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Category Archives: urban economics

Behind The News Presents Professor Jodi Dean On Reclaiming Communism and the Political Party Form

24 Thu Nov 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Neoliberalism, urban economics

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Dr. Jodi Dean (b. 1962), economic liberalism, international solidarity, neoliberalism, party politics, political party, solidarity, third party politics

dsc_1239-former-west-jodi-deanLUMPENPROLETARIAT  Political Science Professor Jodi Dean (b. 1962) (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) is the author of various books, including The Communist Horizon (Verso, 2012), Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), Žižek’s Politics (Routledge, 2006), Blog Theory (Polity, 2010), and Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2002).  She also blogs at ICite.com.

On this week’s holiday edition of free speech radio’s Behind The News, host Doug Henwood graced us with an encore broadcast of a 2013 interview he conducted with Dr. Jodi Dean, in which she discussed her book The Communist Horizon, crowd psychology, the political party form, the squandering of opportunity by the Occupy Movement for building an emancipatory people’s party in the United States, and other relevant topics. [1]  This is a timely re-broadcast in the aftermath of the electoral college’s antidemocratic coronation of Donald Trump, even though he lost the popular vote.  Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Behind The News.]

kpfa-free-speech-take-it-back-logo-121199BEHIND THE NEWS—[24 NOV 2016]  [PEDRO REYES:  “—or online at kpfa.org.  Stay tuned for Behind The News.”]     [Behind The News ‘world/classical’ instrumental theme music]

DOUG HENWOOD:  “Hello, and welcome to Behind the News.  My name is Doug Henwood.  Just one guest today:  Jodi Dean.  Jodi Dean, a professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, New York has been on this show many times.  Though, it’s been more than a year, since her last appearance, which is way too long.  I find her one of the best thinkers on politics around, bringing, among many other things, a sense of the importance of organisation, as opposed to the love of structural-lessness and spontenaity, which is so popular these days and of the centrality of the psychological mechanisms to politics.  Yet, despite the complexity of the material, Jodi writes and talks with admirable clarity.

“She was on this show back in October 2013 to discuss her book The Communist Horizon, also from Verso.  In that book, she was trying to reclaim the idea of communism, a word and concept, which has been dragged through the mud by, both, its friends and enemies.  In her latest book, Crowds and Party, published earlier this year by Verso, Jodi undertakes two related texts—an analysis of crowds, demonstrations, spectacles, occupations and politics, which we always have with us, and the need for a revolutionary party, which we don’t.

“Today, and for the last several decades, many on the left celebrate the crowd as politics, in itself—the beautiful moment, as she calls it—that doesn’t lay the groundwork for a better future, but, basically, is that future.  There are no better examples of this phenomenon than those who claimed during Occupy Wall Street that the gathering itself was the better future and not merely an embryonic event, that could lead the way to a seriously transformative organisation.  (c. 2:08)

“Jodi isn’t shy about calling that organisation a party, a rather unfashionable term.

“She is eloquent in analysing the reasons for the unfashionability of the party.  We’re supposed to resist the form as sclerotic and oppressive by its very nature, imposing among many other things a uniformity on an endlessly variegated humanity.  (c. 2:27)

“Now, we’re all about multiplicities, movements of movements and so on.  This strikes me, to steal Karl Kraus‘ comment on psychoanalysis—which, by the way, I don’t agree with—as the disease for which it purports to be the cure.  This kind of thinking emphasises difference at the expense of solidarity and guarantees ineffectuality.  That ineffectuality might be welcome to those, who fear power.  But there can be no better world without engaging with, and taking power, as daunting and risky as that may sound.  Power may corrupt, as Lord Acton said, but powerlessness is no bargain, either.  (c. 3:01)

“As I say in the interview, I shied away from bringing up the psychoanalytic aspects of Jodi’s argument because I was afraid it might not work well on the radio.  But those aspects are quite important and one of the many reasons you should buy and read this book—that and her extended critique of the individualism, that pervades our society and our minds, myself included.  I’m not so sure how well I work with others.

“That’s another angle on the importance of the party organisation.  Not only is it essential to politics, it’s also a way to get us out of our solipsistic little heads, myself included.  I spend a lot of time in my own head, in my personal bubble.

