M-L-M Mayhem!

After attending Jasbir Puar's recent Toronto talk and book launch the other night I was struck again with the dilemma that post- theory presents to Marxists, particularly Marxists like myself who occupy some sort of academic space. We all, to different degrees, represent the deep-seeded problem with what is often called "post-modern" philosophy/theory: its displacement of Marxism upon the sanctified pedestal of recognized radical theory, its idealist (and quite often obscurantist) bases that permit identity politics and movementism to proliferate as praxis, and (most damningly) the fact that the foundational authors of this tradition only achieved academic hegemony through a translation project funded by the CIA. I have diagnosed this problem in previous posts, and in Continuity & Rupture I attempted to provide a general explanation for the rise of "post-modernism" by linking it to a Marxist retreat forced by the "end of history" narrative of capi…

The bizarro anti-intellectualism that tends to manifest itself in leftist circles has always been paradigmatically represented by perspectives put out by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT)––whether they are shitting on BDS, claiming that the coup in Egypt several years ago wasn't really a coup, or claiming that physicists are liars––and yet again they've proved this anti-intellectualism with their recent hatchet-job on the late Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. These days I try to ignore their embarrassing hot-takes but both a local comrade and a twitter mutual sent me this article and it's the kind of thing that would make anyone who actually read Fisher's book gape and face palm. It also demonstrates something significant about the IMT and groups like the IMT: they are incapable of critical thought, their critiques of positions that are not wholly their own rely on straw-person misrepresentations, and so their political lines about reality in general––the i…

Well here it is again, as my New Year semester contract begins, the MLM Mayhem line-up of the most popular posts of the past year. Considering I've lacked the time and energy to post regularly, and my traffic has dipped here and there because of this, I can at least get at least one new post simply listing what entries did the best in the past year of 2017. So here's the round-up:

10. Guest Post: Narratives of Exclusion by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Faithful readers of this blog and my cultural blog, Achilles Powder & Lead, should be long aware that I'm an avid SFF reader and that one of my favourite contemporary authors is Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Close to the release of her excellent novella Winterglass at the beginning of December, Sriduangkaew embarked on a blog tour and I was more than happy to loan her the blog space to write about her narrative choices designed to push the margin to the centre. (Also, as most of you are aware, I have a book coming out in collaboration w…