diacritics Interview

 ...with Robert Oventile. I've written for diacritics and grew up with them as a young scholar. I like the interview a lot. It's the first one I did on the book Hell. 

Okay This Is Really Bugging Me Now It's Coming Around Again

 There is an "intellectual" trope that goes: "I know something you don't know: rural people feel alienated and we should listen to them." I am deeply concerned about every word and nuance of this trope. 

It's emerging again as it did in 2016, just in time for the election. 

Authors, can you at least see how this trope can be used by the ultra right.

Part of what is so disturbing about the trope is the “this is a totally new take on things that you simply must pay attention to, it’s the key!”…the fact that one has read this amazing insight about a thousand times already.

Another aspect is, of course, the fact that “rural” is not very subtle code for “white” with a lot of extra bells and whistles: some kind of disturbing fusion of ignorance and authenticity, like the bigoted old Hobbits in the Ivy Bush Tavern.

I was in the doctor’s office in Davis, CA, when a surly teenager’s phone went off. He had the studied appearance of a “rural” person, and his ring tone was “I like a chicken fry, / Cold beer on a Friday night”…which for me is the idiotic menace of fascist enjoyment in two simple phrases.

I understand about the need to talk to the part of the brain where the memes are wired in, the part that processes 50 billion bits per second as opposed to the frontal cortex to which the left is keen to craft its messages.

...but you're not talking to that part. You're talking to the frontal lobe of a left wing reader. This isn't reaching "rural" people. This is a threat, whether you meant for it to be a threat or not.

Have You Read me on the Millennium Falcon Yet (It's Really Utopian)

I Wrote a Book on the Millennium Falcon. It's Really Good. And You Should Read It. by Timothy Morton

Star Wars as Jedi mind trick: a rainbow connection to socialism.

Read on Substack

I Finally Tell You the Meaning of Life

 

The Meaning of Life Is…that It Has No Point: Decolonizing Christianity by Roberto Che Espinoza, PhD

Guest Post by Timothy Morton

Read on Substack

Neopaganism! Timothy Snyder YES

 Oh yes oh yes oh YES. Likewise I have been reading Chesterton to think on this precise issue. 

Abjuration

 

Hurricane Beryl gave them the cover they needed. In its aftermath, the police cars had left. Police had positioned cars during fundamentalist protests a few weeks ago. Protests of a magnificent statue by Shahzia Sikander at the University of Houston. 

They beheaded the statue and made lynching-postcard-style videos about it. 

This is what I did in response.

If You've Been Following Me for a While, You'll See at Once Why These Reviews Are So Touching

 The American Academy of Religion one, by Mark Porter, really really sees the book. 

And this one, by Chris Jerrey on Medium, is also an incredible act of seeing. 

Use CUP20 as a discount code when you buy the book from Columbia direct. 

William Blake, The Reunion of the Soul and the Body

Future Fossils Podcast on Hell (EPIC 2 1/4 hours)

My New Substack Post

Mysticism and Totalitarianism by Timothy Morton

Why The Current Moment Requires You to Step It Up, in Your Head

Read on Substack