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aronarchy · 3 months

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A copy of the reading list, if you dislike clicking on Google docs links:

The Popular University of the Palestinian Youth Movement Presents Our History of Popular Resistance: Palestine Reading List

As Palestinians, we are bearers of a rich and beautiful history. Our history is not defined by Zionism, but by our people’s steadfast popular resistance to Zionist colonization and imperialism. For over 75 years, our people have faced Zionist ethnic cleansing and for over 75 years we have risen in struggle against it. Even prior to the 1948 Nakba, Palestinians consistently rose up against British imperialism and the Zionist movement, as exemplified in the 1936-9 Arab Revolt. Our history and struggle, therefore, cannot be defined by victimhood. Instead, they are defined by a relentless persistence toward liberation, even under the most brutal colonial conditions.

Today is no exception. In a moment when the word is rising up for Palestinian freedom, we must emphasize that popular uprisings across Palestine are deeply and firmly rooted in our history. For this reason, our recommended reading list offers historical context on Palestine through the prism of popular resistance, which continues to be our main resource in the fight for land, return, and liberation. We include sources in English and Arabic on popular resistance ranging from political histories, interviews, memoirs, poetry, films, and primary documents. By popular resistance we refer to all forms of resistance taken up by Palestinians: in the form of economic resistance, women’s organizations, unions and labor organizing, and military/armed resistance.

As the Popular University, a committee of the Palestinian Youth Movement, we believe that education must be wielded in service of struggle. Our viewpoint finds inspiration and guidance from the Popular University in Palestine, of which the martyred Basel al-Araj was a part. In our meeting with an educator in this project, Khaled Odeitallah, he emphasized how the political role of pedagogical strategies inspired the objective and vision of the Popular University. He asked: “What is the political role that knowledge production must play?” From this perspective we seek to motivate, engage and facilitate a robust engagement on the history and present of our struggle. Study and struggle are intimately tied to one another. We do not learn and produce knowledge on Palestinian history for academic or careerist pursuits; we produce knowledge in service of our political struggle for Palestinian liberation.

We encourage you to use this reading list to educate yourself on the history of Palestine beyond the objective facts of colonial domination. This is a political responsibility for anyone concerned with Palestine’s liberation. Through engagement with our history of resistance, we may join the struggle armed with knowledge and a continued commitment not to our suffering, but to our collective strength.

Note: We included a number of texts in Arabic that offer analysis and context for this battle that is rarely offered in the English media outlets. Even if you do not read Arabic, we recommend copy pasting the texts in Arabic into Google Translate or another translation service. The translation, while imperfect, will provide you with an overall sense of the arguments and main points being made.

Introductory and Archival Materials

Decolonize Palestine

(مكتبة سبيل (الصفحة العربية

Sabil Library (English Site)

Learn the Revolution

باب الواد - الجامعة الشعبية

Revolution and Rebellion under the British Occupation:

The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis, Ghassan Kanafani

(ثورة 1936- 1939: خلفيات وتفاصيل وتحليل.“ غسان كنفاني (1972”

Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past, Ted Swedenburg (1995)

أبو جلدة والعرميط Abu Jilda & Al ‘Armit

“Abu Jilda, Anti-Imperial Hero: Banditry and Popular Rebellion in Palestine,” Alex Winder (2015)

“A century of Palestinian resistance: the legacy of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam,” The East is a Podcast (2021)

Palestine: A Modern History, Abdul-Wahhab Kayyali (1978)

Palestinian Resistance 1948 - 1993

Palestinian history doesn’t start with the Nakba by PYM (May, 2023)

Armed Struggle and the Search for a State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1948 - 1993, Yezid Sayigh (1997)

(معنى النكبة“ قنسطنطين زريق (1948”

Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Rosemary Sayegh (1979)

(2006) “من التحرير إلى الدولة: تاريخ الحركة الوطنية الفلسطينية، 1948-1988” هيلغا بوبغارتن

Green March Black September: The Story of the Palestinian Arabs, John Cooley (1973)

“Interview with Fr. Shehadeh Shehadeh on the First Land Day Protest,” Sharif Hamadeh (2005)

Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Julie Peteet (1991)

“What the Uprising Means,” Salim Tamari (1988)

“The Stone and the Pen: Palestinian Education During the 1987 Intifada,” Yamila Hussein (2005)

Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment, Mazin Qumsiyeh (2011)

(وقع الانتفاضات الشعبية الديمقراطية - تاريخ المنظمة و الحر كات“ جميل هلال (2011”

“Fighting on Two Fronts: Conversations with Palestinian Women” Soraya Antonius (1979)

“100 Years of Palestinian Popular Resistance” by Nasreen Abd Elal (May, 2023)

Contemporary Palestinian Resistance

Zionism in crisis: Palestinian resistance forges a new horizon (April, 2023)

“The Palestinians’ inalienable right to resist,” Louis Allday (2021)

“No Choice but to Break Free: An Interview with Ahmed Abu Artema,” Ahmed Abu Artema and Lara Sheehi (2019)

Interview with Ahmad Saadat, Leading from Prison, Ending Negotiations, and Rebuilding the Resistance (2013)

“Palestinian Resistance and Sheikh Jarrah,” Devyn Springer, Mohammed el-Kurd, and Abu Shuwarib, Groundings Podcast (2021)

Notes from the Great March of Return w/ Tareq Loubani, The East is a Podcast (2022)

(هبّة باب العامود: نصر جديد وتحدٍّ جديد 2“ خالد عودة الله (2021”

(حراك «طالعات» الفلسطيني: لا وجود لوطن حرّ إلّا بنساء حرّة“ حلا مرشود (2019”

Operation Sword Edge [2018] - Sayaret Matkal’s Covert Operation, Silah Report (2021)

Battle of Shujaiya - The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

The Evolution of the Palestinian Resistance and Its New Strategy (October, 2022)

On the Joint Operations Room

Palestinian Institutions and Political Parties

PLO: History of a Revolution - Six-part documentary series about history of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (2009)

The PLO: The Struggle Within, Alain Gresh (1985)

“The Joy of Flying 1967-73” in The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power, and Politics, Helena Cobban (1984)

“The Palestinian National Covenant,” published in Basic Political Documents of the Armed Palestinian Resistance Movement, Leila Kadi (ed.) (1969)

“PLO Institutions: The Challenge Ahead,” Jamil Hilal (1993)

“A New Hamas Through Its New Documents,” Khaled Hroub (2006)

Worker Mobilization, Labor Movements, and Economic Resistance

“When pickles become a weapon: Economy of the first Intifada,” Palestinian Journeys

(أداء المؤسسات الاقتصادية في المناطق المحتلة قبل الانتفاضة وخلالها“ عادل سمارة (1990”

“Developing a Palestinian Resistance Economy through Agricultural Labor,” Rayya El-Zein (2017)

Resistance in Zionist Prisons

(2021) كلام الأسرى.. عيون الكلام

Video: Steadfastness and Resistance — the Palestinian prisoner’s movement and the case of Ahmad Sa’adat

“One Man as a Whole Generation: The Unfinished War of Zakaria Zubeidi,” Ramzy Baroud (2021)

“Liberating a Palestinian Novel from Israeli Prison,” Danya Al-Saleh and Samar Al-Saleh (2023)

