Tonight, Thursday 20 January 2022 will be Insurgence #862, show #28 of year #17 of Insurgence. As always, broadcasting 10 pm to midnight US Central Time on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM, Eau Claire, and also, streaming, via the web, at: www.whysradio.org
I will be playing music from J.R.C.G, Callum Easter, Headsticks, Stick in the Water, Yard Act, and Fontaines D.C. I am massively excited about this show. I always love doing Insurgence (I would have to feel this way, would I not, to have produced and hosted the show now 862 consecutive weeks in a row, would I not?) and I always select music that I find of interest and appeal, to me (and not just to me), but tonight's diverse line-up is notably exciting, and will be thrilling fun to listen through, and to introduce to and share with my audience.
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Recently I have read a number of books that I want to cite here because I do highly recommend them and would consider it genuinely fantastic if many more people did read and make use of each and all of them.
#1
James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis (Atlantic, 2021)
This is a tremendous book, one I felt as I was reading it that this is one book I have long been hoping to find and long hoped someone would write, and someone would write this well. James Davies is a reader in medical anthropology and mental health at the University of Roehampton, with a PhD in social and medical anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is a qualified psychotherapist (having previously worked in the NHS) and is the co-founder of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry (CEP) which is secretariat to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. He has been an expert drug adviser for Public Health England, has appeared frequently on various avenues of national media in the UK, and is also author of Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good. Davies writes with a novelist's flair while doing an outstanding job in showing direct links between precise aspects and dimensions of contemporary, neo-liberal capitalism and mental distress. In Sedated Daves also convincingly shows how dominant forms of medical response to and treatment of mental distress, by means of psychotropic drugs and currently prominent forms of therapy such as CBT, do little to help and only tend to reinforce and exacerbate already existing problems. Davies interviews a wide array of leading experts, which he incorporates fluidly into his own writing. His examples are primarily British, and in particular English, but I find the particularities and peculiarities of these examples fascinating while it is easy to make connections beyond the UK. As Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, former Director of Liberty, the UK civil liberties organization, roughly equivalent to the ACLU, writes: Sedated is “A wonderful, moving and truly life-chaning book. Sedated is an urgent intervention for post-pandemic society, written with expertise and clarity. Warning: it will cause irritation to powerful interests who fear us all becoming better informed about the root causes of so much human suffering.” As Nathan Filer, author of This Book will Change Your Mind about Mental Health writes, “In this game-changing polemic, James Davies leaves us in no doubt: to tackle the mental health crisis we need major social and economic reform.” As Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Liverpool, writes: Sedated is “A marvellous book. Critics of traditional psychiatry will relish its clear-sighted exposure of a failing system. Defenders of traditional psychiatry may well be infuriated. But everyone should read it.”
“In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity. Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain. Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of mental illness has been promoted by successive governments and big business – and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.”
#2
Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2020)
This book is a critique of the impact and even the hegemony of meritocracy in the US, and argues it has much to do with the substantial support right-wing authoritarian populism, or ‘new fascism', has garnered, as a backlash versus meritocracy and how this has been promoted and deployed throughout American society. Michael J. Sandel is a world-renowned, Harvard-based philosophers, who concentrates in political philosophy and in moral philosophy/ethics. I find this book thoughtful, compelling, accessible, yet challenging, and it is especially relevant to any and all of us who have spent considerable time working in schools and especially in higher education, although more so at highly selective, ‘elite' institutions like Harvard as opposed to places like UW-Eau Claire. As Tara Westover, author of Educated, writes “Astute, insightful, and empathetic, Sandel exposes the cruelty at the heart of some of our most beloved myths about success. A must-read for anyone struggling to understand populist resentment, and why, for many Americans, the American Dream has come to feel more like a taunt than a promise. A crucial book for this moment.” As Elizabeth Anderson writes, for The Nation, with The Tyranny of Merit, “Sandel shows us not only how the liberal promise of equality of opportunity has not been fulfilled, but how the very conception of life as a relentless competitive race unjustly denigrates the losers, produces a cynical and arrogant elite, corrupts institutions of higher education, and replaces democracy with technocracy. Unwittingly, it thereby creates populist backlash.” As Tim Soutphommasane writes for the Sydney Morning Herald,“As we know, the rich enjoy advantages that invariably tilt the playing field in their favor . . . However, Sandel argues there’s a more basic moral problem: The meritocratic way of thinking generates hubris among the ‘winners’, by encouraging them to think that their success is all their own doing and reflects their superior virtue . . . Seduced by the ethic of aspiration, many of us have been complacent in accepting meritocracy, without considering that it also serves as a moral justification for the status quo.”
