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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

michael pollan’s fighting technique is unstoppable!

By shag carpet bomb • Nov 22nd, 2008 • Category: The Omnivore's Dilemma

So, to continue with my posts on Michael Pollan’s work, particularly _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_, to give a little more background, apparently when commenting on the book to Dwayne, mostly agreeing with him, I was unaware of the bee’s nest I was stepping on. As in: no idea that Michael Pollan has a zealous fanbase of […]



pollan: we are all at one with our inner herbivores

By shag carpet bomb • Nov 21st, 2008 • Category: The Omnivore's Dilemma

my spirit animal is a giraffe. yours?
Anyway, as I continued reading _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ I became increasingly annoyed with Pollan’s romanticism. His decided tendency to insist that his experience is everyone’s experience, that as he says, eating lettuce is like getting rilly rilly close to our herbivorous buddies, deer, cows, giraffes, etc.
Here’s what I posted […]



neo-romantic localvorism: where food production happens without icky people

By shag carpet bomb • Nov 21st, 2008 • Category: The Omnivore's Dilemma

More ramblings on the things that irritated me about Pollan’s book, _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_. In line with a lot of other “green,” “ecology,” and “animal rights” perspectives, Pollan tends to ignore the role of labor in food production. OK, so the point of his book was to trace food specifically, and not concern himself too […]



the nationalizing rhetoric of the local food movement

By shag carpet bomb • Nov 21st, 2008 • Category: The Omnivore's Dilemma

I’m going to repost some exchanges that went on regarding an editorial Michael Pollan wrote regarding food security. I’d just picked up Pollan’s book, _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_. I’d spied it on the “new” book shelf at the library and remembered that a couple of people at LBO recommended the book for our book reading group […]



identity political powerlessness has its privileges

By shag carpet bomb • Nov 15th, 2008 • Category: Books, Election 2008, Feminism -- So Very 1998, Film Theory, Identity Politics, Performative Contradictions, Playing the Race Card, Queer, Racialization, Theory, WMF, Whiteness, Women of Color Feminism

“My community has a problem with homophobia, but we aren’t the only ones. African Americans are but 12 percent of the population. We have neither the numbers nor the power, given our history in this country, to disenfranchise another group. Blaming us for what is an American ill–as prevalent in, say, white Tripoli, Iowa, as […]



french theory — new book to kvell about

By shag carpet bomb • Sep 24th, 2008 • Category: Books, French Theory, Jane Sexes it Up

Dewds! I’m quite excited by this book, Francois Cusset’s _French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual LIfe of the United States_. It is not as fantabulous as Janet Halley’s _Split Decisions_, but it is nonetheless a terrific intellectual history of French theory as it was taken up in the United States. […]



black culture industry

By shag carpet bomb • Mar 15th, 2008 • Category: Books, Racialization, The Black Culture Industry

i am supposed to be going through all the boxes we brought here from storage, repacking some stuff and organizing, as well as getting rid of what i should no longer be packratting. for instance, i unpacked a box and found some baby power, a brand called “kids” that I probably bought at discount 15 […]



hypersexuality of race

By shag carpet bomb • Mar 15th, 2008 • Category: Asian Feminism, Books, Feminism -- So Very 1998, Inner Queer Dewd, Orientalism, Racialization, Sexpox Feminism, Teh Sex, The Hypersexuality of Race, Women of Color Feminism

hmmm. couldn’t resist. i visited amazon and this book was screaming at me to buy it, buy it, buy it. I can’t wait to read it and can only hope i have time! i finished a couple of books in the last couple of weeks and am currently reading Katherine Newman’s No Same in My […]



training journal, 08.02.28, 1 year anniversary and ketchup packets edition

By shag carpet bomb • Feb 28th, 2008 • Category: Books, Nobody Passes, Training Journal, Work

Absolutely nothing exciting going on. I’m just working and reading Matilda’s (AKA MAtt Bernstein’s) edited collection of essays, Nobody Passes. I’ve enjoyed it so far, though M’s distaste for academia irritated a wee bit — though I surely understand it. I guess I’ve been sheltered. I can’t imagine why anyone would think that Bernstein has […]



privilege

By shag carpet bomb • Jan 31st, 2008 • Category: Books, Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, Reveries, White Privilege, this bridge we call home

I’ve been reading more of Maza’s The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750-1850. I came upon her discussion of the phamplets that proliferated on the eve of the French Revolution. She discusses the various evils identified by phamphleteers. One was “An Essay on Privilege” by Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, which […]