#critical theory

[noosphe-re]

Today's society is no longer Foucault's disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also, its inhabitants are no longer "obedience-subjects" but "achievement-subjects." They are entrepreneurs of themselves. The walls of disciplinary institutions, which separate the normal from the abnormal, have come to seem archaic. Foucault's analysis of power cannot account for the psychic and topological changes that occurred as disciplinary society transformed into achievement society. Nor does the commonly employed concept of "control society" do justice to this change. It still contains too much negativity.

Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

[andreadworkinq]

“Sex-negative” is the current secular reductio-ad-absurdum used to dismiss or discredit ideas, particularly political critiques, that might lead to detumescence [aroused dick deflation]. Critiques of rape, pornography, and prostitution are “sex-negative” without qualification or examination, perhaps because so many men use these ignoble routes of access and domination to get laid, and without them the number of fucks would so significantly decrease that men might nearly be chaste.

Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin

[1000rh]

So we are faced with a dilemma. The revolutionary Future appears increasingly implausible to most of us, but it cannot be abolished. As a result, it begins to collapse into the present. Hence, for instance, the insistence that communism has already arrived, if only we knew how to see it. The Future has become a kind of hidden dimension of reality, an immanent present lying behind the mundane surface of the world, with a constant potential to break out but only in tiny, imperfect flashes. In this sense we are forced to live with two very different futures: that which we suspect will actually come to pass – perhaps humdrum, perhaps catastrophic, certainly not in any sense redemptive – and The Future in the old revolutionary, apocalyptic sense of the term: the fulfillment of time, the unraveling of contradictions. Genuine knowledge of this Future is impossible, but it is only from the perspective of this unknowable Outside that any real knowledge of the present is possible. The Future has become our Dreamtime.

– David Graeber, "The Sadness of Post-Workerism" (2008) Link

[weil-weil-lautre]

Everything within thought that repeats a position without reflecting upon it, like those who from the very beginning share an author’s opinion, is bad. In this attitude thought is brought to a standstill, degraded into the mere recital of what is accepted, and becomes untrue. For the thought expresses something it has not permeated yet as though it had reached its own conclusion. There is no thought in which the remnants of opinion do not inhere. They are at once both necessary and extrinsic to it. It is the nature of thought to remain loyal to itself by negating itself in these moments. That is the critical form of thought. Critical thought alone, not thought’s complacent agreement with itself, may help bring about change.

Theodor Adorno, "Opinion Delusion Society"

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/specious

1 : having a false look of truth or genuineness : sophistic specious reasoning 2 : having deceptive attraction or allure 3 obsolete : showy

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Noam Chomsky: If you look at what's happening, I think it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. I mean, suppose you are a literary scholar at some elite university. Or, you know, anthropologist or whatever. I mean, if you do your work seriously, that’s fine, you know. But you don’t get any big prizes for it.

On the other hand, you take a look over in the rest of the university and you’ve got these guys in the physics department and the math department and they have all kinds of complicated theories, which of course we can’t understand, but they seem to understand them. And they have, you know, principles and they deduce complicated things from the principles and they do experiments and they find either they work or they don’t work. And that’s really, you know, impressive stuff.

So I want to be like that too. I want to have a theory. In the humanities, you know, literary criticism, anthropology and so on, there’s a field called theory. We’re just like the physicists. They talk incomprehensibly, we can talk incomprehensibly. They have big words, we’ll have big words. They draw, you know, far-reaching conclusions, we’ll draw far-reaching conclusions. We’re just as prestigious as they are.

Now if they say, well look, we’re doing real science and you guys aren’t, that’s white male, sexist, you know, bourgeois or whatever the answer is. How are we any different from them?

==

I worry that when I describe this idiocy as "fraud," people think I'm exaggerating, being hyperbolic or otherwise overstating it.

I'm not. If anything, I'm understating it.

All of this postmodern crap we're dealing with is completely fake. All this ridiculous intersectional jargon is a big grift. All of these domains producing this ridiculous nonsense are bogus and corrupt. All the scholarship they produce is fraudulent. It's fake from top to bottom.

All of it.

These people are cloaking asinine retardation in fancy words to cover up how asinine and retarded this asinine retardation is.

The people producing it are shallow and stupid. Not to mention, envious and spiteful about the status and authority of science. They just use absurd jargon to hide that fact and trick you into thinking it's too deep and profound for you to understand. But when it's decoded into simple English, à la the Tweet summaries above, the retarded, moronic nature becomes obvious.

The response to this kind of ridiculous shit needs to be laughter and derision, not tenure or a tertiary qualification.

We have to get rid of it because it's destroying our societies.

[discoursets]

— red blue dilapidated study space — ⋆˙

[aretheygayvideos]

Hannah Montana’s Guide to Life Under Capitalism

Haven’t posted in a while but made a new video :)

[abyssalmaidenlorgar]

I have been thinking about this. Trump is not fully a fascist, that minimalises the harm he will cause to the nation of America and the surrounding regions. I will talk about his fascist elements throughout it and what else I have seen from a dialectical standpoint.

Theocracy

This is the first element I like to talk about. The removal of lgbt rights and women's rights are prime example. You can argue it falls under the sphere of fascism. This is an example of religion and state being intertwined. We can see it with the logic of most Trump supporters. Churches have more influence on the state then secular logic which has lead to a new moral panic on unreasonable ground against marginalised people. It's a witch hunt. We aren't ruled by reason but by people who think they are being reasonable.

Minarchism

This isn't libertarianism. This is the strip mining of the state for its assets. We have seen the effects of doge and its dialectical effects of it. It's the complete removal and disarming of the state to safely fulfil its roles in people's lives. What we are seeing is the defending of the most basic and urgent things that the state needs to function.

