What in the hell …

Damn it. (more…)

Some notes’n'quote to return to later.

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As I’ve mentioned, I’m in the throes of a move to the discipline of history. I like this decision and am glad I’ve made it (among other things I feel like I’ve gotten a taste of thinking with archival sources and it’s REALLY NEAT). At the same time, I like a lot of the folk and type of folk I used to be more engaged with on a regular basis before, and I like the types of conversations I used to have, or at least aspects of those conversations and the issues in them. Now, I don’t really have time and won’t for a while, but if I did, I’d really like to have a conversation about the claims made about immaterial labor and so forth among folk who take post-operaismo seriously about history. (That’s a bad word choice: I take post-operaismo seriously, though maybe I didn’t take that one new Negri book so seriously because I think it was pretty bad [actually, no: I did take the book seriously. After I finished it I wished I’d had that time back and decided that the book was not worth taking seriously in the way that had]. The distinction here isn’t between those who do and don’t take it seriously - let’s not have such simplistic binaries (ha!), rather the issue is what insights are and are not present in that work.)

It seems to me that the post-operaismo stuff involves implied views or assumptions about what it takes to be a prior era. I’d really like for some of those folk to write out those views more clearly and advocate for them, as I think they’d be easier to dismiss and would make the assertions they make of radical break in the present less egregious (not to say there’ s nothing different, rather the post-op stuff doesn’t offer enough for the differences in the present, as well as the continuities). Sergio Bologna says someplace that the fordist era is still worth studying for reasons along these lines [NOTE TO SELF: FIND THIS REFERENCE]. It doesn’t seem likely this will happen, though. A second option would be to take some of the stuff they see as new about the present and look back to see to what degree they are and aren’t precedented. Two such avenues: immaterial labor, and modes of social organization or political organization and practice which are multitude-like. Another possibly: comparing Marx on real subsumption with the post-operaisti on real subsumption and offering other versions thereof. And another: looking for similar theoretical moves - for instance, I think Thompson had an aleatory sensibility. All of these latter also would involve me doing more work, which makes them more fair, as opposed to the first which would be simply making them other folk do some work.

And now I gotta run. Over and out.

As I’ve said before, I recently made a disciplinary transition to history. Or rather, I’ve recently changed programs. I certainly don’t feel that I’m finished transitioning here at all, substantively. This is tough for me in a variety of ways, but really exciting. Along the way I find myself alternating between two responses to theoretical sort of work like I used to do (pretty much exclusively). On the one hand I find it more exciting than ever, and on the other I find it more exasperating than ever. Both responses are fed by my having more empirical evidence now (well, a little anyway), and both are mostly driven by how I’m feeling about what I’m currently doing. Part of getting excited about theory stuff again is wanting some level of ability to make credible claims - I know way more about certain parts of Marxist philosophy than I do about any of U.S. cultural history, for instance - and so reaching for what is still more familiar terrain; part of it is wanting to be able to do higher level work, so to speak - I’m still acquiring a lot of historical basics with history such that the work I can do there is going to be much less interesting for others etc. Part of getting exasperated with theory is feeding my interest in doing historical work, especially when it gets slow and tiresome. (more…)

But first - listen to this great idea my brother and I had! Two actually.

One: minty peru!

This is a running joke at ours. In the movie Better Off Dead there’s a scene where the protagonist’s parents host a dinner for the neighbors including their French exchange student. The mother serves a dinner with French (pronounced “Fraunch”) dressing, French bread, and so on. And to drink, perrier, which she pronounces “Peru.” I’ve been drinking a lot of peru myself (not technically perrier, we drink a cheaper brand), as I’m cutting out soda as much as possible. Drinking fizzy water feels more like a drink worth having than plain water. I particularly like it with a bit of frozen fruit as an ice cube. Last night we stuffed a mint tea bag in a bottle of plain peru and let it sit for an hour or so while we watched TV. It was delicious.

For dinner we had sloppy joe’s with baked beans on the side. I make a decent veggie sloppy joe. Here’s what I do:

Cook up some chopped bell pepper and chopped onion. While that’s cooking take about a cup or a bit more than that of TVP (textured vegetable protein). Boil water. Pour it over the TVP in the cup, so the water just covers the TVP. Cover the cup to keep the heat in. When the TVP is done, throw it into the pan with the veggies. Add a can of manwich sauce. Add a lot of red pepper flakes or hot sauce to taste, and barbeque sauce to taste.

The baked beans is just a can of veggie baked beans with hot sauce, mustard, and BBQ sauce to taste.

Here’s the great idea:

Take pita bread, bake it a bit to take out some of the moisture. Then treat the pita like lasagna noodles. Layer the pitas in a pan. put sloppy joe on top. Then layer of pita. Then layer of baked beans. Then layer of pita. Bake.

Planned side dish=macaroni and cheese. If that goes well then next time we’re going to put the mac and cheese on top of the top layer of pita and bake it that way.

Prediction: awesome.

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