February 2012
30 posts
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“But the thing about being a Victorian lady is that you can go to the Gold Coast,...”
– Aaron Bady
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Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open...
By David Graeber
I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.
I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one...
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Thoughts on a Word: Glamour [Part 2]
I’ve had my chance to expound on glamour (which, of course, I did from my chaise longue with a Manhattan in hand while my protégé took dictation), but the concept of glamour is intriguing enough to warrant a revisiting—not from me, but from four women who each have their own distinct relationship with glamour. I’m delighted that each of them—author Virginia Postrel, publicist Lauren Cerand,...
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Fail Worse
By Ned Beauman
photo by Richard Avedon
Ranked 104th in the list of the most highlighted passages on Amazon’s Kindle website is a short clipping from The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris: “ ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.”
The first...
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Who Can You Trust?
The fact that she didn’t know it made Minnie even more of a knockout. In one strut she was timeless; In the next, entirely of the moment. Minnie was an enigma made all the more spectacular by contradictions. The cut she struck was both structured and lithe; daring but demure; forgiving yet unforgettable. She existed to make others look better despite her own unknown glamour. She flirted with the...
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They Shoot Horses, Don't They
The Academy has spoken, and now it’s official – animals can’t act. Uggie and Joey can hang up their bow-ties and stop rehearsing their teary acceptance speeches, because no animals will be receiving Oscars at this year’s awards. For one, I’m relieved, as hopefully this will end the recent slew of reductive articles questioning the performative capacity of dogs and horses (“Can they act? Can’t...
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Un(der)known Writers: Penelope Mortimer
There is much to know about Penelope Mortimer. She was married to one man, but gave birth to two children from extramarital affairs with two other, separate men. While pregnant, she would leave her first husband for her second, John Mortimer. Their relationship was anything but sunny, and the details became excellent source material for her scathingly brilliant novels, of which The Pumpkin...
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Thoughts on a Word: Glamour (Part I)
Glamour is an illusion, and an allusion too. Glamour is a performance, a creation, a recipe, but one with give. Glamour is elegance minus restraint, romance plus distance, sparkle sans naivete. Glamour is Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean (picture of a beauty queen). Glamour is $3.99 on U.S. newsstands, $4.99 Canada. Glamour is artifice. Glamour is red lipstick, Marcel waves, a pause before speaking,...
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Plié … Relevé … Heel!
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely critters–at least as far as Mrs. Midnight’s Animal Comedians were concerned. The rage during the 1753 London season, this troupe plied its trade in a small, elaborately decorated theater named the Castle Tavern. The show starred poet Christopher Smart, who appeared in drag as Mrs. Midnight and orchestrated the splendid entertainments his...
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Selflessness and self-absorption
Art historian Michael Fried’s 1980 book Absorption and Theatricality is about how French painters in the late 18th century started to paint people who are totally absorbed in the moment — engrossed in what they are doing and oblivious to the possibility that they could be observed (by, say, the person looking at the painting). Fried tries to figure out why viewers of the time had such a taste...
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“A feminist perspective drives a lot of my sense of purpose to make The New...”
– Rachel Rosenfelt, founder and Editor in Chief of The New Inquiry in an interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Read the full interview here.
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David Graeber’s Debt: My First 5,000 Words
In the final lines of his introduction to Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber writes that “[f]or a very long time, the intellectual consensus has been that we can no longer ask Great Questions.” And as he put it in a guest post over at Savage Minds:
The aim of the book was to write the sort of book people don’t write any more: a big book, asking big questions, meant to be read widely...
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Whose blood that camera followed and follows still
[As this is a new project distinct from Socialism and/or Barbarism, this approximates a starting point. A number of the issues worked through at S a/o B in the last couple years will continue here. The scope, however, will be more restricted and directly linked to cultural forms, above all to film.]
It is often said that cinema is dead.
Or dying, or deserves to be. Or that it doesn’t...
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Simulacra Descending a Staircase
In these dark and brooding times it is Kafkaesque tragicomedy that strikes the right note of collective mirth. The Iranian government recently staged an anniversary celebration of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s momentous return from exile in France. The cardboard reenactment of his arrival has been the subject of effusive internet mockery since photos from the state-affiliated Mehr News...
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Pont Blank
“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy.” –Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977
“It is necessary that the piece of card is animated with some help from me, giving it meaning it did not yet have. If I see Pierre in the photo, it is because I put him there.” –Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary, 1940
This is the story...