“The Prisoner Walid Daqqah: a stubborn conscience that cannot be seared,” Wisam Rafeedie (2023)

“Freedom or Martyrdom: Walid Daqqah’s fate is in our hands,” PYM (2023)

“Resistance and Revolutionary Will: Soha Bechara and Nawal Baidoun’s Testimonies of Khiam Prison,” Mary Turfah (2023)

Role of Palestinian Women in the Resistance

Interview with Samira Salah (2013)

Behind the intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories, Joost R. Hiltermann (1991)

Palestinian Women and the Intifada, Rana Khoury (1995)

“The Palestinian women’s autonomous movement: Emergency, dynamics and challenges,” Rabab Abdulhadi (1998)

“Women of the Intifada: gender, class and national liberation,” Nahla Abdo (1991)

Women, War, and Peace: Reflections from the Intifada, Nahla Abdo (2002)

Palestinian Women’s Activism, Islah Jad (2018)

Memoirs and Personal Profiles

“Committed to Liberation: Remembering Soha Bechara’s Clandestine Mission” (includes chapter 7 of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon by Soha Bechara)

My People Shall Live, Leila Khaled (1971)

Liberation, Wonder, and the “Magic of the World”: Basel al-Araj’s I Have Found My Answers, Hazem Jamjoum (2021)

(وجدت أجوبتي: هكذا تكلم الشهيد باسل الأعرج“ باسل الأعرج (2018”

(مذكرات نجاتي صدقي“ ،تقديم وإعداد حنّا أبو حنّا، (2001”

“I Went to Defend Jerusalem in Cordoba: Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist in the Spanish International Brigades,” Najati Sidqqi (2015)

“Two Portraits in Resistance - Abu ‘Umar and Mahjub ‘Umar,” Jehan Helou and Elias Khoury (2012)

My Life in the PLO: The Inside Story of the Palestinian Struggle, Shafiq al-Hout and Jean Said Makdisi (2019)

Lightning through the Clouds: ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Mark Sanagan (2020)

جيفارا غزة - القصة الكاملة لبطل فلسطيني حارب الاحتلال ببسالة

جيفارا غزة - وثائقي الميادين

Historical fiction, literature, and poetry

The Trinity of Fundamentals, Wisam Rafeedie

“Live Like a Porcupine, Fight Like a Flea,” A Translation of an Article by Basel Al-Araj

“Here We Will Stay,” Tawfiq Zayyad (1966)

Poetry of Resistance in Occupied Palestine, translated by Sulafa Hijjawi (Baghdad, Ministry of Culture and Guidance, 1968)

Returning to Haifa, Ghassan Kanafani (1969)

الأدب الفلسطيني المقاوم تحت الإحتلال 1948ـ1968“ ,غسان كنفاني”

“Resist, My People, Resist Them,” Dareen Tatour (2015)

(نظرية اللعبة“ خالد عودة الله (2018”

Rifqa, Mohammed El-Kurd (2021)

“A Place Without a Door” and “Uncle Give me a Cigarette”—Two Essays by Palestinian Political Prisoner, Walid Daqqah (2023)

On Zionist Literature, Ghassan Kanafani (1967 original, 2022 English translation)

Films

Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight (2021)

Naila and the Uprising (2017)

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2015)

When I Saw You, Lamma Shoftak (2012)

Slingshot Hip Hop (2008)

Leila Khaled: Hijacker (2005)

Jenin Jenin (2002)

Naji al Ali An Artist With a Vision (1999)

Tell Your Tale Little Bird (1993)

Everything and Nothing (1991)

They Do Not Exist (1974)

Palestine Books Library

To search for the book you’d like:

#repost of someone else’s content #Palestinian Youth Movement #Palestine

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 16 days

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There's this website I like using with my students sometimes that has a bunch of simple lil virtual models on it to teach various aspects of ecology, like this one that shows how two species of bacteria compete in a petri dish to illustrate niches, and this one that shows both how to estimate field vole populations using mark-recapture but also how their trap preferences affect the results, and this much fancier one showing how barnacles are affected by sea level rise. They are simple and fun and pedagogically useful. I like them.

I also want to make one of my own to teach climate proxies; sediment cores using foraminifera and their temperature-induced spiralling shells, for example, or pollen or beetle casings or what have you. Tree rings. Ice cores. Shit like that. So, the student would have an image of a layered sediment core, the model would generate random-but-within-parameters numbers of clockwise or anti-clockwise spiral foraminifera, in each layer, boom. Past climate record generated.

THE PROBLEM: I am a fucking moron when it comes to coding. I have tried so many times. It just absolutely resists my ability to understand. It's my Achilles heel. I'm an imbecile. A cretin. A joke.

THE POSSIBLE SOLUTION: my friend Dan who knows how to code.

THE NEW PROBLEM: there has been an XKCD-style assumption about baseline knowledge

#THE NEW SOLUTION: we are meeting up in person on saturday so he can hold my hand and probably ultimately do it for me out of disgust #the professional world of careers and tasks

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metamatar · 10 months

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After World War II, as the USA consolidated its position as the leading capitalist power in the world, so immense was the right-wing national consensus, so pathological the anti-communist phobia, that those lonely figures, such as Kenneth Burke, who continued to do serious radical work in literary and cultural theory were thoroughly marginalized.

The cumulative weight of this cultural configuration has been such that when ‘New Criticism’ appeared on the horizon – with its fetishistic notions of the utter autonomy of each single literary work, and its post-Romantic idea of ‘Literature’ as a special kind of language which yields a special kind of knowledge – its practice of reified reading proved altogether hegemonic in American literary studies for a quarter-century or more, and it proved extremely useful as a pedagogical tool in the American classroom precisely because it required of the student little knowledge of anything not strictly ‘literary’ – no history which was not predominantly literary history, no science of the social, no philosophy – except the procedures and precepts of literary formalism, which, too, it could not entirely accept in full objectivist rigour thanks to its prior commitment to squeezing a particular ideological meaning out of each literary text. The favourite New Critical text was the short lyric, precisely because the lyric could be detached with comparatively greater ease from the larger body of texts, and indeed from the world itself, to become the ground for analysis of compositional minutiae; the pedagogical advantage was, of course, that such analyses of short lyrics could fit rather neatly into one hour in the undergraduate classroom. This pedagogical advantage, and the attendant detachment of ‘Literature’ from the crises and combats of real life, served also to conceal the ideology of some of the leading lights of ‘New Criticism’ who were quaintly called ‘Agrarian Populist’ but were really bourgeois gentlemen of the New South, the cultural heirs of the old slaveowning class. What is even more significant, however, is that ‘New Criticism’reached its greatest power in the late 1940s, as the USA launched the Cold War and entered the period of McCarthyism, and that its definitive decline from hegemony began in the late 1950s as McCarthyism, in the strict sense, also receded and the Eisenhower doctrine began to give way to those more contradictory trends which eventually flowered during the Kennedy era – those golden years of US liberalism which gave us the Vietnam War. The peculiar blend of formalist detachment and deliberate distancing from forms of the prose narrative, with their inescapable locations in social life, into reified readings of short lyrics was, so to speak, the objective correlative of other kinds of distancing and reifications required by the larger culture.

