It is what it is…or not, by Rick Elmore

Rick and I hate this phrase and now he’s put out a longer argument why: “It is what it is” or things T. W. Adorno would have hated | environmental critique. Here’s Rick:

People probably can’t help the occasional recourse to banal tautologies. Phrases like “it is what it is” have a certain sports radio, ‘works in almost any conversation’ kind of appeal. It’s like describing a team as “strong up front” or affirming a statement with “you can’t stop a train.” No one really knows exactly what you mean, but it sounds just concrete enough that everyone goes home happy. Yet, what’s truly pernicious about this phrase and what connects it to Adorno’s work isn’t that it’s tautological or unimaginative, but rather that it is a shorthand way of naturalizing the current state of the world.

Review of New Arendt Movie at LARB

Stephanie DeGooyer reviews Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, finding it too often puts her thought and actions in the relation to the men in her life, a move oft-repeated by those Heideggerians all-too-interested in her affair with Heidegger and its affect on her thought: The Philosopher and Her Kisses – Los Angeles Review of Books

Brian Jordan Jefferson on Policing, Whiteness, and the Death-Wage

An excellent commentary at the Society and Space open site by Brian Jorden Jefferson on Policing, Whiteness, and the Death-Wage | Society and space This follows another contribution at S&S on Black Lives Matter: Deborah Cowen and Nemoy Lewis’ Anti-blackness and urban geopolitical economy: Reflections on Ferguson and the suburbanization of the ‘internal colony’.

Peter Goodrich reviews The Death Penalty – Critical Inquiry

A journal of Art, Culture and Politics, Published by the University of Chicago

Source: Peter Goodrich reviews The Death Penalty – Critical Inquiry

In Phenomenological Reviews, a look at an Edited Collection on the Black Notebooks

Jeff Malplas and Ingo Farin edited the collection, which contains a cast of many well-known Heidegger specialists. It is, on the whole, more sympathetic to Heidegger (or what is culled down as his real thought, rather than the anti-semitism) than I expected: Ingo Farin, Jeff Malpas (Eds.): Reading Heidegger’s Black Notebooks 1931-1941 – Phenomenological Reviews

Deborah Cowen and Nemoy Lewis – Anti-blackness and urban geopolitical economy: Reflections on Ferguson and the suburbanization of the ‘internal colony’ | Society and space

“I’m also looking at whether the Black Lives Matter movement opens up a broader opportunity to explore what black liberation looks like in the United States. Can this movement that̵…

Source: Deborah Cowen and Nemoy Lewis – Anti-blackness and urban geopolitical economy: Reflections on Ferguson and the suburbanization of the ‘internal colony’ | Society and space

Public Books — On Frantz Fanon: An Interview With Lewis R. Gordon

Public Books recently published an interview with Lewis Gordon on his recent What Fanon Said. Most of this will be old hat to anyone who has read much on Fanon (e.g., Gordon make much of misinterpretations of Fanon on violence, which I haven’t seen in years and is maybe 50 years old) or indeed any of Gordon’s previous works.

Source:

Recent Reviews at NDPR

Two of interest, including one of an edited collection of Richard Kearney, who will be at Memorial in the Fall:

RICHARD KEARNEY AND JENS ZIMMERMANN (EDS.)

Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God

Columbia University Press

Reviewed byDaniel O’Dea Bradley, Gonzaga University

2016.07.27

ANTHONY K. JENSEN

An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life

Routledge

Reviewed byMark Alfano, Delft University of Technology

Stuart Elden on Foucault’s Last Decade

Interviewed by Eugene Wolters, Elden discusses how he came to write this book and the continuing difficulties in using Foucault’s archive. I am also in the midst of interviewing Elden, along with Eduardo Mendieta and Dianna Taylor, for Symposium, which will appear early in the fall (if not sooner if we can make it open access).

An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in LARB

Steve Paulson interviews Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak — a joint publication between Wisconsin Public Radio and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Podcast here and text here. The discussion for the most part focuses on her re-translation of Of Grammatology 50 years on, which was critically reviewed by Geoff Bennington in the LARB.

Source: Critical Intimacy: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – Los Angeles Review of Books