DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

Race, Capitalism, Punishment

If you’re actually interested in race and criminal justice in our society, a good place to begin is with two of Manning Marable’s awesome books: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America and Race, Reform and Rebellion. The first was written in 1983 but revised and updated in the early 2000s.

If anyone has other books they really like, post them via reply. Reblogging is better because it’ll distribute a useful and growing list that we can all talk about. Let’s share a list of good reading material. Add the books to the list below.

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Manning Marable. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.

Manning Marable. Race Reform and Rebellion.

deathpenaltyinfo.org (This site is likely experience incredibly high traffic right now and so will often appear to be down. Wait 24 hours. I’ve been trying to access it all morning from Korea and can’t.)

About that Farber book and Kerouac, in my bag 1990-1991

I remember I read Farber’s “Student as Nigger” before I enrolled in college. I bought it and On the Road from a used bookstore in 90 or 91 and carried both around with a few other books for a while. I quickly lost interest in the Kerouac, which I found fun to read but didn’t trust at all. I expected Sal and Dean to get it on, but what sex was there was with young Latinas. Hardly transgressive. I thought, even then and in Denver where I understood the attraction, what a fucking white-power jackass Kerouac must have been—or how naive he was about women—or what a sexist hater. I was young enough still to be influenced by misogyny, classism and  racism of my upringing. Not my parents, but my neighborhoods, schools, cities, churches. I was learning how to speak for myself about how I felt, learning how to defy culture for my work. Saying no to Kerouac was a big deal for me. Not a popular view of On the Road, but I took one look around me and my friends to see who else was reading Kerouac and quickly decided I didn’t want to be in that crowd. I was discovering Charles Mingus anyway and he set me straight. Burroughs was my man, too. I was still in his clutches, obsessed with his novels.

Farber’s essay kicked ass. I loved the incendiary language meant to piss (white) people off. I loved the materialism. I loved how earnest it was. I carried the book for a long time. I left On the Road at home.

dagLists: Reading and To Read

Currently reading two authors I don’t like to read. Unfortunately, I can’t stop because I want to write something on the growing use of “meritocracy” in public discourse. I’ll need to be able to refer to Hayek and Mises. As I reread their essential theory, I’m reminded why I felt compelled to take to the streets in my twenties: to flier, to protest, to organize, to march. Their work is so brilliantly disingenuous and manipulative that I want to find their graves and piss on them.

Exaggeration, you think. No way. Economics aside—all the debates with Keynes and the numbers and the predictions—these two wrote the most strangled theories to in support of their economic positions. Evil geniuses, and in the worst way.

Hayek. The Constitution of Liberty.

Hayek. Law, Legislation and Liberty.

Eugene Heath. “Spontaneous Social Order and Liberalism” from NYU Journal of Law & Liberty.  Heath edited the anthology I used in my Business Ethics course while teaching at Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado. (Biggest city campus in the United States. I miss it.) Morality and the Market: Ethics and Virtue in the Conduct of Business is a very good book for Ethics courses because it contains plenty of discussion about the market and markets. Most students have no clue about what a market is, where the ideas we have about markets come from. Highly suggested. Only set-back is that it’s expensive.  Is it even in print anymore?

Mises. Human Action.

Mises. The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.

And on my want to read list:

Alfie Kohn. Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling. This looks like a worthy addition to the growing dissent against current educational policy trends like Race to the Top and in the tradition of Friere. Should be engaging reading. I’ve been writing a lot about pedagogy lately, so I need this book. Here’s Kohn’s homepage. Here’s Kohn’s wiki ed page. I agree with Kohn on many points, but am rather put off by his implementation of capitalist rhetoric in his arguments. He loves to talk about reason and innovation. Some have labeled him as a radical libertarian. I don’t know about that, but I’m critical of any pedagogy that is in service of capitalism. That said, his ideas are worthwhile in the current discourse as one possible form of opposition to the stupid Michelle Rhee/Arne Duncan plans.

Buy it from the link above and support Majority Report.  And listen to the author and Sam Seder here.

A little Hegel in our legal theory? Why not.

Not the biggest fan of Hegel’s sense of Totality, but am interested in how this theory of punishment might be applied to the way we punish citizens.

This author is looking to rehabilitate Hegel’s retributivist reputation.  Let’s see how he does.

daglists: What am I reading today?

Same as He Ever Was. Paul Krugman, New York Times.

Folks, he’s always been like this. The image of Ryan as a thoughtful, serious conservative never had any basis in reality. The original “roadmap” was just as nonsensical as the new proposal; the Ryan-led attack on health reform was crude nonsense.

Student dons KKK Hood at School Assembly. Joanna @ The Intersection of Madness & Reality.

Recently, a high school student in Utah was accused of racism after wearing a pillowcase over his head during a spirit assembly at Alta High School. The pillowcase looked similar to KKK hood, and when student Larz Cosby (who is described as “multi-ethnic”) demanded that it be removed, the hooded teen taunted the concerned Cosby and yelled “white power.” Cosby then removed the boys hood and threw it to the ground. He later blogged about the incident, and reported it to authorities at the school.

Alta High administrators placed on paid leave during investigation. Amanda Verzello, KSL.com.

The principal and vice principal of Alta High School have been placed on paid leave during the investigation of multiple “serious incidents” uncovered by a district investigation, according to a school employee.

Prompted by a March 18 incident where a student wore a white pointed hood to a school spirit bowl that some felt resembled the infamous Ku Klux Klan symbol, the Canyons School District has uncovered evidence of other “serious incidents” that have occurred at the school over the past year, according to district spokeswoman Jennifer Toomer-Cook.

Dissents of the Day. Andrew Sullivan, The Dish @ The Daily Beast.

The in-tray is still bulging with fury over Paul Ryan. I find the arguments bracing - and in themselves evidence that Ryan’s proposal has already helped move the debate to more earnest grounds.

Cathie Black and the Privatisation of Education. Daniel Denvir, The Guardian.

Cathleen Black, the multimillionaire publishing executive with absolutely no background in education, has resigned as New York City schools chancellor. Her departure is a rare setback for a corporate-funded education reform movement that lauds standardised tests, non-union teachers and private management as the solution to the problems of public education.

dagLists: What am I reading? What are you Reading?

The three books I’ve been focused on over the last month:

Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space.

Karl Marx. Capital, Volume One.

Slavoj Zizek. Violence.

These are re-reads for me.  And I’m enjoying the reading very much.

I recently finished Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and hated it. My copy of Moby Dick has been eyeing me lately.  I love that novel.  After tolerating Franzen’s bullshit for a bit, I think I might dive back into that for respite from the theory.

If I could assign you some homework, it’d be Part 4, Chapter 13, of Marx’s Capital, entitled “Co-operation”.  You can read it, too, if you like.