My focus on attempting to sketch out a political economy of pathogens, outbreaks and their containment and treatment has so far focused primarily on the link between the development and expansion of agribusiness. Here as pointed out by Wallace, we saw nothing less than collusion between business, multi-national organizations and governments to alter narratives regarding the prevalence of pathogens and their dispersion and even muddy waters regarding their origins within the industrial farming processes and the process of primitive accumulation. There are however other aspects of the economy I haven’t remarked on so far that are none the less vital...
I haven’t actually finished working on this piece yet but I thought I’d publish an early draft whilst I continue to refine it. You might also find it useful to watch the clip that inspired this piece. I’ll also preface this by saying I’m not by any stretch a fan of Tucker Carlson’s, his deeply xenophobic rhetoric couched in “conservative” concern is of really no interest to me at all. What does interest me is a particular point he made during a recent interview he had on the Ben Shapiro Show, which whilst covered his new book, highlighted a particular contradiction in...
On July 7, an open letter was published in Harper’s Magazine entitled a ‘A Letter On Justice and Open Debate’. Signed by a cast high-profile, authors, writers and columnists from across the political spectrum, although it should be noted, the signer’s appeared to be predominantly taken from the liberal media class, the letter warned of a slide towards “illberalism”, amidst a rise in “new moral attitudes” and “political commitments”. The letter has so far received a mixed reaction, with some arguing that the claim of ideological adherence does not ring true when considering the platforms that many of the people...
This entry is going to be more of a collage of half-explored thoughts and sketches looking back across the year(s) and hinting at which direction I expect this blog to proceed in in the near future. The history of White Like Heaven as a project goes back much further than this WordPress blog suggests. In 2011 I started a blog on the micro-blogging platform Tumblr, intended to curate a selection of quotes, art, music and video to function as a sort of mixed media journal. At the time the growing saturation of media seemed to lend itself to a project...
In 2010, Eugene Thacker of New York’s The New School, published the first instalment of his Horror of Philosophy series entitled In The Dust Of This Planet. By using the theme of horror as a starting point, Thacker intended to examine and explore the idea of a world becoming increasingly unthinkable, one regularly confronted with emerging pandemics, planetary disasters and looming above everything the eschaton. Whilst it would be somewhat hyperbolic to place Brexit within this category, I believe there might be something to be gained by examining how these themes might still have some relevance to the current conversation. In polls taken almost immediately after...
Regardless of the entirely reasonable cynicism, many on the far-left might have of the Labour Party as a vehicle for a post-capitalist transformation of the UK the general election results have had a profound impact on the left. At an event, I went to recently various radicals from anarchists to Trotskyists glumly reflected on the results. To many, it may have seemed like a refutation of one of the few attempts in recent political history to truly break with the neoliberal consensus and begin to develop a wider-reaching transformative economic and social project. Whilst I’d definitely concede to some degree...
“The Right is primarily after power, in the fight for power (which for example it does not possess in Poland today) it is prepared to advance any leftist slogans that can count on popular appear. Let us speak openly: contempt for ideology is the strength of the Right because it allows for greater flexibility in practice and for the arbitrary use of any facade that will facilitate the seizure of power” Leszek Kolakowski ‘The Concept of the Left’ With the anti-defamation league recently publishing an article conflating accelerationism with a particularly violent strand of an already reactionary ideology. It occurred to...
With the recent protests at the government shutdown effect on employment gaining increasing coverage, it seems like an increasingly salient time to question the nature of work in our lives. I should caveat this with whilst I am aware there’s a fairly clear connection between these protests seemingly organic nature and large dark money corporate networks however the fact that this can seemingly go unremarked on in many instances, is in itself is quite an interesting fact and I would suggest more broadly indicative of how work functions in advanced capitalist economies. With 22 million out of work in the United States...
“Brexit is only sort of mentioned once, very briefly in the novel but I think it’s fair to say at this point you know that Brexit is a feeling” Sam Byers In an interview about his new, technological thriller, Perfidious Albion, the author Sam Byers pondered briefly on the question of whether, or not, the novel could be described as a Brexit novel. whilst he was somewhat recalcitrant in acquiescing fully to this description, he did, however, suggest that Brexit is in many ways as much of a feeling as it is an event. My previous attempts in writing about Brexit...
A recent discussion on the intersection between pandemics and industrialization brought on by the Chinese collective Chuang’s excellent piece ‘Social Contagion: Microbiological Class Warfare’ encouraged me to look further into the circumstances in which COVID-19 and other resilient pathogens, arose from and the correlation with large scale agribusiness, high intensity industrialization and the capitalist mode of production. Similar to Chuang I’m not so much interested in engaging in the kind of vulgar Marxism which places the blame for all the worlds ills at the feet of capitalism, rather given the seemingly random nature of pandemics I’m more interested as to...
