Tonight on Insurgence, Insurgence #832, the 50th show of year 16 of Insurgence I will be playing music from Adrian Crowley, FACS, The Cramps, and Squid. Insurgence, Thursdays 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org
It is remarkable, even though I often don’t take time to reflect on it as such, that I have now nearly completed sixteen years of weekly Insurgence shows, without missing a single week, and will soon start on year seventeen. I have loved doing this show and continue to love doing it; I aim to continue for a long time yet to come.
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Since returning from our brief venture to the Twin Cities metro area last week Andy and I walked over 13 miles Saturday, while stopping twice to spend time at the Eau Claire Juneteenth commemoration and celebration at Carson Park, where it was great to meet up in person with a number of friends I and we have sorely missed all these many months of pandemic-necessitated physical social distancing, and I appreciate the large turnout, all the tabling, the many diverse musical performers, and the organizers, especially the amazing and incomparable Selika Ducksworth-Lawton.
I’ve also ran four miles last Friday, five miles this Monday, four miles Wednesday (yesterday), and plan to run again tomorrow, this Friday, while I hope rain will permit Andy and I to take long walks once more this Saturday and Sunday.
Andy has been working out regularly at Planet Fitness while I’ve also been doing a lot of stretching, although it always seems to me, that at my age, and especially as I am running again regularly, that I can and should do even more. I am contemplating transforming my campus office space by the time I return from extended scholarly leave not only to accommodate a sit-stand desktop but also a variety of stretching devices and places to do stretching in my office.
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This week’s principal work so far has involved taking detailed notes from and on Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Emile Durkheim’s Suicide: a Study in Sociology, and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization & Its Discontents as I proceed in work on chapter three of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory in which I am staging an encounter and a dialogue between these three books and Ian Curtis and Joy Division, with the latter represented by six songs: “Shadowplay,” “I Remember Nothing,” “Isolation,” “A Means to an End,” “Heart and Soul,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
I am taking my time, working slowly and carefully on this chapter, because it marks a departure from what I have yet done so far, in the first two chapters of this book, and encompasses a host of different engagements, including the always daunting challenge I have accepted with this book, of writing it as a part-memoir, but this chapter will serve as a model for what I will then do in the next and final three chapters of the book where what will change, principally, each time, will be the three books of critical theory and the six Joy Division songs serving as the focus of the encounter and dialogue.
Yet again, as I have shared before in commenting on this writing in process, I never know what kinds of connections I will make until I am in the midst of drafting, and I try to set up each chapter, in both of the books I am currently writing, as a challenge to me to attempt to do what I have never done, or even tried to do, previously–in terms of thinking, feeling, experiencing, and writing.
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Otherwise, among notable books I have read and am reading, I finished Elizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s, a most important book, which certainly accomplishes Hinton’s foremost aims of convincingly demonstrating that what have commonly been dismissed as ‘riots’ are actually better, more usefully conceived as ‘rebellions’, that these rebellions have been extensive and persistent, that ‘reform’ is insufficient to address the problem of systemic racism in policing and has been tried over and over again without substantially changing let alone improving all that much, and that the roots of these rebellions lie in socio-economic deprivation and disparity that must be addressed by way of massive reparative investment in poor Black communities while empowering the people of these communities to manage and control what is done and how with this investment.
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And I have read through much of Parm Sindu’s Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice, which offers a searing indictment of racism and sexism within the British police–and in particular the London Metropolitan Police Service–as well as within British society at large, in a powerful and inspiring memoir of someone who fought through considerable obstacles to reach rare pinnacles of success, for an Asian woman in the MPS, before being brought down by charges of misconduct and tabloid media sensationalism that Sandu convincingly argues would not have led to the same result if she had been a white man.
Sandhu collaborates with journalist, producer, and writer Stuart Prebble, former head of ITV, in writing this book, but to me at least it feels very personal while also attempting to convey something of the hardened attitude that someone from Sandhu’s background, suffering and struggling versus the multiple kinds of abuse she has faced as well as all the harsh situations that police routinely encounter, must adopt in order to be able to sustain themselves and carry forward.
I’ve read a substantial number of memoirs recently from Black and Black-Asian-and Other Minority Ethnic Britons recently, including a significant number who have held prominent positions within policing and criminal justice, and I will just add this comprises a most impressive and often riveting if rightly disturbing, challenging, humbling, and yet inspiring array of writing. When I teach a class on Contemporary Black British Experience, which I aim soon to do, the heart of the reading we will do will be drawn from memoirs and similar non-fictional, including creative non-fictional accounts/collections of essays.
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Among the TV shows we have recently been screening I will just, for now, highlight Money Murder Zurich, a Swiss crime drama, which focuses on disgraced lawyer Thomas Borchert, who has to fight off criminal charges for offenses far greater than those for which he is responsible, during eight years of work for a telecommunications multinational based in Frankfurt, but soon readapts to his native Zurich and becomes a partner to attorney Dominique Kuster who prefers to take on cases of people who are in serious need and don’t have substantial accumulated resources to support them.
