In the mid-1950s, French theorist Jacques Lacan had the prescience to proclaim that the calculating machine is “far more dangerous for man than the atom bomb.” (Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book, W. W. Norton: London and New York, 1988). This enigmatic remark about the computer seems…

https://www.islesoftheleft.org/unmarked-graves-and-a-marble-knot-memory-and-migration-in-malta/

https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/en/articles/downward-spiral-euphoric-conspiracy

On the Obsolescence of the Bourgeois Novel in the Anthropocene How can cultural workers respond to climate change? Can the cultural work of responding to climate change be a global conversation? In his latest addition to his General Intellects collection of critical appreciations , McKenzie Wark…

‘There’s a long gap between wanting to do something and it being remotely sensible’ ... James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones.Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian More than 1,300 writers including Kerry Hudson, David Nicholls , Sally Rooney, Michael Rosen and Val McDermid have backed a…

The assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia drew the attention of both the local and international media. Most reporters connected the murder to her work, though they highlighted different aspects of it. The BBC , Economist , Guardian , and Washington Post recognized the global…

By the 1830’s, the ‘proud and overbearing Maltese’ of the first decade of British rule had turned into a submissive people who cringed before their colonial overlords and had internalized, even at a bodily level, a complete dependency on them. by David Edward Zammit Collage: Isles of the Left O ver…

It was through their ‘tolerance’ of Carnival and other Catholic rituals, that the British aimed to freeze the flow of time in order to actively prevent social change from taking place in Malta. by David Edward Zammit Image: Sketches of Life at Malta. Carnival Time: Mummers Going Through the Ceremony…

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Accel­er­a­tion­ism pushes towards a future that is more mod­ern, an altern­at­ive mod­ern­ity that neo­lib­er­al­ism is inher­ently unable to gen­er­ate. 01. INTRODUCTION: On the Conjuncture 1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a new…

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.de/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html?m=1

The message of many things in America is “Like this or die.” — George W.S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context , 1980 The Seeing Robot The camera is a small, white, curvilinear monolith on a pedestal. Inside its smooth casing are a microphone, a speaker, and an eye-like lens. After I set it up on…

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3169-communal-luxury-kristin-ross

Haunting presence ... Jacques Derrida, who coined the term hauntology, in a still from the documentary Derrida Hauntology is probably the first major trend in critical theory to have flourished online. In October 2006, Mark Fisher - aka k-punk - described it as "the closest thing we have to a…

Science and Technology Environment Our new issue, on the housing crisis and capitalism, is coming soon. Get a discounted subscription today. Abolish the Billionaire Class Luke Savage A Plan to Win Socialism In America Peter Gowan Wielding the Imperial Presidency Meagan Day Ilhan Omar Is Not…

Ne produis rien. Change de sexe. Deviens le maître de ton professeur. Sois l’élève de ton étudiant. Sois l’amant de ton chef. Sois l’animal de ton chien. Tout ce qui marche sur deux pattes est un ennemi. Prends soin de ton infirmière. Entre dans une prison et rejoue la scène centrale de la Ferme des…

http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/why-marvel-and-other-hollywood-films-have-such-bland-music.html

JD Lasica Cambridge Analytica & Facebook Facebook may face multi-billion dollar fine for Cambridge Analytica scandal In nearly 500 pages of answers, Facebook stonewalls some senators’ questions Cambridge Analytica files for bankruptcy amidst “siege” of negative attention Cambridge Analytica shuts…

Today is the publication anniversary of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses ; it is also Joyce’s birthday. Elsewhere on Literary Hub, I took a look at the very different responses other famous writers have had to Joyce’s most notorious work, but what about your everyday bookworm? Turns out, regular readers…

On the suggestion of my primary supervisor, I have been taking a look at Jacques Lacan and Lacanian theory as it pertains to critical theory and literary criticism. To someone outside my academic field, this might seem slightly odd, but once you start to read into the subject, it begins to make a…

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2017-12-25/blogs-opinions/The-Lord-s-Prayer-the-Maltese-Semitic-version-and-its-historical-origins-6736182976

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics. Exhausted through overwork, incapable of productive activity, I found myself drifting through social networks, feeling my depression and exhaustion increasing. ‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting…

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-blathering-superego-at-the-end-of-history/

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/21/privatizing-public-services-trump-democracy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Instapaper

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The Verso Prize for Cultural and Critical Studies is a new prize for the top student graduating from Birkbeck’s MA Cultural and Critical Studies . The inaugural prize has been awarded to student Neil Fitzgerald, for submitted work that was described as “truly exceptional” by the external examiner,…

December 2013 Image: Killoffer, "La Manif," 2009, Graphite on Paper48 x 63 cm, Courtesy of Galerie Anne Barrault This month we're showcasing the sparkling innovations in form and literature produced by the members of the Oulipo. The Paris-based literary collective explores how literature might arise…

A digital library would make knowledge, culture and literary achievement available to anyone with internet access. Photograph: Getty Images/Getty Images/Dex Image S cholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written. Then, in 2004, Google announced that…

As diplomats gather at the United Nations in New York this week to consider the future of global drug policy, one Portuguese official, João Goulão, will likely command attention that far outstrips his country's influence in practically any other area. That's because 16 years ago, Portugal took a…

Igor Mordatch is working to build machines that can carry on a conversation. That's something so many people are working on. In Silicon Valley, chatbot is now a bona fide buzzword . But Mordatch is different. He's not a linguist. He doesn't deal in the AI techniques that typically reach for…

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-hidden-systems-at-work-behind-gentrification

Robert Maniscalco Dylann Roof (second from left) during the initial stage of jury selection for his trial for the murder of nine worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, September 2016 In early January, three weeks into the federal trial of Dylann…

We should just come out and say it — Donald Trump has a thing for Eastern European women. I remember Trump’s first wife Ivana well — Polish magazines praised her, and thousands of Dynasty-watching post-Communist women, who saw their aspirations reflected in the Czech immigrant and successful…

An armed guard stands at the entrance of the Survival Condo Project, a former missile silo north of Wichita, Kansas, that has been converted into luxury apartments for people worried about the crackup of civilization. Photograph by Dan Winters for The New Yorker Steve Huffman, the…

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/trumpism-and-the-davos-man/

When I hear other people talking about procrastination, I find myself getting proprietorial: surely their fleeting pauses are as nothing to mine. Procrastination is the main way I express anxiety and depression, if I can use these medicalised, dignifying terms. It’s franker to say that I put things…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?&version=readinglist&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=c-column-middle-span-region&region=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region

Debate: The “Latin Empire” should strike back Detail from the 2nd century Portonaccio sarcophagus, representing a battle between Romans and Germans. 26 March 2013 – Libération (Paris) Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has revived the idea of a union of Southern European countries, a proposal first…

Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in October, 2016.Photograph: Getty Images B elow the medieval citadel in Kazan, two vast frozen rivers turn the landscape white. On a Saturday afternoon there are a few hardy locals shuffling through the icy sludge to take selfies against the mosque, the…