Aijaz Ahmed, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures

#im not sorry for turning into an aijaz ahmed blog #aijaz ahmad #cf that post by najia gothhabiba #readings #lit crit

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fiercynn · 6 months

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White settler institutional support of Israel — such as that of the University of California — points to two historical contexts. The first is the history of the formation of the Israeli settler state, since 1948 and before and after, its expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes, its depopulation of over 400 Palestinian villages, and its ongoing attacks against Palestinian individuals, communities, and institutions, including, as the Palestinian poet and translator Fady Joudah has observed, Palestinian memory. All of this is ignored by political and educational leaders in the United States in the interest of the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the subjection of Palestinians to settler obliteration. The attachment of these institutions and leaders to the Israeli state points to a second context: the racialization of social understanding among white settler individuals, institutions, and collectives, and an identification of individuals, institutions, and collectives with white settler life, self-understanding, and social sense. The affirmation of Israeli acts of genocidal violence as self-defense is not only a grotesque distortion. It points to a social truth: that the social form of the American settler state foments an identification with settler ways of being—with white settler life and social existence—through which individuals, collectives, and institutions understand themselves and in relation to which the world becomes legible for them as a space for life. This identification suggests a third context: the ongoing attempts to domesticate the struggles for decolonization following World War II in the institution of the modern state and the modern terms for the law. These include the basic terms through which the social is understood, terms such as the “individual,” “right,” “property,” and “whiteness,” which sustain the law and which the law reinforces. It is not only that Palestinians are a non-white, non-European people struggling for liberation and freedom against a settler colonial oppressor—and this is the case—but that their struggle, in whichever form it takes, conjures a panic in white life and settler being, a fantasy, as the anti-colonial militant and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961, of “swarming” and “gesticulating” Black and Brown beings, against whom the settler colonial state sets its police, military, and pedagogical forces. It is in this context that we must understand the many attacks against Palestinian academics and intellectuals, such as Nadia Abu El Haj, the author of a pathbreaking book on Israeli archaeology and its relation to colonization; the attacks against psychoanalysts, such as Lara Sheehi, who has brilliantly studied the links among settler colonialism and psychoanalysis; the attacks against the Palestinian novelist, essayist, intellectual, and teacher Adania Shibli, whose receipt the LiBeraturpreis at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 20 has been unjustly delayed; the attacks against the Palestine Writes conference, a gathering of Palestinian writers, activists, intellectuals, and artists held from September 22-24 at the University of Pennsylvania and “dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists.” The desire to prevent Palestinians from publicly and collectively celebrating their literary, artistic, poetic, and cultural productions is a social and psychical assertion of and an identification with a mode of being and life: a form of life that one might call “settler life” in all of its whiteness and in all of its attachment to the state and the law, and in its racialized, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous social sense and ongoing counterinsurgent and carceral practice. [x]

- jeffrey sacks for mondoweiss on october 18, 2023

#free palestine #settler colonialism #mondoweiss

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loneberry · 7 months

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Notes on Palestine

The geopolitical situation right now is extremely unstable. In such moments it always feels like incentive structures are such that all parties are pushed toward war and escalation. I saw how this all unfolded with 9/11; it left an indelible mark on my psyche–to observe the world careening, the hysteria, the march toward endless war. The Iran hawks in the US are out calling for war with Iran (US intelligence and even the IDF have said Iran did not help *plan* the Hamas attacks, though the idea that Iran was behind the attacks is being presented as fact).

Days before the Hamas attacks, I was in an article + podcast rabbit hole focused on Iranian nuclear politics, Saudi-Israeli relations, and the current situation in the “Middle East” (I prefer the term “South West Asia and North Africa”/SWANA but will use “Middle East” for readability). I had also been reading that the US’s attempts to broker a US-Saudi-Israeli deal would piss off the Palestinians. It filled me with immense grief—nobody, not even Muslim Arabs, seem to care about Palestinians anymore. The international community has failed. Now it seems that the world has consented to a protracted genocide of Palestinians. It used to be the case that Arab countries would not considered normalizing relations with Israel without Israel making concessions to the Palestinians. The sad reality is that since the Arab Spring, the resolution of the Palestinian issue has become a low priority for many countries in the Middle East, many of whom have their own feud with Iran and see pivoting toward Israel as a path toward greater security. Of course I’m talking about the Abraham Accords, the so-called “peace deal” brokered by the Trump administration that enabled the normalization of relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain, yet excluded any input from Palestinians. That event had brought me so much grief. It really felt like any hope for the Palestinian cause was dying. There seems to be little political will from any side to put pressure on Israel.

In moments of crisis like these I try to be sober and pedagogical, but such a task feels nearly impossible when it comes to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. People say the conflict is “complicated” and rooted in hundreds of years of religious hatred. It is really not that complicated and only requires basic knowledge of 20th century history. Prior to WWI, the territory of Palestine (and much of the Arab world) was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years. The Allied Powers (Britain, France, Russia, and others) were at war with the Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottomans, etc). The Brits saw Palestine as a crown jewel and coveted Jerusalem in particular. They recruited Arab assistance in the war by whipping up hundreds of years of resentment against the Ottomans and promising the Arabs that they would break up the Ottoman Empire and help the Arabs create their own nations (see theMcMahon-Hussein correspondence). Yet the Brits were also keen on recruiting Jewish support on the side of the Allied Powers. In 1917 the British government made a declaration (the Balfour Declaration) that announced British support for the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. At the end of WWI (which, as you likely know, ended in Allied success), the European empires on the winning side sought to expand their empires while Woodrow Wilson believed more in self-determination. The compromise was the “mandate” system, where the Europeans on the winning side took administrative control of territories lost by the Central Powers—France and Britain carved up the Middle East. Enter the British mandate for Palestine. The Arabs had been betrayed by the Allied Europeans (no surprise there). One form of colonial rule was swapped for another.

Prior to the end of WWI, the Zionist movement was gaining momentum, partly as an answer to the perennial problem of European anti-Semitism and partly because of the 19th/early-20th century discourse around nationalism. The idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine began in the 19th century, but it was really in the 1890s that modern political Zionism began with the figure of Theodor Herzl. European Jews began to immigrate to Palestine to form settlements. Yet when the mandate was established, the Jewish population was still relatively small—around 9%. While the territory was under British rule, the Brits facilitated a dramatic increase in European Jewish immigration to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the portion of the population that was Jewish grew to 27%. It’s hardly surprising that violence broke out between Arabs and Jews, as well as Arabs and the Brits (see the Arab Revolt of 1936-39).

The Brits promised a territory to an oppressed people (the Jews) that was never theirs to give away in the first place. The Arabs were quickly being displaced from their home. All of this would come to a head in WWII, when Europe’s vile anti-Semitism was on full display with the Holocaust. How would Europe atone for the atrocities committed against the Jews? There was much momentum around creating a physical state for the Jews in Palestine. This was also a convenient solution for deeply anti-Semitic Europe, as they preferred that the Jews leave rather than be integrated into their societies. In 1947 the UN voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem coming under international administration. 13 voted against the partition (basically all the countries in the Middle East, plus India and several others). 55% of the land would be set aside for the Jews. War broke out soon after the UN resolution. The (WWII) battle-hardened Zionist paramilitaries (backed by European countries) undertook a campaign of ethnic cleansing and captured additional territory. Between 1947-49, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees—around 40% of the entire Palestinian population. 78% of historic Palestine was taken by Zionist forces. This is the event of settler violence and ethnic cleansing that Palestinians refer to as the Nakba (or catastrophe).