“These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that ‘you can make it if you try'. The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens–leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success–more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.”
#3
Theo Horesh, The Fascism This Time: And the Global Future of Democracy (Cosmopolis Press, 2020)
Horesh wrote this book, originally in serial form, akin to a blog, throughout the years of the Trump Presidency and this book bears some of the advantages and disadvantages of subsequently polishing this kind of writing so as to cohere into a single book. The chapters maintain a strong sense of the immediacy, urgency, and outrage of the moment in which they are written, but in relation to detailed denunciations of Trump and Trumpism offer little that many other critics have not already recounted, at length, and certainly the book is not likely, nor at all designed, to win over any who do not already regard Trump and Trumpism as atrocities. However, Horesh does compelling work in explaining how and why this most definitely is and most definitely should be identified, always, as fascism, linking ‘the fascism this time' with the fascism of the mid-20th century as well as explaining how and why fascism has evolved as it has since Hitler, Mussolini, and the like. Horesh also is strong in arguing for how seriously, dangerously threatening this fascism is, especially versus democracy, although his recommended response is not all that original: a united front among liberals, leftists, socialists, and so on to do everything possible with as much urgency, commitment, and determination as we can muster to thoroughly defeat newly resurgent fascism. Horesh also effectively makes important global connections, linking Trumpism with resurgent fascism worldwide.
“A new wave of fascism is inundating the world under the guise of rightwing populism, but the fascism this time has little to do with taking down elites-and it is every bit as dangerous as the fascism last time. Fascism can be identified by its toxic brew of racism, sexism, ethnonationalism, and authoritarianism. It is organized around a cult of personality, and it mobilizes ressentiment in senseless acts of nihilism. Fascist movements are dangerous because they harness nationalist aggression against minorities, but their subtler danger lies in their turn against reality. They reject science and rationality because they are seen as a threat, and since the world cannot be turned off, fascists try to tear it down instead. Fascists seek, in the words of Erich Fromm, to escape the burden of freedom and return to the mythologized bonds of patriarchy. Yet, in a vast and complex world, where survival requires adaptation and adaptation flexibility, their forced regression always ends in destruction. In this way, fascism is not simply a reaction to globalization but a nihilistic assault on the world itself. The destruction can be witnessed in the disastrous response of fascist leaders the world over to the coronavirus and the recent explosion in crimes against humanity. The Fascism This Time elucidates a psychosocial model of fascism which predicted that Trump's election would lead to an accelerated assault on democratic institutions, a global increase in authoritarianism, immigrant concentration camps, the starvation of Yemen, and an effort to maintain power by force. Yet, the fascism this time is global, and putting a stop to it will require a global democracy movement that is only just getting underway. This book is a highly original account of how the fascism this time is tied to the overwhelming challenges with which the world is now faced. Its warning about the dangers of denial is reminiscent of Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, while its insights into the nature of mass movements harkens back to Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. It is a sweeping defense of democracy, and a classic testament to resistance, inspiring action and reflection, and sparkling with insights, in the perennial tradition of Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville.”
#4
Peter Beresford and Jasna Russo, eds., The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies (Routledge, 2021)
This is a wide-ranging, broadly comprehensive account of and reflection upon what Mad Studies is and does, how Mad Studies emerged, when, where, and why, what are divergent currents and tendencies within Mad Studies, and what are both challenges and opportunities for Mad Studies ahead. It is notable for its global reach, for incorporating significant contributions representative of the global South. It is also notable for representing a considerable diversity of takes on Mad Studies, including those who are skeptical about the field and about the use of ‘Mad' here (especially as a positively identifying term for those with significant experience of what is otherwise commonly referred to as mental illness, mental distress, psychosocial disability, and so on). At the same time the book does an excellent job at pinpointing what are the common shared principles of Mad Studies that distinguish this field from other similar and related fields concerned with critical studies in mental health and illness (such as anti-psychiatry, critical psychiatry, and so on). I found the book highly informative, intriguing, and usefully provocative. I think all who are interested in exploring alternatives to neo-liberal capitalist conceptions of and responses to mental distress (prescription psychotropic drug treatments and socially and politically decontextualizing, privatizing, and individualizing therapies that located madness solely within the brain and neurochemistry of the individual or in the individual's unique personal experience) will find this book of value.
