Christian Politics of the Neighbor

 I'm working on a Christian Communism (I believe it's the only way to go). I just found this in Richard Rohr's writing: 

Torah and the Prophets warned Israel not to discriminate against economic or political refugees, since in YHWH’s eyes even the chosen people were “but aliens and tenants” (Leviticus 25:23). Instead, they were to treat the “sojourners in your midst” with dignity and justice (Deuteronomy 24:14). This fundamental regard for the resident alien, and call to solidarity with the “outsider,” came to full realization in the teaching and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. An oft-cited verse that captures this is Matthew’s last-judgment parable, in which Jesus commends those who welcome him in the guise of a stranger—and condemns those who do not (Matthew 25:35–46)

Three archetypally vulnerable groups are commonly named in almost formulaic fashion: widows, orphans, and strangers. Because YHWH “watches over” them (Psalm 146:9), they have intrinsic rights to sustenance (Deuteronomy 14:29, 24:19–21, 26:12–13) and to human rights (Deuteronomy 27:19; Psalm 94:6). And the prophets measure the health of the nation by how widows, orphans, and strangers are treated (Jeremiah 7:6, 22:3; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5)

But there is another, theologically startling characteristic of scripture: from beginning to end, God too is portrayed entering our world in the guise of a stranger in need of hospitality. One of the first divine epiphanies is YHWH’s mysterious appearance in the form of “three guests” (Genesis 18:1–8). Abraham and Sarah offer them food, drink, and shelter, and their hospitality occasions the great promise of progeny that launches the salvation story of an entire people (Genesis 18:9–10)…. 

We can go further: the God of the Bible is consistently portrayed as “stateless,” and we can reasonably add undocumented. This is in stark contrast to the patron-gods of the empires that surrounded Israel, who lived comfortably in the temples of the king. In the Exodus tradition, the wilderness God doesn’t even have a name, much less “papers”: the moniker YHWH means “I will be whoever I will be” (Exodus 3:14). God’s voice summons Moses into a conspiracy for freedom from a burning bush outside the borders of, and in opposition to, Pharaoh’s political and economic system. Inspired and led by this God, the Hebrews flee Egypt “in haste” (Exodus 12:33), and wander in the desert as a people with no legal status—as political refugees still must do.  

The Gospel writers portray Jesus as a refugee in need of hospitality: 

 The Second Testament continues in this tradition. The gospel story begins with Jesus’ family fleeing violence as political refugees, pushed around Palestine by the imperial forces of Caesar and Herod (Matthew 2; Luke 2). The adult Jesus not only characterizes himself as homeless (“the Human One has nowhere to lay his head,” Luke 9:58), but stateless. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he says before the Roman procurator (John 18:36). The evangelists also portray Jesus as a constant recipient of hospitality who sometimes even “invites himself in” (see, for example, Luke 19:5).    (SOURCE)

"On Black Language of Resistance": Brilliant Poetry by Victoria Danielle

 ...she is in my Ecological Literature, Culture and Theory class and this is a typically brilliant thing. 

obsidianlit · 26 On Black Language Of Resistance by Victoria Danielle

The Teeth of Hell

 Come on, you have to admit 

Andrew Melchior in Krakow

My friend Andy (Massive Attack, Björk, David Bowie) is an incredibly creative human and we are working together on two very special things: The Logos (it's a creation-wide artwork) and HELL...yes...

This is what he has been up to recently. 

I'm in an Essay about Butoh

 Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) very kindly shared this essay with me, which uses some of my ideas. It's about Butoh, very close to my heart. My idea for the Hyperobjects cover was a  Butoh dancer--a reaction shot, if you will. I've written about Butoh in a number of places. 

Sankai Juku

The Phantom of the Present (me and Rupert Sheldrake, video)

 ...at the IAI festival, How the Light Gets In, last September. 

Resurgence

 I must say, I'm hugely enjoying the resurgence of interest in this blog. 

When I started, I began to get about 2000 hits a day during the heady OOO blogging years. 

Things have waxed and waned since, with a massive spike when it was announced that I had written a book with Bjork. 

Things got a bit slim in the later 2010s. I was rushing around and curating things and writing an opera and it was really hard to keep up with regular life, let alone blogging. It's my fault. 

