Velcro City Tourist Board

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a blog by Paul Graham Raven

science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats

Indistinguishable from magic? Extractivism, the infrastructural metasystem, and the obfuscation of consequences

This is a video-paper I prepared for a virtual conference called Extraction: Tracing the Veins, running this week under the aegis of the Political Ecology Research Center at Massey University, NZ and Wageningen Univeristy, NL. My paper is a part of the Technology & Infrastructure panel, and if you think mine sounds of any interest
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Infrastructural Theory 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Sociology 🙜 Technology

3 Jul 2020
the victim is now imagined in the absence of its denials

Some cheery theory from Brad Evans… Giorgio Agamben has been disagreeable on so many points. But his autopsy of the present has led us to one distinguishable truth. As the providential machine of liberalism gasps its final cold breath, the new age, the new normal that has already arrived is a global techno-theodicy. An age
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Politics 🙜 Social Theory

1 Jul 2020
frassar mot rassar

Oh, just yer friendly neighbourhood antifa-run removals firm. A fully professional service at a fine price, with the added bonus of knowing you’re providing work to people who punch fascists. If you need to move house in Malmö, then seek out Frasses Fulflyttar on the Farceborks, and probably on other social stuff too. They come
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General

1 Jul 2020
here we go again

Packing once more… a process made somewhat easier by not having unpacked much of it since the Big Move, four long and baffling months ago. Also made less traumatic by the fact that I’m moving less than a kilometer from my current location, to somewhere I can settle properly for at least a few years.
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General

29 Jun 2020
they refuse to engage with the roots of the problem

Scientists, public intellectuals, and journalists bemoan denialism, but have no solutions to offer apart from urging us to fight harder not to get sucked into an ocean of misinformation. This is because they refuse to engage with the roots of the problem, which cannot be addressed by doubling down on the denial that there are
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Politics 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Sociology

27 Jun 2020

Who is Paul Graham Raven?

“… who, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with [his] voice, thanks to the god in [him].”

Paul is consulting writer, researcher, theorist and foresight practitioner, as well as an author and critic of science fiction literature. More details can be found on the About page of this blog.