“By drawing broadly on international thinking and experience, this book offers a critical exploration of Mad Studies and advances its theory and practice. Comprised of 34 chapters written by international leading experts, activists and academics, this handbook introduces and advances Mad Studies, as well as exploring resistance and criticism, and clarifying its history, ideas, what it is, and what it can offer. It presents examples of mad studies in action, covering initiatives that have been taken, their achievements and what can be learned from them. In addition to sharing research findings and evidence, the book offers examples and insights for advancing understandings of experiences of madness and distress from the perspectives of those who have (had) those experiences, and also explores ways of supporting people oppressed by conventional understandings and systems. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of Mad Studies, disability studies, sociology, socio-legal studies, mental health and medicine more generally. ”
The Routledge International Handbook of Mad Studies
#5
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1955)
As Robin D.G. Kelley writes in an introduction, this book “might best be described as a declaration of war” as it is “primarily a polemic” (7) against colonialism and the colonial order, in its multiple including multifarious dimensions and its multiple including multifarious impacts. Césaire argues colonialism is and always has been and always will be totally indefensible and that it not only devastates the colonized but brutalizes the colonizer. Césaire also argues that colonialism anticipated and prepared the way for fascism, as this was in effect proto-fascism which was bound to ‘boomerang' back against–to impact, to infect–the colonizer. Césaire writes this book as in many respects a surrealist manifesto meets prose poem, and he notably argues that neo-colonialism is just as problematic and dangerous as ‘classic', direct rule, colonialism while warning US imperialism threatens to be the worst, the most destructive, mode of imperialism ever. This is not the first time I have read this book, and I have used it often in classes, but I re-read it in working with it as part of chapter five of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.
“This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights and Black Power and anti-war movements. Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of ‘progress' and ‘civilization' upon encountering the ‘savage', ‘uncultured', or ‘primitive'. Here, Césaire reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that ‘the relationship between consciousness and reality are extremely complex . . . It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society'.”
#6
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual (1994)
As the presenter of the prestigious Reith Lecture Series in 1993 Said argues for a particular conception of and mission for the intellectual in opposition to cooptation and diffusion of what it means to function an intellectual and do intellectual work–in particular versus the intellectual as technocrat, bureaucrat, functionary, lackey, and defender/apologist/promoter of an established and especially culturally mainstream and politically dominant organization, institution, government, or party. Said insists on the importance of the intellectual striving for maximal possible critical independence–deliberately seeking out and aligning with a position of the marginal, even the exile (metaphorical as well as literal)–in order to be able effectively ‘to speak truth to power' and to represent and advocate for the interests of the under-represented and the disadvantaged. The intellectual must be willing to be fiercely iconoclastic and refuse dogma and orthodoxy. The intellectual can, and in fact should, work as an ‘amateur' resisting professionalization, and can (and again as possible, as viable, ‘should') work via a wide variety of different possible means and media. Again, this is not the first time I have read this book, and I have used it often in classes, but I re-read it in working with it as part of chapter five of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.
“In these impassioned and inspiring essays, based on his 1993 Reith Lectures, Edward Said explores what it means to be an intellectual today. Are intellectuals merely the servants of special interests or do they have a larger responsibility? In these wide-ranging essays, one of our most brilliant and fiercely independent public thinkers addresses this question with extraordinary eloquence. Said sees the the intellectual as an exile and amateur whose role it is “to speak the truth to power” even at the risk of ostracism or imprisonment. Drawing on the examples of Jonathan Swift and Theodor Adorno, Robert Oppenheimer and Henry Kissinger, Vietnam and the Gulf War, Said explores the implications of this idea and shows what happens when intellectuals succumb to the lures of money, power, or specialization.”
