Malcolm

Malcolm rated a book it was amazing On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis by Walter D. Mignolo	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mignolo is among the most high profile of Central and South American scholars working with notions of decoloniality in English. Much of his work has been instrumental in introducing the ideas associated with the theoretical and praxis based work that ...more
May 19, 2019 09:33AM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of On Decoloniality by Walter D. Mignolo. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — On Decoloniality by Walter D. Mignolo <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Malcolm wants to read LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 13, 2019 10:41PM · like
Malcolm wants to read The Disobedient Kids and other Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales by Božena Němcová	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 11, 2019 12:58PM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Disobedient Kids and other Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales by Božena Němcová. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Disobedient Kids and other Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales by Božena Němcová <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Malcolm rated a book liked it The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play: Play as Leisure, Leisure as Play by Robert A. Stebbins	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Robert Stebbins quite properly has a reputation as a major figure in the sociology of leisure, and as the developer and leading advocate of a model known as the Serious Leisure Perspective that builds a powerful organising frame for making sense of l ...more
May 11, 2019 12:55PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play by Robert A. Stebbins. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play by Robert A. Stebbins <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Malcolm rated a book really liked it Poison or Protect (Delightfully Deadly, #1) by Gail Carriger (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
There are few more engaging or entertaining places than Gail Carriger’s alt-Victoria England: a little bit supernatural, a little bit excessive romance and an awful lot steampunk. In this short outing we find ourselves some years after the demise of ...more
May 09, 2019 11:03PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Malcolm rated a book really liked it Kynship (The Way of Thorn and Thunder, #1) by Daniel Heath Justice	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The Everland, a place where the old ways hold sway although not unchallenged, is facing its most serious challenge yet as Humans from the surrounding areas close in and the Folk must consider an offer to relocate. As the leaders of the various Folk g ...more
May 09, 2019 09:54PM · 1 like · like · see review
Malcolm has read Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America by M Ann Hall Read 2 times	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Malcolm rated a book really liked it Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1) by April Daniels (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Danny Tozer, stuck in a body he doesn’t recognise, regularly heads off to malls across town to buy nail polish – painting her toes are the only thing she can do to feel she is the 15 year old she is. On one such outing, having sneaked into a quiet co ...more
May 05, 2019 08:16AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Dreadnought by April Daniels. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Dreadnought by April Daniels <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Malcolm rated a book really liked it The Silk, the Shears and Marina; or, About Biography by Irena Vrkljan	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Towards the end of these elegant, elegiac, poetic novellas Irena Vrkljan writes the yearning of all writers: “Marina is preserved in what is written. There are no comparisons. That is life.” Both pieces turn around versions of Vrkljan’s fictionalised ...more
Apr 24, 2019 06:41PM · 2 likes · like · see review

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On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis
by Walter D. Mignolo

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Mignolo is among the most high profile of Central and South American scholars working with notions of decoloniality in English. Much of his work has been instrumental in introducing the ideas associated with the theoretical and praxis based work that Mignolo is among the most high profile of Central and South American scholars working with notions of decoloniality in English. Much of his work has been instrumental in introducing the ideas associated with the theoretical and praxis based work that is developing in and around what is increasingly being seen as a coloniality/modernity/decoloniality nexus to analysts and activists grappling with experiences of the colonial and indigenous worlds. Catherine Walsh is less well-known – much of her work is only in Spanish – and although less high profile in the Anglo-phone world she has number of crucial pieces dealing with praxis around pedagogy and wider political struggles. Between them they are the ideal pair to explore, outline and extend notions of decoloniality in launching a new book series.

The volume works well as a way into the ideas and practices in and around decoloniality, as an extension of some of the recent developments in the field, and as a dialogue demonstrating the diversity and differences the approach encourages and celebrates. They do so by co-authoring but writing separate sections. Walsh’s opening section begins from praxis exploring the ways that theory and practice interact and inter-relate in and through on-the-ground activism, asking the question ‘decoloniality for what’ in an effort to get beyond a focus on resistance to highlight goals, objectives and change. In this, from the outset, she explicitly poses the problem of the meaning and content of pluriversal decoloniality and decolonial pluriversality as terms often invoked in decolonial outlooks. Her way of answering this is to draw on work by Adolo Albán Achinte to propose the notion of re-existence, which following Albán she sees as “the redefining and re-signifying of the conditions of dignity”. This seems a powerful notion in exploring the goals and objectives of decolonial praxis, be it in communities, in engagements with the state or in other settings, contexts and struggles. It also has increasingly seemed to me that this notion of ‘dignity’ is a vital as aspect of contemporary political struggle (and one that I have been discussing with friends and fellow analysts in our respective areas of cultural analysis and practice as we wrangle with the ‘so what?’ question, the ‘what is the goal?’ point of our work and the issues we explore).

