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inhibited by a focus on themes that western avant-garde comic guys (Daniel Clowes, Craig Thompson, that other guy) do a lot: 'I want to fuck a different girl than the one I currently am' but it's got some stuff in it that isn't the usual and crucially it takes about ten minutes to read
The Oxford history of Ireland
revisionist introductory text. nice pictures
four stars for historical interest rather than entertainment value; this is v dry Lenin as opposed to entertainingly abusive Lenin, his barbs are quite bland here.
this was written post-1905 when the revolution was beginning to bear constitutional fruit in the form of the Duma but before it became clear how conditional these advances were. Lenin sets himself the task of discrediting socialists who have turned towards liquidating into the constitutional bourgeois movement (Mensheviks, legal Marxists etc.) as well as maximalists (SRs and anarchists calling for immediate declaration of the socialist republic) and justifying against both the Bolshevik stance which insists that the next revolution will be constitutional / democratic / bourgeois (he hadn't come around to Trotsky's permanent revolution yet) but that it is possible to carve out maximal gains for the proletariat and peasantry in moving it forward
Lenin had just lost control of the Iskra editorial board …
four stars for historical interest rather than entertainment value; this is v dry Lenin as opposed to entertainingly abusive Lenin, his barbs are quite bland here.
this was written post-1905 when the revolution was beginning to bear constitutional fruit in the form of the Duma but before it became clear how conditional these advances were. Lenin sets himself the task of discrediting socialists who have turned towards liquidating into the constitutional bourgeois movement (Mensheviks, legal Marxists etc.) as well as maximalists (SRs and anarchists calling for immediate declaration of the socialist republic) and justifying against both the Bolshevik stance which insists that the next revolution will be constitutional / democratic / bourgeois (he hadn't come around to Trotsky's permanent revolution yet) but that it is possible to carve out maximal gains for the proletariat and peasantry in moving it forward
Lenin had just lost control of the Iskra editorial board and refers to them throughout as 'the new-Iskraists', which I found amusing
introductory text
work of proto-Marxology from an SPD rightist, arguing against notions including i) the notion that capital is increasingly concentrated ii) that the working class is increasing in size iii) that revolution (or perhaps even socialism!) is possible or desirable
was most struck by the extent of its nihilism; Bernstein affords no space to the ingenuity intelligence or capacity of the working class, he more or less just stops short of calling them ignorant and incompetent to manage their own affairs.
read symptomatically this is the Communist Manifesto re-packaged for the self-exoneration of those who spend the next century averting their eyes; the English and the German proletariat were not interested in revolution; they had their trade unions, their political parties and their living standards were, in relative terms, increasing. their political leadership was cut to cloth
disappointed when I found out this guy was in the CIA cos it's pretty good
Dickens scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy, Hard Times features …
one of many many works on the French revolution by an English historian who pollutes the historiography with counter-revolutionary propaganda. at every turn the monarchs and nobility conduct themselves with perfect equanimity dignity and thoughtfulness while the ascendent bourgeoisie and peasantry are snarling licentious irrational self-interested brutes.
royalist propaganda regarding excesses of violence committed by revolutionaries are produced on almost every page, a cursory google told me that historians no longer believe that '[x atrocity]' actually took place, e.g. a crowd disembowelled one of the Queen's handmaidens, strewed her organs around the courtyard in front of her children, etc.
in short its a gothic work of fiction but whatever, I know who Danton is now
took some notes on this if anyone's looking aonchiallach.github.io/posts/ireland_notes/
this is a welcome example of someone taking the NLR approach to historiography in an Irish context, building up a repository of theoretical sources on European economic history coming from a Marxish perspective and plugging them into the most donnish outputs of the Trinity, UCD and Maynooth history departments. The results are a bit uneven; there's a lot hanging on the Anderson brothers here and I think the age of their models is really showing.
Coakley's aim seems to be to de-emphasise the colonial in favour of an attention to 'internal factors' and he makes a big show of rejecting Denis O'Hearn writings which locate Ireland within an orthodox colonial underdevelopment framework as a means of explaining why 'Ireland' (meaning the twenty-six county state) never industrialised but when Coakley has to show his cards on this subject all he …
took some notes on this if anyone's looking aonchiallach.github.io/posts/ireland_notes/
this is a welcome example of someone taking the NLR approach to historiography in an Irish context, building up a repository of theoretical sources on European economic history coming from a Marxish perspective and plugging them into the most donnish outputs of the Trinity, UCD and Maynooth history departments. The results are a bit uneven; there's a lot hanging on the Anderson brothers here and I think the age of their models is really showing.
Coakley's aim seems to be to de-emphasise the colonial in favour of an attention to 'internal factors' and he makes a big show of rejecting Denis O'Hearn writings which locate Ireland within an orthodox colonial underdevelopment framework as a means of explaining why 'Ireland' (meaning the twenty-six county state) never industrialised but when Coakley has to show his cards on this subject all he has is: quasi-feudal kinship networks were stronger in Ireland than in England, Scotland or Wales.
Brenner is obviously a huge presence here as well so there is a consistent emphasis on the non-emergence of the petty-bourgeois yeoman strata in what became the Free State in comparison to the north, which is of course in large part due to the class compromise underpinning the plantation project. This means Coakley has to treat Ulster Custom as something independent from British imperialism; Bew being cited without caveats makes me wonder if he reckons that partition reflected a 'neutral' economic reality. Nothing too objectionable from the nineteenth century onwards, but a bit perfunctory.
Jonathan Hickman: The Black Monday murders (2018)
"Thomas Dane goes looking for a man who doesn't want to be found. From JONATHAN HICKMAN (EAST OF WEST, Secret …
"Delisle explores the complexities of a city that represents so much to so many. He …
the intention here was to have the politics come through via a wilfully ignorant narrator going about their daily life in Jerusalem, losing their keys, picking up their kids, trying to get work done etc.
faux-naive is probably my least favourite register, here it lends itself to framing the question of supporting the settlements in terms of a bourgeois anxiety re: ethical consumption but on the other hand it emphasises the moments in which settlers reveal themselves to be paranoid racist freaks, e.g. calling MSF and Obama Hamas supporters. the author is of course subject to the same accusations in the comment section here, as ever it underlines that any angle on the occupation which is even slightly clear-eyed will be condemned as anti-Semitic propaganda
