McKenzie Wark talked to Rhizome about his new book The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages Out of the Twenty-First Century; Aaron Swartz and the cultural commons; and KimKierkegaardashian as détournement.
Wark explained the twenty-first century relevance of the SI’s critical approach towards technology, culture and capital:
There’s an absolute failure to perform the critical task in relation to technology. There’s a kind of "No, I don’t like the iPhone." Well, what the fuck do you like then? What do you want? Describe another world. Describe it to me. For seven billion people. Among the Situationists, someone like Constant Nieuwenhuys did exactly that, he imagined an entire other planet based on mid 20th Century technology.
Earlier this month, BBC economics editor and author of Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere Paul Mason, took part in two conversations in New York, which are now available online.
On April 11, Mason talked to NYU students about his journalism. A video of the talk—which includes his film about the neo-fascist party España 2000—can be viewed here.
Last week, Mason spoke to American labor journalists Sarah Jaffe and Josh Eidelson about Margaret Thatcher, austerity resistance in Europe, and the end of the neoliberal era, for the second episode of Dissent magazine’s new podcast, Belabored. To listen, click here and to subscribe, search “Belabored” in iTunes.
The latest podcast in a series of discussions between Racecraft author Karen Fields and The Academic & the Artist hosts Sergio Muñoz and Dr. José Moreno is now online. In this episode, Fields is joined by Vanderbilt University Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, Tiffany Patterson. Together, they delve into the ever-fascinating subject of race in the United States, with a soundtrack of songs by Cassandra Wilson. To listen to their conversation online, click here, or you can download the podcast from iTunes (search the Academic and the Artist).
Next Thursday, Barbara Fields will discuss Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life with Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates at the CUNY Graduate Center. The book, which Fields co-wrote with her sister, Karen Fields, is dense with ideas and there will be lots to cover in the conversation.
In advance of the event, we recommend the Academic & the Artist podcast, which Karen Fields has appeared on three times now. The programs provide a great opportunity to explore some of the challenging debates circulating around the book's central themes of race, inequality and the mythical belief in a "post-racial" America.
In the first interview, which was released shortly after Racecraft was published in the fall of last year, Fields talked to the podcast hosts José F. Moreno and Sergio Muñoz about racial identity, the racializing of inequality, and the problems inherent in fighting inequality with social policy that has been constructed on racial terms. Music by Stevie Wonder—Fields is a fan—was played during musical interludes. Click here to listen to the first show.