spiders on the loose! Rescue beautiful girls from horrible spiders! Rescue horrible spiders from beautiful girls! It looked like a barrel full of sixties kookiness that I couldn’t wait to see.
But I lived 65 miles south of St. Louis at the time, and the film never made it to our local theater. I longed for it, always recalling that goofy commercial and its promise of nuttiness. (more…)
124 words / 2:01:03
Leonardio Heredia (Telegram, YouTube) was Nick Jeelvy‘s guest on the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc, explaining the racial and demographic situation in Argentina and offering his speculations on the Scythian origins of white people, a link between Basques and Armenians, and the presence of Norsemen in pre-Colombian Argentina. (more…)
6,136 words
Introduction here, Chapter 10 Part 1 here, Chapter 11 Part 1 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
In most Western countries, all discussion of immigration today immediately results in a debate about “multiculturalism.” In England, the United States, and Germany, to cite only three countries, if one is against immigration, one is also against multiculturalism[1] — and the converse is also true: It is generally in the name of multiculturalism that immigration is justified. (more…)
Alasdair MacIntyre
3,903 words
Introduction here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here, Chapter 10 Part 2 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Communities, whether ancient or recent, and whether of a historical, ethnocultural, linguistic, religious, sexual, or other nature, are natural dimensions of belonging. They accompany and underlie chosen forms of identity. No individual can exist without belonging, if only to distance himself from it. (more…)
