Quotes

how the world works

The problem seems to me to be twofold. The first is that righteousness, which always is dependent on a Manichean division of ethics and politics, stokes the fires of a sectarianism that has blighted radical politics for over two centuries. The historic tragedies and outrages of Left totalitarianism are enough reason for any of us who still identify as socialist to choose inquiry over conviction, to favour the nuances of contradiction and doubt. ‘Political correctness’ is a phrase so over-indulged by conservatives that its very use now seems trite and banal, but twenty years on from the culture wars we need to acknowledge the truth that strident identity politics and postmodernist obsessions over symbols and language led to a straitjacketing of feminist and socialist thought. Against the logic of a war metaphor, I don’t see such an acknowledgement as a retreat but as necessary work. The work is twofold: we need to learn to listen, as much as we need to learn again how to communicate. For we all know that smug people, regardless of their politics, don’t listen.

via The Toxicity of Smugness | Melbourne Review.

The Toxicity of Smugness | Melbourne Review

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CITIES, spatial poetics

To je ta Evropa, o kojoj piše malograđanski štampa da je velegradska i zapadnjačka, zagrebačka Evropa. Međutim, sve to samo je esplanadska kulisa. Dođite, molim vas, sa mnom prijeko na drugu stranu kolodvora, iza Podvožnjaka, ni dvjesto metara od gradskog centra, slika je zakulisno kobna, kao što je sve fatalno što je zakulisno: trnjanske petrolejke, blato do gležnja, prizemnice s trulim tarabama, seoske bašte (krastavci, tikve, ribiz i grah), kudravi psi bez marke, krave na melankoličnom povratku iz Vrbika, u predvečerje, selendra bez građevinskog reda, bez plana, sve gnjile kolibe s vlažnom horizontalom vodene razine od posljednje katastrofalne poplave koja se tu javlja s matematskom neizbježnošću: sezonski pravilno dvaput, svakog proljeća i svake jeseni, već kako padaju kiše oko Rjavine i Mezaklje na Feldesu. Patke po barama, otvorene toalete, malarija, tifus i sedam hiljada drugih bolesti, kao sudbina felaha u nilskoj Delti, sve sivo, sve bolesno, sve beznadno, sve antipatično, sve balkanska tužna provincija, gdje ljudi stanuju na smeću, gdje ljudi krepavaju kao pacovi, gdje slabokrvna djeca crkavaju od gladi i gdje se uopće krevapa više nego živi u ljudskom smislu […]

Skretati pozornost na prosjačku, zakulisnu bijedu nekih dekorativnih laži nije nikakvo naročito otkriće, ali kad se te dekorativne laži uzdižu na žrtvenik jednog samozaljubljenog idolopoklonstva, koje iz dana u dan sve više gubi najminimalniji smisao za procjenu istinitih vrijednosti, onda nam upravo ljubav za bijedu i neimaštinu naše stvarnosti nalaže da istini pogledamo u oči smionim i otvorenim pogledom.

Miroslav Krleža, in: Stefan Treskanica, Ukrudbene povjesnice, Zarez, XIV/346, p.25

Krleža

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CITIES, poetics of life

Basically, what I learned from Japan is that creativity isn’t solely the domain of individual artists or inventors. Groups can be creative too. It took me a while to realise this, but when I did it made me happy, because it resolved an apparent conflict between two of the things I hold most dear: collectivism and creativity. I think you can say that Japan is capable of producing both the cliches of the manga industry and the originality of someone like Yuichi Yokoyama, whose quirky abstract mangas depend for their impact on twisting the conventions of mainstream manga. It’s not like Yokoyama defies manga, or appears courtesy of divine lightning.