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Facebook division of labor and the rewired society
I’m reading through the summary of findings of this Pew survey of Facebook users. (It is based on phone polling, so caveat emptor.) The point they are foregrounding in their report is that Facebook has “power users,” which means that the division of labor on Facebook’s social factory is uneven — some active users work harder at building the network and feeding its flows, which makes using the site...
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On Modeling as Modern-Day Physiognomy
I’ve had my palm read and my astrological chart done, but what I really want to find is a physiognomist. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your purpose, physiognomy — the art of decoding character and temperament through the way our facial features are formed — has been discredited, and except for the occasional parlor game piece, it’s not something we readily find anymore (though if you...
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Such was the point of what I tried to unpack... →
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The Pitfalls of Indie Fame
The book Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman was just named winner of The ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.
I’m guessing this doesn’t mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article’s opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece. But there’s something about this situation that I find pretty...
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Not to brag or anything but I almost had sex...
Popular discourse portrays marriage as a source of innumerable public and private benefits, happiness, companionship, financial security, and even good health. Complementing this view, our legal discourse frames the right to marry as a right of access, the exercise of which is an act of autonomy and free will.
However, a closer look at marriage’s past reveals a more complicated portrait....
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Sunday Reading
On Sundays, I post a lot of links to things I think are worth reading, almost always from the previous week, and in exactly no particular order. I try not to link to the NY Times or other huge MSM outlets, and I mostly succeed. Click through, and look for something you weren’t looking for.
Cairo, Hers Again: excerpt from Ahdaf Soueif’s book about Cairo and the Egyptian revolution.
The Aesthetics...
TNI Blogger Announcement #7: Rob Horning
And for our finale, our last blog and last blogger (for now), and the only thing you’ll get out of us before the launch on Monday: We are just tickled to announce editor Rob Horning’s blog Marginal Utility will be making its new home at TNI. Some intellectual historians have suggested the desire to steal Rob’s blog was the the genesis of TNI as we now know it, but one...
TNI Blogger Announcement #6: Maryam Monalisa...
We’re only days away now from the launch, which means we’ve built up sufficient dramatic tension to proudly announce our sixth New Inquriy blogger: Maryam Monalisa Gharavi and her blog south/south. Maryam is a doctoral candidate at Harvard, where she focuses on banditry, transgression, and film in Brazil, France, and North Africa. You can find her top-rate commentary and analysis all...
January 2012
19 posts
TNI Blogger Announcement #5: Imp Kerr
We begin day two of blogger announcements with a creative genius who has had as much of a hand as anyone in creating the new TNI. Imp Kerr is the enigmatic designer/creator/blogger/prankster behind the new shelton wet/dry and the fake-turned-real American Apparel ad campaigns, as well as the amazing wall street casinos graphic series. Hamilton Nolan at Gawker once said of her: “I...
TNI Blogger Announcement #4: Evan Calder Williams
Our final announcement for today is Evan Calder Williams, who will be starting a new blog at TNI called The Noonday Shadow. Evan recently closed down his long-running blog Socialism and/or Barbarism to much counter-public sorrow, and we’re happy to cheer up the sewer-dwelling tentacle beings among our readers. In addition to his blog, Evan has published two books: Combined and Uneven...
TNI Blogger Announcement #3: Christine...
We thought we could stop at two today, but the drive is too great. We’re proud to announce our third blogger, Christine Baumgarthuber and her blog The Austerity Kitchen.
You’ve probably seen Austerity Kitchen at TNI before, and we’re ecstatic it’s going to have its own home at the new site, logo and all. Maybe you recognize Christine from her interview at Bon Appetit or...
TNI Blogger Announcement #2: Autumn...
We just couldn’t wait, as soon as we got started we couldn’t stop. The second announced member of the TNI blog squad is Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, with her blog The Beheld.
You may recognize Autumn’s excellent work from TNI before, particularly her recent piece on erotic capital. Or maybe you’ve seen her in higher-profile places like The Hairpin, Jezebel, or Feministe....
TNI Blogger Announcement #1: Aaron Bady
In the lead up to the launch of the new New Inquiry next Monday, we’ll be announcing our outstanding blogging team. And we couldn’t be more proud to start with Aaron Bady and his blog Zunguzungu.
Aaron is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley in African Literature and an active participant in and chronicler of Occupy Oakland. He drew applause from all corners of...
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Working Beauty
The disappearing work-life divide and the feminization of abstract labor in Sleeping Beauty
By Malcolm Harris
In the opening scene of Julia Leigh’s debut film Sleeping Beauty, Lucy (Emily Browning), our beautiful college-student protagonist, serves as a medical test subject. She leans her head back as the doctor slowly threads a tube down her throat, then fills a balloon in her chest...
