Continuing the conversation with Pete Chambers, in late 2023, in which late-ness is deep with connotations. Our dialogue was partly prompted by Naomi Klein’s thought-provoking new book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World . Using frames of mirrors, shadows and others, Klein manages to capture something about the deeply weird and warped relations that now prevail between online and the real / ‘real’ world.
What to make of our present conditions? The post-Cold War era has passed, (hyper)globalization has peaked, the unipolar moment has finished, neoliberalism has perhaps entered its zombie phase.
Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism : - Ernest Becker, The Structure of Evil: - Lev Shestov, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy : - Arundhati Roy, ‘The End of Imagination’: - Paul Valéry, ‘Politics of the Mind’: - Anton Chekhov, In the Ravine :
That serious periodical, The Economist , has published a profoundly unserious article entitled, ‘What a third world war would mean for investors’, in which it offers such wisdom as: Indeed. The 60/40 might be in trouble if there is a world war. Bonds won’t provide much safety during nuclear escalation. Good to know.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil : - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace : - Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 : - Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History : - Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday : - Albert Camus, The Rebel : - Karl Jaspers, Tragedy is Not Enough : - Innokenty Annensky, ‘Nightmares’:
With each new incident or disaster, a rush to place it within a frame, to enlist it to a narrative. In our eagerness to decipher the meaning of the moment we miss that what is occurring might simply beyond our capacity to comprehend and order, or that it has not yet crystalised. Too soon, not yet at hand.
Much of what we use and touch every day is likely connected to the sea: many items would have been wholly or partially produced abroad, and most – if not all – of the remainder would have relied on commodities that would have arrived on tankers and other ships. Yet this all forms part of that background web of global interconnections that we too rarely recognize or reckon with, but are vital to how we presently live.
Late September, almost a month into autumn. Walking by Kamogawa in Kyoto at night. The air has cooled slightly, the intense humidity has finally lifted. The nouryou-yuka remain, raised wooden decks constructed each summer, allowing people to dine and drink while overlooking the river. This yearly tradition is now extended an extra month, until the end of October. The warm lights from restaurants reflect and shimmer in the water.
Alexander Etkind, Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (2021): - Helen Thompson in ‘The New Age of Tragedy’, The New Statesman (2023): - Adam Hanieh, ‘Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production’, New Left Review (2021): - Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (2021): - Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy:
Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School (1833): - Ken Jowitt, ‘After Leninism: The New World Disorder’ (1991): - Paul Valery, ‘Historical Fact’ (1932): - Vaclav Havel, ‘Speech to US Congress’ (1990): - JP Stern, ‘Havel’s Castle’ (1990): - Bertolt Brecht, Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things (1965):
In conversation again with Pete Chambers. With this episode we have moved to a new recording setup and the audio quality is much better as a result. Thanks for the feedback from listeners and to our producer, Peter Van Hoesen, for his guidance. Our starting point is the extreme weather that has marked this year’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere.