cuck

New books

Added 2022-12-22 06:39:32 +0000 UTC

I recently went on a trip and bought some new books.

Leon Trotsky on literature and art. Pretty self-explanatory - a collection of texts by Trotsky on the topic of literature and art from throughout his life. Some people might not know that he was not only a revolutionary and a military leader but an avid reader of novels and a literary critic, and quite cutting-edge in some ways.

Then I got 2 Baudrillard books. The first one is a collection of writings from the period 1967-1978, from a journal Baudrillard participated in called Utopie, which was a radical collaboration between theorists and architects on the themes of urbanism and architecture, partly inspired by Henri Lefebvre's works of social theory. I’ve always been fascinated by Baudrillard’s early works, back when he was still a Marxist and somewhat politically hopeful. There was something lost there when he became overtaken by cynicism after the failure of 1968 in France.

And, on the other hand, Cool Memories, one of his later, post-simulacra, works. A collection of seemingly unorganized aphorisms on society and culture that do not seek to present a coherent conceptual framework. I was interested in it because of the wild variety of topics it touches on, but also, man, he really says some shitty things here which serve as clear examples of why a lot of feminists at the time disliked him.

Finally, I got Abolition Geography, a collection of texts by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a theorist who I’ve never read before. She, along with Angela Davis, did a lot to popularize prison abolition in the US, and has focused in particular on the relationship between the prison system and urban spaces, so I’m looking forward to reading it.