http://www.npr.org/2012/01/08/144797377/orphan-a-new-novel-imagines-life-in-north-korea
When North Korean President Kim Jong Il died last month, media outlets around the world tried to cover the story with very few facts. That's because there really are no clear facts about North Korea. It's arguably the most closed society in the world — run as a hereditary fiefdom by a family of dictators.
We're now on the third generation of that family, the newly installed Kim Jong Un. Journalists and writers are rarely granted access to North Korea, and when they are, they're escorted by official minders and see mostly what the regime wants them to see — leaving a whole lot to the imagination.
That's where Adam Johnson comes in. His new novel is called The Orphan Master's Son. In it, Johnson uses his own imagination to reveal a more nuanced picture of what life for North Koreans may be like.
In it, Johnson uses his own imagination to reveal a more nuanced picture of what life for North Koreans may be like.
just.... stare at that sentence for a little while..
im gonna be mondo pretentious after this semester
aerdil posted:
deadken u should appreciate this, here's one of my textbooks this semester: "Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory"
im gonna be mondo pretentious after this semester
lmao awesome. my tutor for my History & Historicism class is mondo marxisms i think. should be kewl. education roxxx!!!
stegosaurus posted:
not strictly related to books, but after a lengthy apprenticeship on goodreads merely being allowed to 'follow' tom's reviews I have now, as of yesterday evening, been upgraded to full 'friend' status. I would like to take this opportunity to thank, first of all tom, secondly my wonderful plural wives, thirdly god and lastly all of you at the rhizzone.
ya i just noticed i had some outstanding friend requests.
swampman posted:sosie posted:
you're all less than scumAs someone with a healthy appreciation for the many roles scum plays in our solar system, I take that as a compliment.
recently seen on reza-chans wall:
babyfinland posted:mistersix posted:babyfinland posted:
finished Proncializing Europe. excellent book. will write a reviewi think i have that sitting around in a pdf somewhere, i should read it. you may be interested in this if you have not seen it yet, the last day of a series of classes zizek did in 2010, on that day specifically focusing on that book http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009/06/slavoj-zizek-masterclass-day-5-notes-towards-a-definition-of-communist-culture/
I googled "zizek chakrabarty" and i guess in zizeks most recent book he offers a pretty good summary of a component of the argument: http://books.google.com/books?id=tjsiqfZo3zwC&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=zizek+chakrabarty&source=bl&ots=IuWB-kuECw&sig=vQ0Z5AriCV-mpeuZhdnpfXfmYiA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=55QKT6GvFuGpiALW9qyWCQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
yes skimming that it appears to be verbatim from the class in places. not surprising given his usual methods of writing
its pretty good, these guys taught english in china during the 60s and so witnessed it first hand and shit. imo there are a lot of similarities in certain respects to what is going on in venezuela, with a senior leadership and mass movements reinforcing each other in holding a state structure to account. And shit
i also read a biography of huey p long, which was some hilarious shit A+ am gonna get other biographies of him, and a book on serbs called The Serbs
the way it is framed by many leftists now is that the cultural revolution was an attempt by the left-mao faction to displace the right-soviet-line faction. which is true to an extent. but like it is pretty obvious that the cultural revolution in itself gave far-rightists all the ammunition they needed to move the country to the right, because of how disastrous a failure the cultural revolution was. maybe if the country had sort of plodded along with a semi-wary right-soviet line it might still be semi-socialist. who knows.
i guess the chavez approach is doing that kind of thing before you have a party-state, rather than after... or something....
getfiscal posted:
there is a canadian writer that went to china in the 1960s and accidentally informed on her friends. like she said something in passing to a handler about how one of them wasn't a dedicated communist or something. anyway people troll her about it constantly. i went to a talk of hers years ago and like sure enough someone was like hey jan wong ummm how does it feel to snitch on your friends and ruin their lives and she was like really upset and pleading about it lol
is that episode described in red china blues? ive forgotten most of the content of that book
shennong posted:
is that episode described in red china blues? ive forgotten most of the content of that book
i think so yeah
getfiscal posted:
but like it is pretty obvious that the cultural revolution in itself gave far-rightists all the ammunition they needed to move the country to the right, because of how disastrous a failure the cultural revolution was.
do you mean the obvious point that it failed to achieve its aims, or do you mean that it was misguided in its aims. i'm confused because monkey smashes heaven has taught me that the gpcr was the pinnacle of human progress.
gyrofry posted:
do you mean the obvious point that it failed to achieve its aims, or do you mean that it was misguided in its aims. i'm confused because monkey smashes heaven has taught me that the gpcr was the pinnacle of human progress.
sort of that it couldn't win on badiouian terms. like if the point was to transcend the socialist state, what could that possibly mean? was china developed enough that it could transcend the state-form entirely? badiou isn't an anarchist and doesn't believe that. so is it that some sort of commune-state should have been formed, just a loose federation that was planned at the local level through participatory forms and such? was china really ready for that, and wouldn't have other countries simply picked them apart?
mao realized that and tried to target the "5%" of politicians that were bad. but do you basically shut down growth for a decade just to weed out 5% of politicians? MSH explicitly says oh yeah it was actually "95% bad" but what could that possibly mean? kill off 95% of state officials? i mean it all seems like nonsense.
i mean you can go "oh well everyone just should have agreed to far-left democratic planning and a commune-state" but the entire point of having a party and state and such is that people don't agree on that going in because of material problems and class divisions and ideological attacks and such. that's why anyone just sitting around thinking will probably come up with a sort of far-left liberalism or anarchism without reading a history book, but anarchism is wrong.
discipline posted:
Oh my G-d now the author is accusing Foucault of not feeling any empathy for poor Herculine Barbin. Seems this author has never read anythign else by Foucault................
As with most sensible people, perhaps one taste was enough
aerdil posted:
In it, Johnson uses his own imagination to reveal a more nuanced picture of what life for North Koreans may be like.
just.... stare at that sentence for a little while..
"And it is through coincidence that our orphan, Pak Jun Do, comes to encounter the American Navy out on the Sea of Japan. And here he gets the first look at an alternative way of being a human being. And the doors opened to a new possibility for the second half of the book."
the american navy, teaching brainwashed commies everywhere waht it means to truly be human..
this author is one of the most bourgeois dudes i've heard speak in quite awhile ahahah stanford has so many goddamn professors like this
Lykourgos posted:discipline posted:
Oh my G-d now the author is accusing Foucault of not feeling any empathy for poor Herculine Barbin. Seems this author has never read anythign else by Foucault................As with most sensible people, perhaps one taste was enough
thats a really good point, i never thought about it that way. thanks for your insightful comment
Edited by sosie ()
of course, all those of us confrabugalted by fuzz from the rand machine knew that we and her were never in any harm.
She asked, "but what about when you talk about how much you despiose the cops and want to physically void them?"
"Whell," I said, "Our idea about changing society isn't simply quantitative, as you well know. You float ever and ever higher from me and the cameras, but that's not what this is about."
"But qualitative change we mean precisely that cops stay right where they are, they do edactly what they always dud, just for our side instead of theirs'!"
a n imbecile fuzz swatted a sleeping child floating through the empty abyss of its mind, and we all laughed with a kind of amptiness, recognizing, at least on my part, that humor actually dies with the advent of true love, and that its a fair trade