There is so much obfuscation about the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict. What ultimately happened: Europe decided it wanted to create a nation for Jews. It picked the territory of Palestine for this project (other territories were also considered) because the Brits controlled the territory and because of its religious significance. There were already people who lived on the land that was to be used to create a Jewish state. Now Palestinians are stateless and live under a brutal military occupation (the West Bank) and even more punishing blockade (Gaza)—or as refugees. Palestinians were ultimately made to suffer for the sins of European anti-Semitism.

There is a lot more I can say here, about the history of the Cold War and how it relates to the US’s alliance with Israel, about internecine conflicts in Palestinian politics (the split between Hamas and the PLO/Palestinian Authority), about the current geopolitical situation, about contemporary domestic politics in Israel (which currently has the most right-wing govt in Israel’s history) and the Hamas attacks themselves. I see friends gleefully posting about the murder of Israeli civilians. I just can’t get on board with that. Neither can I get on board with Israel bombing hospitals and shelters in Gaza, or calling Palestinians “animals.” All life is sacred, all life is grievable. (People are right to point out that most of the world does not grieve the loss of Palestinian life.)

Events do have a context. Gaza is one of the most unlivable places on the planet. Around 67% of Gaza's population are refugees displaced during the Nakba. It has been under a brutal blockade for 16 years. It’s the 3rd most densely populated place on the planet—over 2.1 million people are crammed into a space half the size of London. The residents have been deprived of electricity, clean drinking water, medical supplies, and food. Nearly half of residents are unemployed and civilians have died by thousands under Israeli bombings (6,407 Palestinians have been killed since 2008). It is referred to as an “open air prison” because the residents are literally hemmed in by a high-tech fence. Given these dire conditions, an eruption of violence did seem almost inevitable.

What I fear: a ground invasion of Gaza. A broader conflagration involving Lebanon and Iran, and potentially the rest of the world. The US going to war with Iran. If the world genuinely wishes to see the end of the “cycle of violence,” Palestinians must be free. Any attempt to bring about “regional security” while ignoring the Palestinian situation is destined to fail.

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gothhabiba · 1 year

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from what i understand harrison bergeron was a satire of conservative reactions to civil rights movements but every time i had it taught to me in school the curriculum would intentionally read it as if it was criticizing "too much equality" (a real thing my teacher told us...). but that interpretation could also be attributed to it just being poorly written idk

I don't know much about "Harrison Bergeron" in particular, though I also don't think that such a question (is this a satire of dire conservative predictions about "equality going too far," or is it a conversative satire on "equality gone too far") is ultimately decidable from the text (or any text) itself.

I think you make an extremely good point with regards to the fact that when it comes to literary pedagogy, the way in which texts are taught is perhaps more important than the texts themselves. A particular story being commonly read at a certain grade level wouldn't strike me as reactionary or whatever if the predominant way of teaching English literature in schools weren't so guided by New Criticism, and the corresponding belief that a text is an encoded object that you must decode in a specific way to figure out what it "means" (along with the assumption, in my experience, that you must agree with what the text "means," or else you have somehow failed to be "taught" by the text, and have perhaps failed to understand it as someone who reads properly should have). And if schools didn't have a vested interest in interpreting these texts in a particular way (a way that of course cannot veer meaningfully anti-authority, that probably will not veer in a direction that views oppression as anything more than a set of overt attitudes to disavow, &c.).

This is kind of what I was trying to get at when gesturing at the "no one would find [this] icky to explain to an 8th grader" aspect of the phenomenon I'm talking about (where the phenomenon = which texts get chosen to be read in classes, and why?). And I think this is what some people are missing when trying to talk about what types of text should be taught in schools and which topics children are "ready" for, &c. &c.—Regardless of what children are "ready" for, is a pedagogy that cannot accommodate ambiguity and dissent "ready" to teach children about these topics, to help children use texts as tools to think about and discuss these topics? The pedagogical system that overwhelmingly focusses on Identifying Themes with maybe some close reading strategies thrown in? The pedagogical system where if you disagree with what you believe a text to be "saying," or if you disagree with what the teacher insists the text is "saying," you're missing the point at best and insubordinate at worst? The school system with teachers who are no less likely to be reactionary and have low opinions of children than anyone else? Where children have no opportunity to meaningfully guide discussion or to opt out of discussing a specific topic at a specific time in a specific way? That school system is the one you want to be "teaching" kids texts that deal with racism, misogyny, sexual violence et al. in? Lol. Lmao even.

#Anonymous #literature

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cheerfullycatholic · 1 year

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Born in Hamburg in May 1919, Lafrenz was the youngest of three sisters. Her father was an accountant, and her mother was a homemaker. The family “rarely discussed” politics, Lafrenz told Waage, but both of her parents eventually joined the Nazi Party. Lafrenz’s first brush with anti-Nazi politics arrived in the mid-1930s, when she studied under a teacher named Erna Stahl. “She passed her insight on to us through a pedagogical practice that aimed at inspiring independent thought,” Lafrenz recounted to Waage. “She woke me up at any rate. I had been a dreamer earlier.”

#prayer request #traute lafrenz #smithsonian magazine #world war 2 #the white rose #was there a movie about the white rose??#i think i watched a movie about them when i was a kid

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 days

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By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: Apr 24, 2024

Top physicians, including former Harvard dean, say required course is riddled with dangerous falsehoods

Students in their first year of medical school typically learn what a healthy body looks like and how to keep it that way. At the University of California, Los Angeles, they learn that "fatphobia is medicine’s status quo" and that weight loss is a "hopeless endeavor."

Those are two of the more moderate claims made by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-described "fat liberationist," in an essay assigned to all first-year students in UCLA medical school’s mandatory "Structural Racism and Health Equity" class. Launched in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the course is required for all first-year medical students.

The Washington Free Beacon has obtained the entire syllabus for the course, along with slide decks and lecture prep from some of its most explosive sessions. The materials offer the fullest picture to date of what students at the elite medical school are learning and have dismayed prominent physicians—including those sympathetic to the goals of the class—who say UCLA has traded medicine for Marxism.

Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world’s foremost experts on obesity, said the curriculum "promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation."

UCLA "has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate," said Flier, who reviewed the full syllabus and several of the assigned readings. "As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking."

One required reading lists "anti-capitalist politics" as a principle of "disability justice" and attacks the evils of "ableist heteropatriarchal capitalism." Others decry "racial capitalism," attack "growth-centered economic theories," and call for "moving beyond capitalism for our health."

The essay by Mercedes "describes how weight came to be pathologized and medicalized in racialized terms" and offers guidance on "resisting entrenched fat oppression," according to the course syllabus. Mercedes claims that "ob*sity" is a slur "used to exact violence on fat people"—particularly "Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people"—and offers a "fat ode to care" that students are instructed to analyze, taking note of which sections "most resonate with you."

"This is a profoundly misguided view of obesity, a complex medical disorder with major adverse health consequences for all racial and ethnic groups," Flier told the Free Beacon. "Promotion of these ignorant ideas to medical students without counterbalancing input from medical experts in the area is nothing less than pedagogical malpractice."

Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University, who has spent decades providing medical care to underserved communities, including in the South Side of Chicago, called the curriculum "nonsensical."

