Kassandra Jo Tomaras's Blog, page 4

Theories of Ideology and Sciences of Belief Systems

Around the time that I left the SPUSA, I conceived a non-fiction writing project which I think I will be laying aside. Tentatively entitled "The American Ideology," the aim would have been to try to identify a set of ideological presuppositions that would be both peculiar to citizens of the United States and nearly universal among them. I still think it would be a worthwhile project, but not necessarily the best use of my individual efforts.

Theories of ideology play approximately the role in...

Emancipatory Biopolitics

I have for some time (at minimum since November of last year) been saying that Marxism is past the point of provability, and thus no longer salvageable as an exemplar of "scientific socialism." In more short-hand forms I have taken to referring to myself as "post-Marxist," dissatisfied with that term, since it encompasses a wide range of political and philosophical manifestations, more than a few of which I dislike. What I have not had time to do, until now, is try to articulate what aspects...

Why I Am Resigning from the Socialist Party USA

Is there any genre of writing more tiresome than the leftist letter of resignation? The protagonist and narrator is always more sinned against than sinning, a paragon of good judgment mired in others' groupthink, and world-historical import of the decisive conflicts is inflated to a degree inversely proportional to the actual stakes of the disagreements. This will not be such a document. I almost decided not to write this, but since I did announce my decision to first join four years ago on t...

Aphorisms toward a History of American Marxism

A materialist history of ideas is not an oxymoron: It would be a history of the institutions that shape and propagate the ideas in question.

A visible difference between the histories of European and (U.S.) American Marxism: The predominant institutions to shape and propagate the former have been political parties, trade unions, and in moments of rebellion against the bureaucratization of the first two, collectives. The predominant institutions of the latter have been the academic circle, the...

Horse Dances and Goat Songs

I have been reading Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, in the newest version put out by University of Nebraska Press. I am glad to have encountered this text, an essential reference in any discussion of the history and spiritual practices of North American native peoples, in such a complete critical edition, as it helps clarify even to a casual reader which aspects of the text originate faithfully from the visions of Lakota warrior and medicine man Black Elk, and which are intrusions of Ne...

Asymmetry

The fiction blog Asymmetry has been at it for a couple of months, long enough that their aesthetic is coming clear. Today, they published a piece of psychological horror, of flash fiction length, entitled "Cynthia". I wrote it. But to get a sense of what they are up to, I would recommend reading the early stories contributed by editor Nathan Kamal, which are some of the more interesting pieces they have put out, and the ones that convinced me that this new endeavor would be a good spot for my...

Meta-Anthology 2016

Here I go again. This features short stories that appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, Best American Mystery Stories 2016, 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016. Because of the lag built into the editorial processes of those volumes, the stories in question were first published in the year 2015. I make no pretense of this comprising the best stories of that year. Just the stories that best exemplify what "anthologies" (from the Greek άνθος, "the...

Salvage

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

--T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," 430-432

The collapse of the Socialist Workers Party of Britain, by way of a sexual assault cover-up scandal, emitted several incandescent fragments, as leftist party implosions have and will. One is tempted to compare it to the supernova that overtook Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party thirty years ago, and to invoke the 18th Brumaire's...

Zionism Then (1933) and Now

The Zionist Organization of America, the most unrepentantly right-wing Zionist organization in this country, has unsurprisingly come out in defense of Trump's ban on Muslim immigrants and refugees. The ZOA, like the hard-right nationalist parties in Israel with which they align, are the ideological and organizational descendants of "Revisionist Zionism," led by Vladimir Jabotinsky.

On February 24, 1933, less than a month after the appointment of Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany, the Jüdisch...

My Top Ten Books of 2016

I read enough books in 2016 that were published that year--and enough of them were good--that it actually makes some meaningful sense for me to indicate which of those books were, for me, in the top ten. These are included without regard to genre, with the result that two are novels, five are single-author collections of short stories, one is a scholarly monograph, and two are single-author collections of essays.

1. Rabih Alameddine, The Angel of History

Despite the advances in anti-retroviral...