Monthly Archives: November 2014

Low Theory

I’m reading David Graeber’s pamphlet Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), and ran across the following provocative passage:

Even more than High Theory, what anarchism needs is the might be called Low Theory: a way of grappling with those real, immediate questions that emerge from a transformative project. Mainstream social science actually isn’t much help here, because normally in mainstream social science this sort of thing is generally classified as “policy issues,” and no self-respecting anarchist would have anything to do with these (Graeber 2004, Loc. 89).

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Art of Critique

Read an A.O. Scott’s New York Times essay this morning: Is Our Art Art Equal to the Challenges of Our Times? (Nov. 27, 2014).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/arts/is-our-art-equal-to-the-challenges-of-our-times.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region&_r=0

And I found it nauseating. Scott is probably my least-loved liberal critic. His commentary has a way of being preachy, terminally middle class, blandly questioning and nostalgic.

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