The relationship between health and social forces "should indeed be taught at medical school," Christakis wrote in an email, "but to have a mandatory course like this—so tendentious, sloganeering, incurious, and nonsensical—strikes me as embarrassing to UCLA."

UCLA did not respond to requests for comment.

Snapshots of the course have been leaking for months and left the school doing damage control as members of UCLA’s own faculty have spoken out against the curriculum. The most recent embarrassment came when a guest lecturer, Lisa Gray-Garcia, led students in chants of "Free, Free Palestine" after instructing them to kneel on the floor and pray to "Mama Earth." Lessons on "decolonization" and climate activism, as well as a classroom exercise that separated students by race, have also stirred controversy.

"There are areas where medicine and public health intersect with politics, and these require discussion and debate of conflicting viewpoints," Flier said. "That is distinct from education designed to ideologically indoctrinate physician-activists."

The mandatory class is part of a nationwide push by medical schools to integrate DEI content into their curricula—for residents as well as students— both by adding required courses and by changing the way traditional subjects are taught.

Stanford Medical School sprinkles lessons on "microaggressions," "structural racism," and "privilege" throughout its curriculum. Residents at Yale Medical School must complete an "Advocacy and Equity" sequence focused on "becoming physician advocates for health justice," while those in the infectious disease program must complete additional lessons on "Diversity, Equity, and Antiracism."

Columbia Medical School promotes an "Anti-bias and Inclusive" curriculum by encouraging educators to use "precise, accurate language." Instead of "women," guidelines for the curriculum state, faculty should refer to "people with uteruses."

The changes have been driven partly by the Association of American Medical Colleges—one of two groups that oversees the accrediting body for all U.S. medical schools—which in 2022 released a set of DEI "competencies" to guide curricula. Schools should teach students how to identify "systems of power, privilege, and oppression," the competencies state, and how to incorporate "knowledge of intersectionality" into clinical decision-making. Students should also be able to describe "public policy that promotes social justice" and demonstrate "moral courage" when faced with "microaggression."

The course at UCLA, which predates those accreditation standards, offers a preview of how DEI mandates could reshape medical education. It is littered with the lingo of progressive activism—"intersectionality" is a core value of the class, according to slides from the first session—and states outright that it is training doctors to become activists.

Students will "build critical consciousness" and move toward a "liberatory practice of medicine" by "focusing on praxis," according to the slides.

A section called "Our Hxstories" adds that "[h]ealth and medical practice are deeply impacted by racism and other intersectional structures of power, hierarchy, and oppression—all of which require humility, space and patience to understand, deconstruct, and eventually rectify."

That jargon reflects a worldview with clinical implications. In a unit on "abolitionist" health, which explores "alternatives to carceral systems in LA," students are assigned a paper that argues police should be removed from emergency rooms, where 55 percent of doctors say they’ve been assaulted—mostly by patients—and threats of violence are common, according to a 2022 survey from American College of Emergency Physicians. Other units discuss the "sickness of policing" and link "Queer liberation to liberation from the carceral state."

Flier said the syllabus was so bad it called for an investigation—and that anyone who signed off on it was unfit to make curricular decisions.

"Assuming the school’s dean," Steven Dubinett, a pulmonologist, "does not himself support this course as presented, it is his responsibility to review the course and the curriculum committee that approved it," Flier said. "If that body judged the course as appropriate, he should change its leadership and membership."

Dubinett did not respond to a request for comment.

One of the leaders of the course is Shamsher Samra, a professor of emergency medicine who in December signed an open letter endorsing "Palestinians’ right to return" and linking "health equity" to divestment from Israel.

"To authentically engage in antiracism health scholarship and practice is to explicitly name injustices tied to white supremacy and maintain an unapologetic commitment to antiracism praxis that transcends US borders," the letter reads. "As such, we, the undersigned,* unequivocally support a free Palestine and Palestinians’ right to return."

Samra, who in 2021 published a paper on "infrastructural violence and the health of border abolition," did not respond to a request for comment.

To the extent the course addresses actual medical debates, it frames contested treatments as settled science, omitting evidence that cuts against its activist narrative. A unit on "Queerness/Gender," for example, assigns readings on "gender self-determination" and "DIY transition," but does not include any of the research from Europe—such as the newly released Cass Report—that has led England and other countries to restrict hormone therapies for children.

"UCLA School of Medicine has decided to shield its students from the ongoing scientific debates playing out in Europe and even in the U.S.," said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who researches gender medicine. "This is fundamentally unserious, and a stain on the school’s reputation."

The omission of inconvenient facts extends to a unit on Los Angeles's King/Drew hospital—nicknamed "Killer King" for its high rates of medical error—which the course promotes as an example of "community health."

Founded in 1972 as a response to the Watts riots, the hospital was majority black, had a documented policy of racial preferences, and was hit with several civil rights complaints by non-black doctors alleging discrimination in hiring and promotion.

It closed in 2007 after a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by the Los Angeles Times found numerous cases in which patients had been killed or injured by clinical mistakes, such as overdosing a child with sedatives and giving cancer drugs to a meningitis patient. Efforts to reform the hospital stalled, according to the Times, because its board of supervisors feared coming across as racially insensitive.

The assigned readings on King/Drew do not include any of this history. Lecture slides instead praise the hospital for "suturing racial divides," but suggest that it may not have gone far enough. A focus on "producing highly talented and skilled physicians," one slide reads, "forced" King/Drew to hire doctors who were, "in some cases, not Black."

The curriculum is a "compilation of ideologic and anecdotal assertions that represent a warped view of medicine," said Stanley Goldfarb, the founder of the medical advocacy group Do No Harm and the father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb. "American medical education needs to purge itself of this nonsense and treat every patient as an individual."

The slides suggest that "lived experiences," "historical memory," and "other knowledges" can constitute medical expertise.

Biomedical knowledge, after all, is "just one way of knowing, understanding, and experiencing health in the world."

The moral of the story is, if you see a UCLA medical school certificate on your doctor's wall, leave.

If you don't see this as the same thing as faith-healing, I don't know what to tell you.

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sneezemonster15 · 2 years

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I agree that SNS has some moments that can easily be interpreted as romantic, but I disagree that anyone who sees them as platonic "sucks at understanding media". Sounds bit condescending to me

Strong emotional bond doesn't necessarily mean romantic bond. I believe it's up for interpretation since nature of their relationship is left ambiguous at best. I'm neutral to SNS, but to me it seems some shippers become too overwhelmed by their love for ship and interpret every moment between Naruto and Sasuke as romantic.

Plus how do we know Kishimoto ever intended sns to be romantic/canon? He never said so in interviews. So for same reasons anti sns stans can't claim he never wanted them to be seem as romantic, sns stans cant claim he intended for them to be romantic. He's an author, he has no power over his fandom will interpret his work.

Sorry if this sounded bit mean, it wasn't my intention. I'm just tired of shippers calling nonshippers blind for not interpreting their relationship as romantic

Heh.

People who think they are brothers or their relationship is platonic DO suck at interpreting media. No their relationship is not up for subjective interpretation since they both say it explicitly that they don't think of each other as brothers. Plus a thousand other things. If you ignore clear and ubiquitous text, subtext and visual imagery that gel with everything else in the story, the narrative, visual language, overarching themes etc, your skills at interpreting media look juvenile at best.

