Month: January 2024
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23JAN24 / accessions
Caro’s The Power Broker: a book notorious for being referred to far more often than read, and you’ll have an inkling as to why once you see a copy in the wild, given it’s about the same size and weight as a breezeblock. The institution was persuaded to take the plunge by a friend and…
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tools to cudgel or flatter
Bit of a callback here to last week’s post: Addressing the vacuity of the words fascism and democracy, [Orwell] wrote “the word fascism has no meaning except insofar as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” Calling something a democracy is not very different except that “we are praising it.” Fascism is reduced to meaning not good…
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15JAN24 / accessions
The institution is on the rails today*, leaving the department to man the front desk, and having taken at least one of these new arrivals with them: * — The institution is, at time of this posting, en route by rail to a village just outside Wiemar, where they will be spending much of the…
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the erasure of a line between intellectual inquiry and public power
From an interview at The Nation with Wendy Brown, ostensibly on the occasion of her new book on nihilism as discussed in Weber’s “vocation” lectures: What does it mean to think with another scholar—including one with whom one may have many differences and disagreements? Thinking with someone, especially a powerful interlocutor like Weber, does not…
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09JAN23 / accessions
Moore & O’Neill’s League omnibus: somehow the institution never got around to acquiring this one, nor even reading it? It was mentioned at Eruditorium Press a few weeks back, it was there on the shelf, and the department did what the department does. Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time: because all sorts of people—including the sort of…