Then Hell started to happen and I must say, the blog has NEVER been as healthy as this. It's a plump luscious thing. Love it. Massive amounts of interest in Hell. I posted some stats recently so I won't bother with that just now. But truly, 7000 hits a day is a LOT. That's more than three times the heady times. 

Live in Italy TODAY (stream link) 9:30 CST, 3:30 GMT, 4:30

The Lucifer Effect: How to Act in a Bad Barrel

 As we are seeing, I hope, evil is not simply a case of "bad apples," it's a bad barrel. Evil is banality, just going along with the situation, which defaults to white supremacy and patriarchy. 

Milgram's experiments demonstrate that two thirds of people will do an evil act all the way up to murder if it is socially sanctioned. 

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment turned psych evaluated Stanford grad students into Abu Ghraib torturers in 36 hours. 

We are witnessing abuse of immigrant prisoners in Gauntanamo Bay (see what Dick Durbin has said about this). 

We witnessed Theresa Borenpohl being dragged out of a town hall meeting in Idaho by fake fascist police. 

Watch and learn. Teach someone. 

Great Graduate Students

One thing's for sure. The graduate students this term are INCREDIBLE. I'm very lucky when it comes to my job. I had the privilege of being on the graduate committee and determining who would come and study with us these last couple of years, and it's been a wonderful thing to do. The students in my ecology and culture and philosophy class are just fantastic. 

Well Isn't This Interesting

Hell continues to be the most important event of my career, if interest in this blog is a metric. 

This in itself is interesting because Hyperobjects, if you need to know, vastly outsells everything else, still. Even the most recent stuff. And Hell is actually one of the slowest selling books! 

But people who are into it, are really into it. I get correspondence all the time about it. 

If you haven't already, give it a try. The area under the Hell spikes is now so much more than that of the moment at which I was working with Björk. 

The Nightmare Vision 2

 For those of you who have been following for years, it's beyond irksome how some daft ideas in supposed posthuman and accelerationist philosophy got weaponized. Several of us (the OOO ones) were trying to warn people. Here's the plan: 

The Nightmare Vision

 A friend of a friend writes: 

"One way to think about the Trump-Musk-Putin project is that it is Neo-Barbarism. The old left critiques of ‘Neoliberalism’ actually assumed the horizon of a liberal democratic order (credit John Gamey). In other words, however ‘radical’ critics of Neoliberalism thought they were being, they were attacking the established order from within a framework which assumed the existence of nation states, international trade, intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations and liberal democratic institutions in at least many of the most important states. 

"What the Trump-Musk-Putin axis does, is to blow this all up (credit Nancy Ries). They are not only destroying the old order, but also rendering standard critiques of Neoliberalism irrelevant. In their new world , instead of nation states there will be billionaire barons allied with armed garrisons; instead of international trade, coerced resource extraction; instead of social participation and welfare provision, massive repression and individualised struggle for survival. 

This explains why Trump can talk so freely of seizing Canada, Greenland, Panama: he no longer assumes any of the external or internal constraints on power holders that have, however unevenly, developed over the last 200 years. This is not about going back to 19th Century colonialism or further developing 20th Century Neoliberalism. Rather, this imagined future corresponds most closely to something like the western part of the Roman Empire in 500s and 600s: magnates with armed hordes swirling across ill-defined territorial boundaries, slaughtering and seizing resources, while production falls off a cliff and the standard of living of the mass of the population falls to unfathomably low levels."

Now...

You know, the way to see the nightmare dystopian vision of these dark ages late late Roman Empire tech bros is, 

Once you get over the shock, 

IT'S STUNNINGLY UNIMAGINATIVE

It's out of Gladiator slash Alien 

IT's CRAP

IN.CRED.IB.LE

Dark Ecology Passes 2000 Citations

Hi--for those of you keeping score (none I hope!), this means that for books have over 2000, citations, with Hyperobjects leading the way, approaching 6000. There was a time a few years ago when "Queer Ecology," my essay, outranked several of my books, but that is no longer the case. "Queer Ecology" is now just below all the books that have been out for a while, apart from my earliest books on Shelley and spice. 

Dark Ecology is a very beautiful book and it's one of my deepest. I was a great honor to be a part of the Wellek lectures along with Derrida and Balibar and Cixous. 

Paradise Prequel

SECOND Printing of Hell Is Now Out

 We sold out the first printing in half a year, let's see what we can do with the second!