Walsh explores this notion of decoloniality for what and of re-existence through specific political struggles – the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico, the recognition of plurinationality and intercultural conditions in the Ecuadoran constitution and other struggles. In this she explores the limits of action, the character of standpoint epistemologies and the links between theory, practice and praxis in and on the ground. This is a rich discussion of decoloniality in practice reminding us that where many of us have come to the ideas through theoretical texts, the nexus of coloniality/modernity/decoloniality is inseparable and has material existence beyond the realm of theory and analysis. In many ways, Walsh’s contribution reminds of the political dictum (often attributed to Lenin) that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice and without revolutionary practice there can be no revolutionary theory: praxis is key to grasping conceptual approaches. A key strength of Walsh’s chapters is that we do not need to know much (if anything) about the specific struggles to get the point – she explains and contextualises to build a compelling case.

While Walsh’s discussion begins on the ground with struggles against both coloniality as an ideology or mind-set, Mignolo’s in some ways starts out where she left off with a clear outline of decoloniality-as-praxis and a distinction between colonialism as relations on the ground and coloniality as way of seeing/thinking/maintaining Power to explore the ideological basis of the coloniality/modernity/decoloniality nexus. Here he very carefully lays out the debates to date and explores ways in which they might be extended or developed, drawing on the notion that liberation must be won by the oppressed – and given he is talking about a struggle at the level of ideas where ontology is the product of epistemology, he makes much of Bob Marley’s reworking of the Garveyite notion that “none but ourselves can free our minds”.

As we should expect from Mignolo, this is rich and multi-layered discussion highlighting coloniality’s essential, foundational, relation with modernity to remind us that there is a distinction between decolonization and getting beyond being colonised, where decolonization is all too often taken to be only a political or state function meaning that it is often little more than replacement of an elite, with little the ‘frees the mind’. He also, and quite compelling, argues that decoloniality is an option –partly to be worked out in struggle, but also partly as a factor of local relations and conditions: that is the ‘dewesternization’, with no other change, is only part of the way to decolonial conditions, but more importantly he invokes the notion associated with the Zapatistas of many ways of being in the world. Throughout the text, both Mignolo and Walsh continually return to this notion and assert that they do not have all the answers, may not have any of the answers and that the conditions of dignity so important to Albán’s argument for re-existence cannot be determined by anyone but those struggling for that dignity.

This is an essential text both for those new to ideas of decoloniality and those who’ve been around them for a while. As the launch of new book series it charts the ground they seek to explore in more detail and from diverse approaches, posing as many problems and questions as they do point to answers. Not only does it map the terrain of decoloniality, at least their view of it, but it also opens that terrain up for further enquiry, critique and evaluation leading to making of new meanings and recognising other forms of Power in that space. It is a fine example of collegial, open scholarship that models the practice the liberatory ideas underpinning decoloniality encourage. ...more

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LaGuardia
by Nnedi Okorafor (Goodreads Author)

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The Disobedient Kids and other Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales
by Božena Němcová

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The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play by Robert A. Stebbins

The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play: Play as Leisure, Leisure as Play
by Robert A. Stebbins

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Robert Stebbins quite properly has a reputation as a major figure in the sociology of leisure, and as the developer and leading advocate of a model known as the Serious Leisure Perspective that builds a powerful organising frame for making sense of l Robert Stebbins quite properly has a reputation as a major figure in the sociology of leisure, and as the developer and leading advocate of a model known as the Serious Leisure Perspective that builds a powerful organising frame for making sense of leisure as decidedly non-trivial. I was excited then when I saw that he’d ventured into another area often seen as trivial, to explore the links between leisure and play – but it is always dangerous when analysts venture into an area that one knows well (and writes and publishes in, as I do in play – although to be fair, our collections of philosophical essays on play are a long way from the best seller lists). Much as I admire Stebbins’ goal here to highlight moments of playfulness in wider leisure activities, the result is profoundly disappointing and deeply frustrating.

