Recording Surface

Some rough notes on Rawi Abdelal’s Capital Rules: Abdelal attempts to turn much of the standard history of neoliberal finance on its head. (more…)

The opposition between individual racism and institutional racism has from the beginning stood on pretty shaky theoretical grounds. Aren’t individualist expressions of racism, in both their “spontaneous” and continuous forms, always underwritten by statist practices? And haven’t state institutions’ rationalized borders and operations been partly enforced by substrata of popular exclusions and (threats of) routine violence? (more…)

There’s an interesting geopolitical situation developing in South America, between Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Military hero Hugo Chavez is even raising the specter of war, though it seems unlikely to come to that. (more…)

Like all left believers in the essential progressiveness of capitalism, Simon Critchley thinks that the “truth of Marx’s work” lies in its conviction that the “dislocatory power of capitalism must be affirmed.” The alternative, as it’s usually presented is in these stories, is “a retreat into some sort of Rousseauesque and ultimately reactionary romantic anti-capitalism.” (more…)

I watched the Clinton-Obama debate last night, the first one I’ve tuned in for. It’s pretty funny to see the two of them trying to convice people that there are actual differences between them when clearly there aren’t: both are DLC-beholden, centrist Bill Clinton-oids. Which is to say, ideal CEOs of the neoliberal state. The candidates themselves think that their positions on health care are, as Obama said last night, “substantively different.” Indeed. Clinton’s plan makes people who are unemployed or don’t receive insurance from their employers buy government insurance that they can’t afford so that they can pay copays they can’t afford so that they can maybe eventually receive care from a doctor. Obama wouldn’t make people buy government insurance and take on the burden of premiums and copays, but if they don’t and they show up at an emergency room to receive treatment, they will be fined, severely, as he made clear last night. These are the politics that are inspiring such great passion among Democrats this year.

(As an aside, it’s hilarious to hear Clinton rail against medical profiteering, since the lone accomplishment of her health-care reforms of the early 90s was to set in motion the process by which HMOs and drug companies, those mind-bogglingly profitable administrators of life and death in the United States, came to rule the delivery of health care.)

Some people think it’s significant that the two finalists for the Democratic nomination are a woman and a black man. Apparently the candidates don’t, as race and sex seem to be off-limits topics for them. That is, unless you count Obama’s passing references to his growing up without a father (read: I’m just like every other black person) or Clinton’s intimations about her essentially nurturing nature (read: I’m just like every other woman) as vigorous discussions of race and sex. Obviously, I do think race and sex are significant, but the discursive terrain on which this discussion is taking place is so debased and idiotic — Clinton’s voters and supporters are racists, and Obama’s voters and supporters are sexists — that it’s hard to find any purchase that doesn’t entail buying into the banality. The debate about the intersections of race and sex inspired by Clinton-Obama, a debate that should be about difference and dissenion, has already, in its singular way, erased difference and dissension. It’s now about who is the better American.

The Thomas Frank inside of me wants to get worked up about the awfulness of the Democrats. But that would be insincere. They are, after all, just doing their job. It would be like getting angry at leopards because they have spots.

The New York Times has an article on Bobby Fischer and the lessons we are supposed to learn from his life. (more…)

I’m reading, finally, Retort’s Afflicted Powers, and I’m impressed with their handling of “how, strategically and politically, the US state [has] responded to” September 11. (more…)

I’m fascinated by politics that proceeds in something like the following fashion: Over the last 40 years, capital has proven itself to be endlessly flexible in neutralizing, even commodifying, things that would seem to be opposed to it or that hold themselves out as having the capacity to elude it. These things are usually alternative lifestyles and autonomous political movements, which often receive some very unkind words (Badiou’s frothing about disabled black lesbian Jews for Jesus, or whatever he says, is typical). (more…)

Finally saw Marie Antoinette this weekend, and I was impressed with Coppola’s consistent refusal to submit to the logics (aesthetic and political) of representation. This refusal probably explains why the movie received such an icy reception when it was released, particularly from the left. (more…)