Saturday, June 16, 2012

Summer Days

I'm reading quite a few things at the moment. I'm reading Polemics by Alain Badiou, which is basically a collection of his articles on a variety of issues from parliamentary democracy to islamic head scarves to the wars in iraq and serbia. (I dip in and out of that one.) I've also started reading Beyond a Boundary by CLR James which is supposed to be the greatest book ever written on any sport and is a very appropriate read given the current series between England and the West Indies. Oh and finally got around to Midnight's Children. It was good (of course) but I thought some of the metaphors and allegorical imagery was too on-the-nose.

I've also read the following articles by Zizek:

A review of Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n21/slavoj-zizek/attempts-to-escape-the-logic-of-capitalism

and


With regard to the latter, I don't entirely agree with his assertion that "democratic mechanisms are part of a bourgeois-state apparatus that is designed to ensure the undisturbed functioning of capitalist reproduction." I think this overly simplifies the role of the legal system as a democratic mechanism i.e. that it merely protects commercial interests. This is, of course, not always the case. 

17.06.2012
Birmingham

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