There is a whole set of things the book does well in setting out its case for studies of leisure to take play seriously, meaning that I expect that the book will have an impact among scholarly analyses of leisure. Stebbins takes an already well established model of serious leisure, unpacks its key components and by illustration (the case is more descriptive than analytical) demonstrates the potential, the likelihood and the actuality of moments of playfulness in many of those key areas of serious leisure highlighting areas where bodily and cerebral moments of play can be essential to effective performance and achievement of leisure objectives. What is more, he makes a compelling case for this to be more likely in serious than in casual leisure, draws on significant analyses of agency to demonstrate the intentionality of playfulness and makes a strong case to see leisure studies as the basis of a positive sociology and thereby escaping the tight focus on sociology and the study of social problems. All this is good and is to be celebrated – but the sentences above point to the fundamental problem in the book: he sees playfulness as contributing to effective performance and the attainment of objectives – that is, he sees play in this setting only as instrumental.

The book, then, is undermined by two things. First, the sense of instrumental play: he deals only with what he calls augmentative play. Second, he ignores or fails to acknowledge extensive literature that is relevant to the field and case, but that challenges his (narrow, instrumental) notion of play. Starting with his notion of augmentative play defined as “challenging circumstances → inventive solution → continued activity” (p1) where the play element is the inventive solution. At the outset, this seems not unreasonable, even if a bit narrow. Its principle limitation, in my initial thinking, was its instrumental component – play exists in this analysis only as a means to find a solution to a problem in a wider activity. This concern grew from a widespread view in play studies of play’s autotelic aspects – that is, it exists only for itself and for no other purpose: some writers call this play’s disinterest (the problem with a focus on play this is only instrumental should be clear here).

As the discussion continues, however, it became clear to me that Stebbins had set the bar very low. In his discussion of augmentative play in sport, for instance, he cites as an instance “when a casual volleyball player must decide into which part of the opponent’s court to return the ball over the net” (p115) – while part of me see this as a solution to the challenge to continued activity, and welcomes the focus on the utterly ordinary, I’m not sure it tells us much, as suspect a more interesting problematic is when the “inventive solution” is unexpected, unusual or extraordinary because to a large degree that player’s decision about where to direct the ball is quite possibly (very likely) part of an established or pre-prepared repertoire of options – so I am not sure about the extent to which it is “inventive”. To be fair, there are other elements of the case, as in a discussion of the performing arts, were he distinguishes between base knowledge and fundamental learning and preparation, and innovation and intuition based on that foundational understanding.

My bigger concern is that Stebbins fails to adequately contextualise ‘augmentative play’, which I admit might be a conceptual and theoretical difference between my approach and his, but is also a sign that he fails to consider an enormous body of literature. As is the case with so many writers on play from beyond the field, he refers to only two foundational texts – but Huizinga and Caillois: certainly fundamental to the field but now between 60 and 80 years old. Fundamentally missing for his notion of play is the now very widely accepted notion based in work by Suits and others that essential to playfulness is a playful disposition – Suits calls it a ‘ludic disposition’. Now, I accept that given Stebbins deeply positivist outlook – he seeks observable data, including post-hoc practitioner reflections – this idea of the actor’s mindset – her disposition – is problematic, I would at least have expected him to have addressed this major tendency in play studies, especially as he is exploring questions of adult playfulness.

This work on a ludic disposition is not the only gap. While noting that there is some basis to play studies in philosophy, he reverts to his preferred arenas of sociology and social psychology (I accept that this is a sociological text). In doing so however he fails to address a rapidly growing body of work in philosophy that addresses the very issue he is exploring here: moments of playfulness in otherwise non-play phenomenon. I am thinking here especially of work by Henning Eichberg (there as an extensive collection of his essays available in English about 2010 – at least 6 years before this text of this volume was completed). In addition (and I don’t want to appear to be the grumpy academic complaining that my work was ignored) there are several essays in a collection we edited in 2013 (also well before this text was written) that relate directly to the case Stebbins is making – notably essays by Randolph Frizzel and Emily Ryall (and, I admit, one I co-authored with Imara Felkers and Ellen Mulder that addresses the very issue of playfulness in sport noted above). I’m not getting all precious and arguing that our work is necessary here (although I think some of Eichberg’s is!), but these gaps, unfortunately, undermine his claims to the uniqueness of this text.

This concern points to my final significant worry, which is the text’s effective integration into the interdisciplinary fields being considered here. There were two elements that rang alarm bells for me: first was a very low number of citations in the text (these academic paraphernalia matter in some settings, such as claims to distinctive innovation let alone uniqueness) and the observation that 2 pages of the 8 page reference list were Stebbins’s own publications. When there are gaps in the literature as noted here plus ¼ of the reference list being self-citations I worry about the rigour of the text – Stebbins is a prolific publisher, but I worry that he is not keeping up with developments in the field, especially when venturing into other rapidly developing areas such as play studies. The second alarm bell was a tendency to cherry pick: so on p 128 there is an insightful quotation from Henri Bergson about intuition, referenced not to work by Bergson but to a quotations website! The problem here, for me, is that this quotation has been taken in a non-contextual manner – when Bergson’s work (and here I thank my co-author and fellow play studies scholar Ellen Mulder) is profound in the insights it offers.