Corporatism

This is the fascist elements. We have seen Trump empower corporations and their influence of society. What we have seen over time is that the republican party has empowered the corporations over the decades. We are finding that corporations extend its power more then states. I dare say dialetically; amazon, Facebook and a lot of companies have more soft powers then a lot of countries today due to their ability to influence markets.

Gunboat Diplomancy

What we have seen is a regression in diplomatic ideology by the American Regime to the time of early 20th and 19th century diplomacy with how the imperialist powers treat the other powers of the world. The tariffs and the treatment of other nations. I will provide a few examples:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy was humiliated by Donald Trump and his underling in an attempt to try to bully him. There was no traditional diplomacy, it was absolute brutality. Similarly, there has been efforts to undermine the Australian government. Donald Trump and the administration has expected all research funding to be proven and given to him so he can demand us to change our stance on lgbt rights. Another example is him trying to force Australia to lower its standard of biosecurity laws to enable American beef exports into the country, that as well as criticising our public health system is indicative of how they will try to influence other nations.

White supremacy

This is indicative of how they treat several groups from African Americans to Muslims of all ethnicities, Asians, Latinos. There's been a huge amount of misinformation and pseudo-science made by these think tanks. The pseudo-science is ripped from 19th century ideas of race that these people justify.

Cyberpunk dystopia

This strangely resembles the cyberpunk dystopias we read in some way or another. Of course, that's not a 100% replication that would be similar. I hate using the cultural industry as an example to quote things but in this time it's the most helpful way to describe it. The surveillance, the corporations, the discrimination, the lack of effective government, key important stages of cyberpunk.

Thank you for your time. I am primarily am anarchist who provides dialectical insights. Depending on feedback I might do a direct comparison between the Russian Empire(tsarist) and America.

[typhlonectes]

[imaginarylands4000]

[file-cabinette]

“The Nights I Don’t Remember, The Nights I Can’t Forget” 2018 Oil, acrylic, and glitter on canvas

Arcmanoro Niles

Black Interiors, Idealized Worlds, and The Gaze

The work of Arcmanoro Niles is wistful: rooted in the weighted reality of the Black Experience in America. His paintings often depict black figures inhabiting spaces with idealized, vibrant hues, evoking a sense of longing, vulnerability, and complex interiority. Through these scenes, Niles invites the viewer to consider the daily strife black people endure within systems that define their existence as either “just” or “unjust”: constructs imposed by our government, socialized norms, and mainstream media.

Niles deliberately creates space for black people to be pictured in moments of intimacy, solitude, and layered emotion. His subjects do not act as mere characters in an image, but rather as complicated, emotionally rich, and deeply human. Signature elements of his work include sickly-bright pinks, glitter pigments, exposed underpainting, and subjects who often return the viewer's gaze with intense, unbreaking stares.

Recurring in his work are figures Niles calls “Seekers”, appearing as phantom-like entities composed of quick, sketchy, and energetic lines. They are often mid-act: mischievous, erotic, or ambiguous in intent. Sometimes they clutch arrows like handles, existing between balance and chaos. These spectral figures float across the canvas like apparitions or graffiti, referencing a visual language often criminalized yet reclaimed here as expressive and intentionally superimposed on the face of the image. Their equivocal presence poses questions about how they relate to the other figures in the image, and how their physical forms exist in the world Niles depicts

Niles's work offers an unbiased glimpse into the everyday life of black individuals: its joys, griefs, and contradictions. Through intimate interior scenes and layered symbolism, he challenges us to consider how we see, judge, and imagine blackness.

I first encountered Niles’s work at the very first museum I worked at, where I was a part time gallery attendant. His 2018 painting The Nights I Don’t Remember, the Nights I Can’t Forget was incredibly striking in person; the scale, the way the glitter seemed to emit its own light in the dimly lit works-on-paper gallery, and the intensity of the subject's gaze. As a black person just beginning to navigate the world of museum work, I didn't often see myself reflected in the traditional canon of American institutions. Niles’s work grounded me. It reaffirmed my mission to make museums more accessible, to help open them up as spaces where anyone can walk in and have an experience that feels meaningful, relevant, and lasting.

[1000rh]

One could argue that both revolutionary thought, and critical social theory, both have their origins in prophecy. At the same time, prophecy is clearly a form of politics. This is not only because prophets were invariably concerned with social justice. It was because they created social movements, even, new societies.

– David Graeber, "The Sadness of Post-Workerism" (2008) Link

[sashaxoxo02]

card for boyfriend <3

[nando161mando]

[weil-weil-lautre]

The latest phase of class society is dominated by monopolies; it tends toward fascism, the form of political organization worthy of it. While it vindicates the doctrine of class struggle with its concentration and centralization, extreme power and extreme impotence directly confronting one another in total contradiction, it makes people forget the actual existence of hostile classes. The monopolies are assisted much more by such forgetfulness than by ideologies that have meanwhile become so attenuated that they declare themselves to be lies in order to show those who believe in them how impotent they really are. The total organization of society by big business and its ubiquitous technology has taken such utter possession of the world and the imagination that even to conceive of the idea that things might be otherwise calls for an almost hopeless effort. The diabolical image of harmony, the invisibility of the class caused by the petrified mold in which they are held fast, can only gain such power over the people's minds because the idea that the oppressed, the workers of the world, might unite as a class and put an end to the horror seems doomed in the light of the present distribution of power and impotence.

Theodor Adorno, Reflection on Class Theory, p. 96