Chris > Recent Status Updates

Just got to America and they’ve already met Benjamin Franklin

Slow going so far. I'm finding this one less engaging than "War & War" or the shorter works that I've recently read.

"'Can a person marry his own aunt?' He asked, startled. 'He not only can do that,' a soldier answered him, 'but we're fighting this war against the priests so that a person can marry his own mother.'" Far and away the most interesting exchange so far, and the only suggestion that anyone has even a vague sense of politics.

The hell is this book about?

Fanciful things keep happening, but nothing makes much of an impression.

Mandel'a introduction is more or less solid, but pretty out of date. When Engels swings his swords, all vulgar economists are choppable.

Most in depth discussion of the features of Indian literature I've read.

In the midst of an extended critique of Said. Very stimulating.

Ahmad is tearing Rushdie a new one and it's _so_ _sweet._

I'm really appreciating Ahmad's attempt to carve out the global space for a liberatory socialist project against Postcolonialism and what he calls Third World Nationalism.

Arundhati Roy is emblematic of what I find demoralizing in contemporary anti-imperialism. Still, I'm going to wade through her introduction. This looks like a well edited and annotated edition.

Good critique of post-colonial literary theory from an uncompromising if also rather inflexible Marxist position. Additional interest due to the fact that the author lives and works in India, lending what I find to be an interesting perspective on the Anglophone world and world politics. The author's Marxist analysis of the Third World is giving me an interesting counterpoint to Vijay Prashad's recent books.