This is not an attempt to condemn this text; it offers all manner of valuable insights and suggests important ways to think about play and playfulness in the context of leisure activities that might not otherwise seem playful (even if the notion of play deployed here is a narrow one). My concern is that it is a missed opportunity to synthesise exciting work in two fields of study at different stages of development: there is a statement in the blurb on the back cover that this book is “a step forward in understanding both play and leisure”, and while this is true, it is a much shorter step than it could have been and in some ways in focusing on the instrumental character of augmentative play it is in part a step backwards in the play field. While from a leisure studies perspective it will hopefully have an impact on how we re/think leisure, from a play studies perspective it adds little – hence, three disappointed stars. ...more

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Poison or Protect (Delightfully Deadly, #1)
by Gail Carriger (Goodreads Author)

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There are few more engaging or entertaining places than Gail Carriger’s alt-Victoria England: a little bit supernatural, a little bit excessive romance and an awful lot steampunk. In this short outing we find ourselves some years after the demise of ...more

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Kynship (The Way of Thorn and Thunder, #1)
by Daniel Heath Justice

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The Everland, a place where the old ways hold sway although not unchallenged, is facing its most serious challenge yet as Humans from the surrounding areas close in and the Folk must consider an offer to relocate. As the leaders of the various Folk g ...more

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Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America
by M Ann Hall

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Dreadnought (Nemesis, #1)
by April Daniels (Goodreads Author)

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Danny Tozer, stuck in a body he doesn’t recognise, regularly heads off to malls across town to buy nail polish – painting her toes are the only thing she can do to feel she is the 15 year old she is. On one such outing, having sneaked into a quiet co ...more

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The Silk, the Shears and Marina; or, About Biography
by Irena Vrkljan

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Towards the end of these elegant, elegiac, poetic novellas Irena Vrkljan writes the yearning of all writers: “Marina is preserved in what is written. There are no comparisons. That is life.” Both pieces turn around versions of Vrkljan’s fictionalised Towards the end of these elegant, elegiac, poetic novellas Irena Vrkljan writes the yearning of all writers: “Marina is preserved in what is written. There are no comparisons. That is life.” Both pieces turn around versions of Vrkljan’s fictionalised/factionalised life, a writer born in 1930 in Belgrade, shifting to Zagreb and then on Berlin and elsewhere, writing, living a bohemian-ish existence although that is really a label to romanticise the precariousness of the cultural worker. Along the way we meet Irena’s family (it’s pretty dysfunctional), grapple with the uncomfortable lives of artists and cultural workers (they’re pretty disorganised), and eventually unpack the ways that Irena has built her world in a way that makes sense and allows her to make sense of what is going on around and to her.

In The Silk, The Shears this factionalised Irena’s life is told through and inner looking, family reflection as she grapples with her parents, her sisters, her husband(s), her social circles as a wartime teenager and young Yugoslav, a poet and film script writer whose social life largely excludes her family. It is partial, episodic and in places cuts to the quick. Once Marina starts the tone shifts, becoming more disruptive, as she explores her relationships with the poet Marina Tsvetayeva whose work she adores and translates but never met (Tsvetayeva died in 1941, when Irena was 11) and her seeming commonality with long term friend Dora, an actor and depressive.

These, then, are tales of interwoven lives where although the livers of those lives never meet, they find connection in Irena’s world, in her word(s) and in her work; they are tales of the ways we make ourselves, our being, our places in the world, how our loves and friends shape those existences even when those loves and friends are people we know only from afar – temporally or spatially. And at the heart of it all, the writer, preserved without comparison in her words… what more can any of the rest of us hope for: to be read and remembered…..

Don’t expect a linear narrative: these are not biographies – but musings and meditations on biography, on making a place in and of the world. The story line is circuitous and meditative, marked and marred by the unexpected and the contingent, but continually framed by relationships – showing that although biographical none of these lives that make Irena’s is individual, yet paradoxically although collectively made Irena’s biography is hers and hers alone. Be prepared to be lost in the mellifluousness of the prose and jarred by its abrupt shifts in focus: this is a book that is good to think with. ...more