Representations of the Intellectual
#7
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcolonialism and Feminism
Trinh is an accomplished musician, film-maker, poet, writer and teller of stories, as well as critical theorist, and in this highly influential book engages a host of complex issues which she in turn renders all the more usefully and provocatively complex. Trinh explores what it means to write, especially as a woman/as a woman of color/as a Third world woman, both within and against language and discourses of language that have been used and are continuing to be used as principal instruments of patriarchal/ racist/colonialist oppression. She explores the nature of language, of subjectivity, and of relations between language and subjectivity. She argues for poetry and story-telling as exceptionally potent, as exceptionally powerful, modes of critical theorization in and of themselves. She strives to identify openings for resistance and opposition by way of a rigorously critically self-reflexive deconstructionist praxis. She offers a devastating critique of anthropology, old and new. And she takes on yet much more as well. Her writings requires slow, patient, careful attention, and indeed frequent re-reading, but often offer up extraordinary, indeed stunning gems of insight that are highly quotable. Just one example: “Not one, not two either. ‘I’ is, therefore, not a unified subject, a fixed identity, or that solid mass covered with layers of superficialities one has gradually to peel off before can see its true face. ‘I’ is, itself, infinite layers. Its complexity can hardly be conveyed through such typographic conventions as I, i, or I/i. Thus I/i am compelled by the will to say/unsay, to resort to the entire gamut of personal pronouns to stay near this fleeting and static essence of Not-I. Whether I accept it or not, the natures of I, i, you, s/he, We, we, they, and wo/man constantly overlap. They all display a necessary ambivalence, for the line dividing I and Not-I, us and them, or him and her is not (cannot) always (be) as clear as we would like it to be. Despite our desperate, eternal attempt to separate, contain, and mend, categories always leak. Of all the layers that form the open (never finite) totality of ‘I’, which is to be filtered out as superfluous, fake, corrupt, and which is to be called pure, true, real, genuine, original, authentic?” (94). Once more, this is not the first time I have read this book, and I have used it often in classes, but I re-read it in working with it as part of chapter five of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory.
” . . . methodologically innovative . . . precise and perceptive and conscious” —Text and Performance Quarterly
“Woman, Native, Other is located at the juncture of a number of different fields and disciplines, and it genuinely succeeds in pushing the boundaries of these disciplines further. It is one of the very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the writings of women of color.” —Chandra Talpade Mohanty
“The idea of Trinh T. Minh-ha is as powerful as her films . . . formidable ” —Village Voice
” . . . its very forms invite the reader to participate in the effort to understand how language structures lived possibilities.” —Artpaper
“Highly recommended for anyone struggling to understand voices and experiences of those ‘we' label ‘other'.” —Religious Studies Review
#8
Lennard J. Davis, ed., The Disability Studies Reader, 5th edition, 2017
I have been reading a lot of contributions to the field of disability studies, and have been especially interested, no surprise (given by long history of concentration in critical theory/critical studies), in critical disability studies, but only recently got around to working through this compilation. Even though some of the contributions are a bit dated, all are interesting, informative, useful, and compelling, albeit in varied ways and to varied degrees. I am especially interested in learning about historical experiences of and factors influencing how disability has been conceived and engaged that I was previously unaware of, how disabled people have struggled to take charge of their own lives and of defining/determining how to make sense of who and what they are about in their own terms, and of the formation and development of various successive models of disability especially as these have taken shape in dialogue with critical social theory–as well as convergences/divergences and overlaps/separations of disability with mental distress/mental health and illness/madness/etc., the same concerning chronic illness and chronic pain, and advocates for recognizing supposed impairments as instead alternative ways of experiencing and engaging the world that offer advantages and valuable contributions potentially to all of us, via movements and conceptions such as for example ‘deaf gain'. And yes, I also find intricately elaborate discussions of disability as ‘narrative prosthesis' in literature striking and challenging as they lead me to reconsider the place and role of disability in numerous literary works I have read over the course of my life.
“The fifth edition of The Disability Studies Reader addresses the post-identity theoretical landscape by emphasizing questions of interdependency and independence, the human-animal relationship, and issues around the construction or materiality of gender, the body, and sexuality. Selections explore the underlying biases of medical and scientific experiments and explode the binary of the sound and the diseased mind. The collection addresses physical disabilities, but as always investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities as well. Featuring a new generation of scholars who are dealing with the most current issues, the fifth edition continues the Reader’s tradition of remaining timely, urgent, and critical.”
I know the sixth edition has been up in the air because multiple prospective contributors complained that the editor and the publisher did not adequately consult with them, and obtain their permission/consent, before proposing to republish their writings in this edition or otherwise did not give them an adequate opportunity to update these writings of theirs and to determine themselves what excerpts from larger writings of theirs they themselves would approve for inclusion in this anthology as well as how they wanted to explain from what and how those sections have been excerpted. Hopefully all of these contentious matters can eventually be worked out and a sixth edition will be published.