– Momus, The Rumpus Interview

This feeds into a number of conversations I’ve been having recently, through which I have unearthed the roots of my own understanding of a meaningful life in the diet of socialist-approved children’s books my generation grew up on in Croatia; books in which gangs of smart children come together and make awesome things come through, generally accompanied by either a complete disinterest, or active sabotage, of adults (Vlak u snijegu, Družba Pere Kvržice, Junaci Pavlove ulice, Emil i detektivi, Blizanke, Koko i…). This, to me, ties directly to the fact that the most interesting initiatives in art, politics and design in Central Europe (not merely post-socialist, but all of Central Europe) are collective pursuits (art, design and curatorial collectives, magazines, festivals, movements, protests), as well as to the fact that contemporary young Australia is woeful in all of these categories. Coming together to work on a bold, brave project is shrouded in a kind of sublime poetry over there. Here, people shudder and say I hate group work, and ‘arts management’ is understood as the art of midwifery for many individual little geniuses.

Groups can be creative too.

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CITIES, how the world works

I had gotten mugged in front of my rental apartment—on Christmas Eve, no less—and had posted the time and location of my mugging to the Park Slope Parents list, a generally helpful, crunchy, and supportive message board for people raising kids in that section of Brooklyn and beyond. Within an hour, my email inbox was filling with messages from concerned neighbors. Scratch that: angry neighbors.

They wanted to know exactly why I had posted the exact location where the mugging had taken place. Didn’t I realize what this could do to their property values? No, these folks had no immediate plans to sell their homes—yet they were still more considered with the short-term asset value of their real estate than they were the long-term experiential value of their neighborhood!

I had already begun my latest book, an alternative history of the development of corporations, in which I hoped to warn people about the precarious position of our economy and the society we had built according to its very tilted ideas about debt. But this episode changed my focus entirely: I became less concerned with the way corporations acted on us than the way we had come to act like corporations, ourselves.

The reaction of a handful of Park Slope residents to a crime in their neighborhood had less to do with eradicating crime than the episode’s ability to detract from the district’s precious brand. My effort to analyze the impact of gentrification and displacement on the relationship between rich and poor was swiftly reframed as the racist outrage of a weak-kneed liberal. Or, as New York magazine put it in their headline, “Are the writers leaving Brooklyn?”

Of course, none of this happened because Park Slope’s residents or the many who jumped on the bandwagon of outrage were bad people. This was the height of a speculative frenzy, remember, when overleveraged homeowners were depending on ever-increasing prices to refinance mortgages that they would otherwise be unable to pay. Like corporations, they were responding not to their real needs or their neighborhood’s but their debt structures. In such a situation, it was the only way for humans to respond. But it wasn’t the most human response.

Read the whole article here.

Douglas Rushkoff: How I Became an Enemy of the People

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CITIES, poetics of life

Cruel but kind – a precise description of one element in the pervasive ambivalence of the national character. Here also are vitality, energy, strength, and optimism in one’s own ability, yet indolence, carelessness, the ‘she’ll do, mate’ attitude to the job to be done. Here is insistence on the freedom of the individual, yet resigned acceptance of social restrictions and censorship narrower than in almost any other democratic country in the world. Here is love of justice and devotion to law and order, yet the persistent habit of crowds to stone the umpire and trip the policeman in the course of duty. Here is preoccupation with material things – note, for example, the hospitals: better for a broken leg than a mental deviation – yet impatience with polish and precision in material things. The Australian is forcefully loquacious, until the moment of expressing any emotion. He is aggressively committed to equality and equal opportunity for all men, except for Black Australians. He has high assurance in anything he does combined with a gnawing lack of confidence in anything he thinks.

Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, first ed. 1960

Cruel, but kind

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CITIES, poetics of life

The ugliness I mean is skin deep. If the visitor to Australia fails to notice it immediately, fails to respond to the surfeit of colour, the love of advertisements, the dreadful language, the ladylike euphemisms outside public lavatory doors, the technical competence by the almost uncanny misjudgement in floral arrangements, or if he thinks that things of this sort are too trivial to dwell on, then he is unlikely to enjoy modern Australia. For the things that make Australian people, society and culture in some way different from others in the modern world are only skin deep. But skin is as important as its admirers like to make it, and Australians make much of it. This is a country of many colourful, patterned, plastic veneers, of brick-veneer villas, and the White Australia Policy.

Robin Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, first paragraph in the book

The Australian Ugliness

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