Borchert acts as a classic noir protagonist, often getting himself (and others immediately around him) into lots of trouble and ample danger, while engaging primarily as a free-wheeling rogue investigator who is certainly willing to push hard, and beyond normative boundaries distinguishing acceptable and legitimate investigative practices from those that are not, in order to get at the truth and to secure justice for his and Kuster’s clients.
The series is compelling and we have enjoyed proceeding from episode to episode; it needs be so since each episode is 90 minutes and if we didn’t find it so compelling we would be reluctant to devote that much time to it.
I do appreciate streaming services like MHz and Topic for making many more Continental European dramas available to us, supplementing what we can find through sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Acorn TV, BritBox, etc. I am on the lookout for more TV series of the kinds we enjoy from Africa, South America, and Asia as well.
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I’ve read a number of other books as well, Andy is in a reading group focused on an intriguing book that connects EDI issues with mathematics and he is continuing to make useful devices for us and our household with his 3-D printer while also figuring out how to run the online portion of the UW-Eau Claire Math Lab without Collaborate Ultra, and Casey is at least walking and stumbling about more extensively and more frequently than not too long ago (although he still is often confused and can still readily become frightened and upset).
In addition, I’ve watched at least portions of a number of Euro 2020 matches and looking forward to more.
I’ve been trying to keep up with and clear through the massive amounts of email I receive every day, especially from people, organizations, causes, interests, publications, and venues alerting me to issues along one or another avenue of social and political concern, but this can be quite exhausting to do.
I also had a routine dental appointment Tuesday afternoon and am pleased both the hygienist and dentist suggested everything looks great, other than some stains the hygienist had to help me get at around my wisdom teeth, which yes I still have.
As a final comment, for this week, I’ve read a number of pieces lately that have stressed the importance, which the authors believe has become increasingly endangered, of being able to listen to, read, and engage not only with positions with which you disagree, even find disturbing and offensive, but also with doubt and uncertainty about complex issues where it can make sense to suggest the truth of what is best, or what is right, is likely actually to be muddier than many are willing or able to acknowledge.
My thought about this is to stress we are all, always, limited, in many and significant ways, and if we can foreground recognition and acknowledgment of this, while nevertheless being honest and as seems apt and necessary firm in our alignment with, support for, and advocacy of strong positions, on matters of principle, it might help–as will recognizing and respecting all people as multiple, complex, contradictory, and dynamic, while striving to be highly self-critically self-aware and making sure we distinguish sharply and clearly between critique of positions and practices on the one hand versus criticism of persons on the other hand. And at the same time being open to continually learning and changing as a result of what we learn.
I think one of the great gains for me of being a teacher, for over thirty-five years now, has been how much I continually learn, and grow and change, as a result of this work, and from what my students share, contribute, and accomplish. This is an exciting process, and yes sometimes it is scary, but it is immensely rewarding, and this is one of many reasons why I do look forward to returning, full-time, to teaching with the start of the Fall 2022 semester, and am unwilling to speculate for how many years I might well yet continue doing so before finally retiring.
All best regards everyone!
Bob
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I was happy and moved when Carl Nassib came out publicly as the first openly gay player while actively playing in the National Football League. It continues to mean a great deal, this kind of representation in arenas which have for so long seemed to exclude people like me, and to be hostile versus people like me, despite my immense love of sports, including American football, since I was a very young boy.
Carl Nassib becomes first active NFL player to come out as gay
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As I shared on Facebook last Sunday,
I especially recommend this series. I understand why critics suggest it imagines a French Obama but I think it is more distinctive than that characterization might suggest and President Idder Chaouch, of Algerian descent, played by Roschdy Zem, is ultimately a more radical figure than Obama, while the series does a good job respecting the position that France will never be a nation in which Arab people, of Algerian descent or otherwise, will be fully accepted and equitably included although the series supports President Chaouch’s position that even if most of French history is shameful, and French racism and imperialism have done incredible damage, it is worth striving to create a much better nation, to try to bring that about. As I was following this series I felt I really would like to find a way to share this with students in classes I will teach to come and that’s usually a sign that a series is especially worthwhile.
Rebecca Zlotowski, Sabri Louatah Talk ‘Savages,’ Canal Plus’ First Big Fall Series
In indirect connection with Juneteenth here in the US this show reminds us of how much work yet needs to be done and how much needs to be made up for as well as it is our collective responsibility to take this on but reason for hope, paired with determination, does exist.
I did appreciate the size of the turnout at the Juneteenth commemoration and celebration at Carson Park here in Eau Claire this afternoon and at the least I think this is a hopeful sign that many people want to do their part to carry on coming to grips with the deep and continuing impact of slavery in defining and staining this nation, as well as the same with systemic racism even more broadly conceived. And to contribute toward striving to make this nation closer to what it has frequently promised but all too often failed to be.