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I will just sum up the rest relatively quickly. I am working assiduously on writing chapter five of Ian Curtis, Joy Division, and Critical Theory. I continue to work on striving to take care of my health, including to exercise regularly. I continue to enjoy running as often, and as much, as I can, even on the treadmill inside during winter. I like running 5k races, but I also like doing a wide array of other kinds of runs, although steep uphill runs, with me running uphill for most of the entire run (for 30-40 or more minutes at a time) are still especially tough, yet I can easily, whenever I want, run 5-6 miles at a time now. I just hope I will be able to continue this regular running once I return to full-time teaching and institutional service this coming Fall 2022 semester.
I am truly extremely excited (‘pumped') about returning to teaching, to meeting and working with many new students. This should be exhilarating, and I love my schedule of classes for the 2022-2023 academic year–these are going to be wonderful to pursue, together with the students. Yet I do worry about being up to the challenge, at my age and with my chronic health issues, as I already found the demands too much to take prior to my long-term scholarly leave and prior to COVID-19. But we shall see what happens. I do however, feel grateful to discover writings by other academics with chronic illness, recounting the multiple challenges and difficulties of doing this kind of job and this kind of work with this kind of condition, and especially how hard it is to be able to explain so as to get most others to even begin to be able to understand let alone in any meaningful way help accommodate chronic illness as part of a full-time job working within the higher educational academy. I wish much more work had yet been done with critical studies in chronic illness, bringing critical social theory directly to bear on making sense of and engaging with chronic illness in particular as has been done with many other forms of disability.
Andy and I continue to watch many TV shows, especially crime shows, in particular from the UK and elsewhere across Europe, and many movies. And we continue to enjoy spending time with our puppy, Aidan, and our cats, Jet and Star. Andy continues to make many practical devices with his 3-D printer and is starting to prepare for the upcoming Spring 2022 semester. I am looking forward to the Spring 2022 section of this year's (2021-2022) Empowerment Through Solidarity Film Series, sponsored by United Faculty and Academic Staff of UW-Eau Claire and Leaders Igniting Transformation; we have some most incisive and inspiring titles to share. I continue to follow many different sports regularly and hope the Packers win the Super Bowl again for the first time since following the 2010 season. We don't yet go anywhere or do much else, given continuing pandemic conditions and especially the fact that this has been a cold winter, but I do cautiously hope for more expansive opportunities later in the year.
I share a great many people's considerable worries about the state of the world, and of our nation, today, and the many threats we face. I too find it infuriating that the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act have been defeated, at least for now, in the US Senate, and worry about what this will mean for upcoming and future elections. But at least I do think President Biden is right, finally, to recognize the need to make a concerted, persistent, overt, and full-throated public push for the legislation he has proposed, and he supports, showing people, and showing people over and over again, what he and the the vast majority of Democrats in DC are in fact ‘for', while drawing a sharp contrast with what the Republican Party, the Party of Trump, stands for, which is seemingly nothing much but opposing everything Biden and the Democrats support, and being willing to use any means whatsoever to obtain and retain power. I also would keep using every possible ‘parliamentary maneuver' to force a debate, and a vote, even knowing they will lose, on every possible piece of legislation that the Democrats support–to force the Republicans to have to speak to, and debate, all of this and to put themselves on record as preventing it from coming to pass. Beyond all that, social movements are absolutely necessary and these need to be sizable, mobilized, strategic, and yet relentless in independently representing and pushing for progressive to radical to revolutionary forms of social and political change, or it is unlikely ever to happen. We can't wait for Democrats in the White House, the House of Representatives, or the Senate, to do this work for us. As Angela Davis aptly commented, on Democracy Now, recently, people like her who voted for Joe Biden never expected him to be the one to lead the way in accomplishing what is needed; we are the ones who need to do this, to be the leaders in making the change that is needed the change that comes to be.
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Finally, at least tentatively Andy and I are planning to see Fontaines D.C. live, in Minneapolis, at First Avenue, on May 7, the day after my birthday, which if all goes well, we make it, and they make it, should be wonderful. In their relatively short time making, recording, and performing their music Fontaines D.C. have become one of my all-time favorite bands, approaching the likes of the Twilight Sad and in the rank right below Joy Division. We have tickets. Let's just hope we all survive all right until then, and even that the pandemic may have finally started truly to receded by then. It's just amazing that we won't have gone to a live music event, since August 2019 (other than the stage performance at the Pablo Center of Rent last month, here in Eau Claire, which partially counts, as it is after all a musical).