There are definite and significant overlaps between Pinchbeck's thought and mine regarding the left and religion. This is a great essay. Excerpt:
The philosopher Timothy Morton (Hyperobjects) sees in Žižek’s often-expressed “hostility” to Buddhism “a narcissistic woundedness so painful that it seems better to paint the whole world with its raw colors than examine itself, even for a second.” I think this is true.
Yes that's right. Thanks to the team at The Conversation my very popular class is now news!
I do hope, if you're near, that you can join me for an exclusive lecture and some book signing. It'll be at the Kemper Art Museum and my title is
THIS IS HELL: IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
It'll be at 5:30pm on May 6.
It will not be streamed.
Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Santiago Sierra: 52 Canvases Exposed to Mexico City’s Air, Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and director of the Cool America Foundation, will give a talk to celebrate the publication of their new book Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia University Press, 2024), which explores the relationship between religion and ecology in response to the climate crisis. Morton is the author of several books that bring together politics, art, and ecological studies to better understand how we coexist with one another and with non-humans.
A book signing will follow the talk. Purchase Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology in the Museum Shop.
Free and open to the public. Registration is requested.
This event is co-sponsored by WashU’s Program in Public Scholarship and is part of the Sam Fox School's Public Lecture Series.
American Sign Language interpretation can be arranged for public events upon request. This service is free, but we ask for two weeks' notice. Requests can be made by contacting kempereducation@wustl.edu.
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and director of the Cool America Foundation. They are the author of more than twenty books, including Hyperobjects, Dark Ecology, and Ecology Without Nature. Morton has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jeff Bridges, Olafur Eliasson, Susan Kucera, Adam McKay, and Jennifer Walshe.
...by Phuture, aka DJ Pierre, with whom I was talking at IMS last week on Ibiza.
Yes. One of my heroes. The reason I write so much of what I write. DJ Pierre, who turned an envelope filter on the Roland TR-303 baseline and changed music. Who made scary dance music, an innovation in itself: acid house.
I was on a panel with him at IMS Ibiza this week, having given the keynote to set the tone for the whole conference of about 1000 DJs, producers and musicians. Other panelists included DJ Madame Gandhi, who was brilliant, and Georgia Taglietti, who seemed to have read everything I had ever done, Maria May and Ruth Daniel, who both spoke plangently on the ethical and political dimensions of techno.
500 people, Syracuse University Art Museum. Thank you thank you to Edward Morris and Susannah Sayler!
I made MAGA. I did. Well not just me.
1. I can only take responsibility myself for what I see in the world.
2. People like me stopped talking about God to our students.
3. Ecological language is Old Testament revenge speak and Joe Truck Driver has something BETTER: Jesus loves him anyway.
4.
5. Seriously I never got the memo about not speaking about God from theory class, at which I am a bona fide alpha plus student. A never given grade at Oxford which I got for my theory exam. The top is alpha minus. Believe me I can destroy you using Hegelian Marxism. But I shan't. Because it sucks.
6. Until people like me talk forgiveness and mercy and Jesus we have ceded a HUGE area to the ultra right.
7. This is the main reason I wrote Hell. It's coming.
8. All the scientistic yelling has done jack lshit.
9. Scholars created the internet as the Wild West forgetting about the legacy of slavery and what would happen if there was a new Wild West.
The single fang of Björk and the molars of books versus the triple snaggleteeth of Hell LOLOL
I can do no better than send you extracts from an email I sent to my publisher and others:
Club night was amazing. Stefano [Cagol] came FROM VENICE (he had invited me to give the first ever Hell lecture, in the Dolomites on Zoom, last year). Ed came from Syracuse (yes, that Ed[ward Morris], from that lecture! [I gave one at Syracuse in February]). Paul [Miller aka DJ Spooky] was so great not only behind the decks but as an amazing host.
We sold so many copies of Being Ecological! Many many! It was lovely to sign them. There was a huge line.
Lecture was also amazing. I’ve done dialogues many times and that was the BEST. Paul was very enthused about the book and he knows everyone. He wants to launch it in NYC. He got Cornel and Slavoj together at the New School last week. He wants to hook up with Columbia etc etc. If anyone can make it work in NYC it’s Spooky.
So much lovely conversation. I have a thing about “I have a dream” [MLK] that is much more than even in the book now, I’m so happy with it. And I felt at home with the U of H Downtown students, many continuing ed, genuine, emotionally connected people, great students of all ages. There is now other stuff that isn’t in the book. I researched the original Greek in “But deliver us from evil”—it’s really really really powerful and nothing like what I was taught, ever.
I was TERRIFIED. Not since my first big keynote in 2005 have I been terrified like that, with cotton mouth. I talked about it and made people laugh. I read Thomas Merton’s “Moral Theology of the Devil” at the start. I did a really heavy powerpoint like I haven’t done since Hyperobjects. Ed [Morris], an artist who had persuaded me strongly to do a presentation, was impressed.
I handed out the 100 flyers for the book promotion at Brazos Bookstore!
It was such an honor and a privilege to launch the book this way.
Thanks to Andrew Melchior for sending me this incredibly interesting article about recordings of life in the soil.
It's gonna be so great to talk to the Blake Society!
Brazos Books is one of those local treasures that you just want to live in, hidden in a corner. It's like a bakery of books, that freshly baked book smell. They do readings and all kinds of events. And right now they're running a promotion. If you order the new book from them, they'll include a bookplate I've designed (based on the art of William Blake, with a lovely quotation that Blake genius Andy Wilson found), and more, signed by me.
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My fourth Hell lecture, the first specifically about Blake, the first ever for the Blake Society. I'm nervous!
There's still time to register. It's at 1:30pm my time, 7:30pm UK time.
Ten days from now, two world class DJs will spin Hell into existence (as it were LOL) along with celestial cocktails and more, at the acclaimed Avantgarden club in Houston. You can register free here.