Sasuke and Naruto don't just share a strong emotional bond, the author does his Best to impress upon the very romantic nature of their relationship on the audience. It is NOT open to subjective interpretation.

Would you watch 'Triumph of Will' (it's a Nazi propaganda movie, check it out) and say it's pro Jews because your subjective interpretation says so? Would it be the right thing to do? If you do say that, you are essentially doing the same thing here. You are ignoring text, subtext and visual language to satisfy your own headcanon. But do you see how harmful it is? Is going against author's intent by the way of 'subjective interpretation' really the way to understand media? Was that why it was made? Is that what should be your takeaway? Who cares what the creator meant? You are going to just do your own thang? Fuck the narrative, visual language, major themes and characterization? Who cares how much work the creator put in his story, you are going to dismiss all that just because?

And no, their relationship is not left ambiguous at best. Just depends on how much you understand media and human condition and emotions. Given Kishi's limitations, since he was writing shounen, he had to make sure that he would be able to tell his story even if he couldn't be explicit about it. So he used all the romantic tropes and picked up all the best romantic elements from the best literature and media available to him and got to work. I can't speak for others but I am quite experienced to know what I am looking at when I am looking at it. I have the knowledge that makes me sure of my stance and I am not gonna apologize for it. So I don't need him to be explicit. Not everything needs to be said out loud in exact words, this isn't some PG 13 American movie.

Naruto is also not some experimental film. Try and understand how genres work. Like any other shounen manga, it's supposed to be expositional. It's supposed to cater to kids, it is supposed to be pedagogic. It is supposed to instill a certain value system in its audience, it's supposed to inspire and teach and guide. It is not open to subjective interpretation, everything (the major themes, the values, virtues, vices, the takeaway etc) is made quite clear. If you are actually paying attention. Yes, Kishi was not as explicit with SNS as other themes, but he had a reason. What reason? Shounen guidelines about portrayal of homosexuality. But does he need to be explicit? Given Naruto and Shippuden are love stories? Nope. Kishi does an extremely good job of telling this story with the narrative tools he has learnt and mastered as a professional. If you can deconstruct it, like I do on my blog, you will have no problem believing they are lovers. There is no doubt they are lovers.

Yes, their relationship does overwhelm me. Because Kishi designed it that way and it worked because he has a good grasp on child psychology and he obviously takes advantage of that. Which is why he was able to write such amazing and complex and realistic and relatable characters. Are these moments romantic? Totes. A lot of them are. They just are. I am not going to go in detail about that for this ask, just go through my blog.

The reason I am this adamant talking about them not being brothers is because essentially, it's a homophobic stance. It is. A lot of homosexual narratives the world over get reduced, appropriated and trivialized to brotherhood and friendship because of how much taboo and lack of awareness surround the topic of homosexuality. Especially in conservative societies. Which is harmful to homosexuality and gay people. I will NOT push any stance that encourages that.

If the writer has made things clear for me, and they are clear to me because I just know better (I don't care if you think of me as condescending), then I will say it out loud with utmost confidence.

Dude, why do you think post Shippuden has such a Brokeback mountain vibe huh? Why are Sasuke and Naruto so damn disinterested in the women they got married to, mothers of their kids who happen to be the main characters of Boruto? Why does Sasuke treat Sakura as if she has the plague? Why is he so disinterested in his family? Why does Naruto not go home and stay in the office at all hours? This boy who wanted a family with such passion? Hmm? These two boys for whom family was the prime motivating factor are now, at the end, so isolated from their families? Kishi had provided such consistent layering throughout. How do you compute that? Why would it be necessary if Sasuke and Naruto were just brothers or friends? Why? Because they aren't friends. They are only happy when they are with each other, these husks of their former selves brighten up like they used to before only when they are with each other. Why? Because they are friends? Brothers? Fuck off. Lol. This is a very common trope on gay media, I request people again and again to watch it but no. They have to spout bullshit without any knowledge because it's easier. Well my blog ain't insta. If you are coming here, think twice before bringing your arguments.

I have mentioned before that I work in the field of media and communication. I work in a leadership capacity. I am also a cinephile. My analysis is based on reason and the actual process of storytelling. I am very very assured of my takes. And I know sometimes it makes me sound condescending. But in reality, I am just very clear, my personality might come off as a bit rough, but I try not to be too rough. I can't help it if it makes me sound arrogant. I won't deny for a minute I am emotionally attached to this story. But my analyses are always based on clear reason and logic.

I live in a patriarchal society and I know what harmful narratives do to people. Ruins their lives. Women have to be a certain way, men have to be a certain way. Women (they are supposed to be beautiful and delicate and feminine and polite and submissive, no?) spend hours and painful hours trying to look beautiful and skinny and desirable. Men try their best to look cool and masculine and capable, (Real men don't cry, right?) when they aren't feeling it in the least. Men are supposed to love and marry women and women are supposed to love and marry men. Married couples need to conceive a child in the first three years of marriage. Old people are always supposed to be respected and honoured no matter how shitty and inhuman they are. Kids are supposed to be seen, not heard. Etc etc etc.

I have seen so many lives go to waste because of these narratives that are so deeply embedded in the fabric of society, no one questions it, or very few do. We don't wanna mess with something that has been going on for centuries, we grew up with it, it's our comfort zone. A lot of women end up perpetuating the same patriarchal values through other women that made them powerless and agencyless in the past. Because no one wants to fight the popular narrative. Half the time, they don't even realize they are encouraging these narratives by not calling them out. They do it because that's how it's done, so it must be right. I am sure a lot of westerners also understand this issue. Not as black and white, is it? Layers upon layers. So better just sit down and learn. Deconstruct. Peel those layers and see what concepts are harmful and need to be gotten rid of.

Just look at Hinata stans. Their main flex is that Hinata is pretty and rich and fertile and has a superior bloodline. And so many girls and women worship her because of this. Do you really want this narrative to continue? Is it really good for women?

He is an author, he has no power over how his work will be interpreted? Seriously, this is your argument? Wow.

Except he DOES. He is a master actually. I can't go on about how stories are written because I am tired but let me say this, visual language and narrative building inherently depends upon psychology and perception. The stories are created to affect the audience a certain way, the creator controls all, he knows what buttons to push and how to push them. They know what they want the audience to feel, and so they go for it. That is why we have genres such as drama, comedy, horror etc. Because the creator knows that, that's what he wants to portray. You think Hitchcock went like - Damn, people were supposed to laugh at the shower scene in Psycho but instead they are afraid to go in their shower stalls??

Lol.

No. He intentionally designed it that way, so that that scene can create unholy terror in the minds of the audience. Btw, he used chocolate syrup to have effect of blood, just a random tidbit.

And yes, it's true that when Psycho was released and watched by people, they were scared shitless to go to their own bathrooms, especially women. You think that kind of visceral reaction comes out of oblivion? No. It's deliberately planned and executed to affect the viewer a certain way, as intended by the maker. If you actually pay attention and not daydream about your headcanons, you will easily get it. No desperate text and subtext bending required. It's clear as water already. Just use your head.