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Consultancy Rock
The solace of sociological distance in the music of Rush
by Rob Horning
Certain rock groups persist as their own subgenre. The venerable Canadian band Rush is one of them, maintaining a legion of loyalists willing to stick with them as they release album after blandly titled album — Power Windows, Presto, Test for Echo — that defiantly sell in the millions despite little mainstream notice or...
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Il Salvataggio Selvaggio
A letter to Micky Arison, CEO of Carnival Cruiselines, and Gianni Onorato, president of Costa Cruises
By Evan Calder Williams
Dear Micky Arison, I was sorry to hear about the Costa Concordia. What a big fuck-up, a große Verhau, as Kluge would put it. A sad one to boot.
I saw that you tweeted that “our thoughts and prayers are with the passengers and crew” so I can tell that you’ve been...
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Dance With the Devil
The systematic genius of Krasznahorkai’s Satantango
by Dan Bevacqua
Twenty-seven years after it was first published in his native Hungary, László Krasznahorkai’s debut novel, Satantango, has materialized in America. Published by New Directions, it is the third of Krasznahorkai’s works to be translated into English by George Szirtes, Hungarian-born poet and winner of, among other...
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The Future Is Female
In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, women are nowhere and everywhere
by Samantha Hinds
A tea-soaked palette floods recession London. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, we see the khaki styles and filing boxes of an empire packing itself away. Director Tomas Alfredson, known best for his gentle adolescent vampire tale (Let the Right One In, 2008), stays orthodox to neither John le Carré’s text nor the...
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Accounting for Beauty
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Erotic capital doesn’t set us free. It yokes women’s careers to the whims of men
by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano
Before I actually read Erotic Capital, sociologist Catherine Hakim’s treatise on how women should flex their powers of sexual allure in the workplace, I wanted to like it. As Hakim presents it, erotic capital is a combination of physical assets (beauty, style)...
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Un(der)known Writers: Martin Luther King Jr.
“I’m sure that you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. The thing that we usually remember about this story is that Rip Van Winkle slept 20 years. But there is another point in that story that is almost always completely overlooked: it was a sign on the inn in the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the...
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Scoreboard Jesus
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Can Tim Tebow, the latest American exemplar of “muscular Christianity,” get a witness?
by Elissa Lerner
Unless you’ve avoided all sports news since Thanksgiving, you’ve probably heard the name Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos quarterback and evangelical Christian who likes to thank his lord and savior Jesus Christ for winning football games. Despite his awkward throwing motion and...
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Not Great Men
Georges Simenon’s The President shows how history swallows its agents
by Rob Horning
With its focus on a destabilized European government, currency manipulation, and the frailty of technocracy, Georges Simenon’s novella The President seems a surprisingly timely book, especially considering it was originally published more than 50 years ago. The scene in which Simenon describes various...
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Cruise Control
Grindr is an app men can put on their phones to find other men to have sex with. But it automates the work that once made a subversive and politically potent world.
by Max Fox
Last Thanksgiving, more men logged on to Grindr, the largest “all-male, location-based social network in the world,” than on any other day of the year. Somehow, Grindr managed to tout this fact without mentioning...
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Do Nothing, Be Nothing
Violence, idleness, and nihilism in Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84
by Stephane Allard
Clocking in at just short of a thousand pages, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is the author’s ostensible pitch for the Nobel Prize and what many expect will stand as his magnum opus. Published in Japan in three installments beginning in 2009, the novel was released in North America in a single volume this past...
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Un(der)known Writers: Anna Kavan
Self-portrait by Anna Kavan
Anna Kavan was born Helen Woods in Cannes, France. She perceived herself as deeply unloved. Kavan was the main character in her novel Let Me Alone, and she adopted the name for herself after a stint in an asylum. She kept herself immaculately maintained, was severely addicted to heroin, and enjoyed the success of her own interior decorating business while she...
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No Resolution
Cruel Optimism at the beginning of the end.
By Jenna Brager
Lauren Berlant wants you to break your New Year’s resolutions. Or at least she wholly understands your impending failure to keep them. So go ahead, smoke another cigarette. Smoke whatever you can find. Down a few more 100-calorie snack packs. Eat a whole goddamn box of 100-calorie snack packs. Fuck 100-calorie snack packs, find some...
December 2011
16 posts
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The Search for Posthumanism
Notes from the 2011 Singularity Summit
by Mike Thomsen
The idea that we can run out of time is peculiar. It’s a product of how we organize our memories.
Human consciousness is a kind of romance with the idea that time is finite and consumable. This assumption of finitude means that time can also become digested and metabolized urge, energizing the desire to imagine what is coming next. Being...