Lastly, Kishi doesn't need to say it in his interviews. What a pointless argument. I didn't watch Naruto for the interviews, I watched it and later read it for the story and characters. He wanted to tell me this story through his manga and I got it. Message received. I don't need to see his interviews to get the story. What, you read all the creators' interviews to grasp the meaning of their creations? Who says you have to? The story is supposed to be self-contained, that's how it's written. And this story is. I don't need any outside material to understand the story. And frankly the relevant outside material that I did find about Naruto, only strengthens SNS, heh. If 700 fucking chapters weren't enough for you to get the meaning of this story, no interview is going to help you, lol. Any person with average intelligence knows this. I don't know why Naruto fandom needs to be told this over and over. You aren't five. Grow up.

I don't mean to sound too harsh. But I have answered so many asks like this, it just gets annoying when people give the same non sensical, non-arguments to prove their point.

#i am so tired #naruto fandom is a drain #ask #naruto #sns #sasuke #sasunaru #narusasu #uzumaki naruto #uchiha sasuke #naruto analysis

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humanperson105 · 3 months

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Mikhail Lifshitz: Marxist Aesthetics and a Critique of Modern Art

What is important to me is to mark the main features of the worldview we are offered as the lodestar of the future art – the renunciation of realistic pictures, which Picasso sees as an empty illusion, that is, deception, and the affirmation of a wilful fiction, designed to spark enthusiasm, that is, the conscious deception of mythmaking. [...] Let’s just say that the main inner goal of such art lies in suppressing the consciousness of the conscious mind. A flight into superstition is the very minimum. Even better is a flight into an unimaginable world. Hence, the constant effort to shatter the mirror of life or at least to make it muddy and unseeing. Any image must now be given qualities of ‘unlikeness’. In the way, pictoriality recedes, eventually becoming something free of any association with real life. [...] Once it was enough to present a few geometrical figures on the canvas to avoid any associations. Now this is too little. The self-defences of consciousness are so refined that even abstract forms are reminiscent of something real. That requires an even greater degree of detachment. Hence, there appears anti-art, Pop Art, which largely consists of the demonstration of real things, enclosed in an invisible frame. In a sense, this is the end of a long evolution from real depictions to the reality of bare facts. It might seem we’ve already achieved that goal: the life of the spirit has ended, the worm of consciousness has been crushed. Still, that is an empty illusion. The ailing spirit’s attempts to jump out of its own skin are senseless and hopeless. When reflection revolves around itself endlessly, it only gives rise to ‘boring infinity’ and an insatiable thirst for the other. [...] Yes, ‘modern art’ is more philosophy than art. It is a philosophy expressing the dominance of power and facts on lucid thinking and poetic contemplation of the world. The brutal demolition of real forms stands for an outburst of blind embittered volition. It is the slave’s revenge, his make-believe liberation from the yoke of necessity, a simple pressure valve. If it were only a pressure valve! There is a fatal connection between the slavish form of protest and oppression itself. According to all the newest aesthetic theories, art’s effect is hypnotic: it traumatises or on the contrary blunts or calms a consciousness that no longer has any life of its own. In short, it is the art of a suggestible crowd at the ready to run after the emperor’s chariot. Why am I Not a Modernist? - Mikhail Lifshitz

Lifshitz's critique of modern art and its "hypnotic effect" targets modernism's romantic heritage and its animating desire for art to redeem what it sees as a fallen world through acts of a sovereign will possessed by a singular genius (hence the reference to the "emperors chariot"). Its no coincidence the notion of the genius is a quintessentially Roman notion that Walter Benjamin found in the works of none other than Goethe that entailed "the patriarchal idea that every culture, including bourgeois culture, could only thrive under the protection of and in the shadow of the absolute state." (Benjamin - Goethe: the Reluctant Bourgeois) Hitler's status as a failed artist, by now such a trite fact as to be included in the encyclopedia that is middle-brow pop historical consciousness, is a testament to the prevalence of this desire for a despot-as-artist that romanticism, among other things, has left in its wake. Fredric Jameson's antidote to the culture of the crowd seeking a new art school Ceasar is “a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system…” (Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. pg. 54). Lifshitz and Jameson endorse a realism that attempts to allow the masses to understand the world so they may one day change it.

#philosophy #theory #fredric jameson #Mikhail Lifshitz #marxism #Proleartthreat

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kapi-tanka · 1 year

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If you don't do commissions what artistic work you do? I want to get an art related job too but I don't really know how and where to start :(

oh well. i'm sorry but honestly i don't think i can help much since my experience is very specific to russian-speaking communities plus i'm very lucky in terms of upbringing. my mom's an editor and my dad worked as a designer for a long time. they passively taught me a lot of stuff and kind of presented me to my first clients back in the day, plus i've always had to do small things for their own projects too. at this point i just know a bunch of other editors, authors and designers who recommend me to people they know. sometimes new people find my behance portfolio and contact me. i also read a bunch of chats/pages where people post art/design vacancies. but connections were my bread and butter the whole time. i don't even have an art degree, only word of mouth and skill and uhh i also can't say i recommend my field?? i mostly do vector stuff and, to put it lightly, it's boring. the most fun stuff i did was children's book illustration/children's and pedagogical periodics but i feel like it's an overpopulated field in russia and they rarely pay well my current job is okay, though it's very tech and business oriented. their current theme is autopiloted aircrafts lmao. very fun objects to draw, you have no idea, anon. the "best" part is that i have to understand the principles of all the stuff i draw about to depict them properly and to convey the basic concept behind them. i'm not an expert by all means but somehow i end up working on such projects (the worst time was when i had to make infographics on nanotubes and carbon, etc., it was very stressful and scientists weren't great at explaining stuff to dumbasses regular people like me lol). but in my experience this field isn't as crowded as children's illustration since not as many artists want to draw shit like. geodesic drones. i've also had my fair share of corporate vector art. was relatively easy for me (i'm good at adjusting to company artstyles and i like drawing people) but it didn't feel right (imagine drawing APPEALING and ENGAGING pictures on taxes in singapore plus you're an anti-capitalist plus everybody in art community hates how it looks and you just kinda have an existential crisis every single time you draw a smiling dude in a suit)

so yeah. i do lots of labor i don't really enjoy/want to do and i kinda got used to it by adding stuff i find appealing to my work illustrations (such as people, interesting compositions, fun details), BUT i hope you'll find something that suits you personally and something that will bring you joy. good luck!!! (my work doesn't suck 24/7 though, i just tried not to sugar-coat it)

#asks #GODDD i need to be shorter with my answers #sorry for borderline venting and thanks for the ask!!#you can ask more specific stuff if you want to i don't mind at all

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kaelio · 1 year

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Malcolm Caldwell

The name of Malcolm Caldwell is remembered now by very few people: some friends, family, colleagues, and students of utopian folly. In the 1970s, though, Caldwell was a major figure in protest politics. He was chair of CND for two years, a leading voice in the anti-Vietnam war campaign, a regular contributor to Peace News, and a stalwart supporter of liberation movements in the developing world. He spoke at meetings all over the country, wrote books and articles, and engaged in public spats with such celebrated opponents as Bernard Levin.

The name of Kaing Guek Eav is, arguably, known by even fewer people, at least outside of Cambodia. Instead it is by his revolutionary pseudonym "Duch" that Kaing is usually referred to in the press. Duch is the only man ever to stand trial in a UN-sanctioned court for the mass murder perpetrated by the Cambodian communist party, or the Khmer Rouge, in the late 1970s. His trial on charges of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and homicide and torture concerning thousands of victims, drew to a close in November. Justice has taken more than 30 years, but a verdict and sentence are expected sometime in the next few weeks.

Although their paths crossed only incidentally, the two men shared two main interests. They both had a pedagogic background: Caldwell was a history lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, while Duch, like many senior Khmer Rouge cadres, started out as a schoolteacher. And they both maintained an unbending belief in Saloth Sar, the leader of the Khmer Rouge revolution, who went under the Orwellian party title of Brother Number One, but was known more infamously to the world as Pol Pot. It was an ideological commitment that would shape the fate of both men and they held on to it right up until the moment of death – in Caldwell's case, his own, for Duch, the many thousands whose slaughter he organised.

In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall to a system based on mass extermination? It's estimated that around two million Cambodians, more than a quarter of the population, lost their lives during the four catastrophic years of Khmer Rouge rule. What could have led these two individuals, worlds apart, to embrace a regime that has persuasive claim, in a viciously competitive field, to be the most monstrous of the 20th century?

(read on ....)

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kvetchlandia · 2 years

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Uncredited Photographer Marxist Historian and Essayist Issac Deutscher 1956

“...Socialism, classless society, the withering away of the State - all seemed right around the corner. Few...had any premonition of the blood and sweat and tears to come. To himself, the intellectual convert to communism seemed a new Prometheus - except he would not be pinned to the rock by Zeus’s wrath. ‘Nothing henceforth {so Koestler now recalls his own mood in those days} can disturb the converts inner peace and serenity - except the occasional fear of losing faith again...’

Our ex-communist now bitterly denounces the betrayal of his hopes. This appears to him to have had almost no precedent. Yet as he eloquently describes his early expectations and illusions, we can detect a strangely familiar tone. Exactly so did the disillusioned Wordsworth and his contemporaries look back upon their first youthful enthusiasm for the French Revolution:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive

But to be young was very heaven!

The intellectual communist who breaks away emotionally from his party can claim some noble ancestry. Beethoven tore to pieces the title page of his “Eroica,” on which he had dedicated the symphony to Napoleon, as soon as he learned the First Consul was about to ascend a throne. Wordsworth called the crowning of Napoleon ‘a sad reversal for all mankind.’ All over Europe the enthusiasts of the French Revolution were stunned by their discovery that the Corsican liberator of the peoples and enemy of tyrants was himself a tyrant and an oppressor.

In the same way the Wordsworths of our days were shocked at the sight of Stalin in fraternizing with Hitler and Ribbentrop. If no new “Eroicas” have been created in our days, at least the dedicatory pages of unwritten symphonies have been torn with great flourishes.

...There can be no greater tragedy than that of a great revolution succumbing to the mailed fist that was to defend it from its enemies. There can be no spectacle as disgusting as that of a post-revolutionary tyranny dressed up in the banners of liberty. The ex-communist is morally as justified as was the ex-Jacobin in revealing and revolting against this spectacle.

But is it true, as Koestler claims, that ‘ex-communists are the only people who know what it’s all about’? One may risk the assertion that the exact opposite is true: Of all people, the ex-communists know the least what it is all about.

At any rate, the pedagogical pretensions of ex-communist men of letters seems grossly exaggerated. Most of them ({Italian writer, politician and anti-fascist activist Ignazio} SIlone is a notable exception) have never been inside the real communist movement, in the thick of its clandestine or open organization. As a rule, they moved on the literary or journalistic fringe of the party. Their notions of communist doctrine and ideology usually spring from their own literary intuition, which is sometimes acute but often misleading.

...Having broken from the party bureaucracy in the name of communism, the heretic goes on to break with communism itself. He claims to have made the discovery that the root of the evil goes far deeper than he at first imagined, even though his digging for that ‘root’ may have been very lazy and very shallow. He no longer defends socialism from unscrupulous abuse; he now defends mankind from the fallacy of socialism. He no longer throws out the dirty water of the Russian Revolution to protect the baby, he discovers that the baby is a monster which must be strangled. The heretic becomes a renegade.

How far he departed from his starting-point, whether, as Silone says, he becomes a fascist or not, depends on his inclinations and tastes - and stupid Stalinist heresy-hunting often drives the ex-communist to extremes. But, whatever the shades of individual attitudes, as a rule the intellectual ex-communist ceases to oppose capitalism. Often he rallies to its defense, and he brings to this job the lack of scruple, the narrow-mindedness, the disregard for truth, and the intense hatred with which Stalinism has imbued him. He remains a sectarian. He is an inverted Stalinist. He continues to see the world in white and black, but now the colours are differently distributed. As a communist he saw no difference between fascists and social democrats. As an anti-communist he sees no difference between nazism and communism. Having once been caught by the ‘greatest illusion,’ he is now obsessed by the greatest disillusionment of our time.

His former illusion at least implied a positive ideal. His disillusionment is utterly negative. His role is therefore intellectually and politically barren. In this, too, he resembles the embittered ex-Jacobin of the Napoleonic era. Wordsworth and Coleridge were fatally obsessed with the “Jacobin danger;’ their fear dimmed even their poetic genius. It was Coleridge who denounced in the House of Commons a Bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals as the ‘strongest instance of legislative Jacobinism,’ The ex-Jacobin became the prompter of anti-Jacobin reaction in England. Directly or indirectly, his influence was behind Bills Against Seditious Writings and Traitorous Correspondence, the Treasonable Practices Bill, and Seditious Meetings Bill (1792-94), the defeat of parliamentary reform, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the postponement of the emancipation of England’s religious minorities for the lifetime of a generation. Since the conflict with revolutionary France was ‘not a time to make hazardous experiments,’ the slave trade, too, obtained a lease on life - in the name of liberty.

An honest and critically minded man could reconcile himself to Napoleon as little as he can now to Stalin. But despite Napoleon’s violence and frauds, the message of the French Revolution survived to echo powerfully throughout the nineteenth century. The Holy Alliance freed Europe from Napoleon’s oppression; and for a moment its victory was hailed by most Europeans. Yet what Castlereagh and Metternich and Alexander I had to offer ‘liberated’ Europe was merely the preservation of an old, decomposing order. Thus the abuses and the aggressiveness of an empire bred by the revolution gave a new lease on life to European feudalism. This was the ex-Jacobin’s most unexpected triumph. But the price he paid for it was that presently he himself, and his anti-Jacobin cause, looked like vicious, ridiculous anachronisms. In the year of Napoleon’s defeat, Shelley wrote to Wordsworth:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve

Thus having been, thou shouldst cease to be.

If our ex-communist had any historical sense, he would ponder this lesson.

...Finally, Shelley watched the clash of the two worlds with all the burning passion, anger and hope of which his great young soul was capable: he surely was no Olympian. Yet not for a single moment did he accept the self-righteous claims and pretensions of any of the belligerents. Unlike the ex-Jacobins, who were older than he, he was true to the Jacobin republican idea. It was as a republican, and not as a patriot of the England of George III, that he greeted the fall of Napoleon, that ‘most unambitious slave’ who did ‘dance and revel on the grave of Liberty.’ But as a republican he knew also that ‘virtue owns a more eternal foe’ than Bonapartist force and fraud - ‘old Custom, legal Crime and bloody Faith’ embodied in the Holy Alliance.”

Isaac Deutscher, “The Ex-Communist’s Conscience” 1950

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