“Enough from me; here’s Jodi Dean, author of Crowds and Party from Verso.  [broadcast cuts to archival audio]

“Welcome, Jodi.  You open the book with an anecdote about an event during Occupy Wall Street.  (c. 3:47)  [snip]  (c. 6:54)

“And, then, the collective energy and the collective capacity dissipated.  Right?  We had a capacity, at the beginning, actually, to take the park.  And, then, once each person started deciding for herself what was best for her, our capacity disintegrated.  And we no longer had it.

“And, so, of course, it became like: Well, there were exams at NYU next week.  And people were really busy and hadn’t planned.  So, maybe they needed to do something else.  And, so, it was like put off for another time.  And everybody ended up going home.

“And, so, my concern in the book is to try to capture the combination of collective capacity, that we all had together and to try to reclaim that and push it forward against the individualising tendencies, that hurt the movement that night, and, that have hurt the left now for the last 20 or 30 years.  [snip]  (c. 7:46)

DOUG HENWOOD:  What you write about—you talk about here really captures the frustration many of us felt about Occupy, that it was very skeptical about agendas, about structures, about turning this very exhilarating moment into something more permanent and, potentially, more transformative.

“And, as you point out later in the book, this is a lot of readings of the Paris Commune fall into this kind of interpretation that the Commune was, itself, not a way-station to a more permanent better society, but just the revolutionary life, in itself.  Isn’t this what you’re getting at?”  (c. 8:22)

DR. JODI DEAN:  “Yeah.  [snip]  (c. 8:45)  And there’s been a shift away from thinking organizationally and strategically, in terms of taking power, in terms of a struggle for power.

“And that has been pushed away, in favour of an approach, that looks at personal transformation, small-group transformation, immediacy, making our immediate relations better.  And this making our immediate relations, whether or not they’re self-relations or small-group relations, making those better has been the form of political struggle.

“I think it’s a form, that is, ultimately, politically damaging, bereft, and the left response to, and incorporation into, neoliberalism, or late capitalism.  Right?

“It’s not a real form of political struggle.  It’s only a kind of minor individuated resistance.

“So, I think that this is the problem, that we’ve encountered in the last 20 or 30 years on the left.  But it presents itself as somehow in advance.  Well, the problem is power.  No.  I would say the problem is our lack of power [chuckles], not power per se.  Right?  Anybody, who turns away from power, will not have it.  So, that’s the problem on the left.” (c. 9:59)

[snip]

[snip]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at BEHIND THE NEWS.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

[1]  Catapulting social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, towards building a revolutionary political party is a topic, which many of us have emphasised for years, including in real time and in an interview for Media Roots with Alexa O’Brien, from US Day of Rage, one of the four groups, which started the Occupy Movement.

[2]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Behind The News, this one-hour broadcast hosted by host Doug Henwood, Thursday, 24 NOV 2016, 12:00 PST.

Also see related Lumpenproletariat articles, such as:

  • Reclaiming Communism With Political Science Professor Jodi Dean; 2 JUN 2015.

***

[26 NOV 2016]

[Last modified at 23:39 PST on 27 NOV 2016]

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Is Former Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Detective Kari Abbey Getting Away With Murder?

22 Wed Jun 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Free Speech, Microeconomic Analysis, Police State, urban economics

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CopWatch

CopWatchCoverflickrA_SynLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Ostensibly, our community police agencies are endowed with extraordinary lethal force and firepower because they are charged with protecting and serving our local communities.  Unfortunately, the outrageous numbers of extrajudicial killings by police of innocent unarmed civilians doesn’t allow them that reputation.

The questions becomes: what resistance shall we, the people, dignify?  Stay tuned, as community protests will likely follow.

Lumpenproletariat

***

THE MODESTO BEE—[18 JUN 2016]

Former Stanislaus sheriff’s detective Kari Abbey takes plea deal

By Rosalio Ahumada

rahumada@modbee.com

A case against a former Stanislaus County sheriff’s detective once accused in a deadly shooting has been resolved.

Kari Abbey initially was charged with murder in the 2010 shooting of Rita Elias. But Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Ricardo Córdova later dismissed the murder charge after determining Abbey fired her gun in self-defense.

What remained of the case against Abbey were felony charges that included allegations of embezzling from the Sheriff’s Department, cultivating marijuana, unlawfully evicting her tenants, child endangerment and illegal possession of steroids.

The embezzlement charge stemmed from allegations by investigators and co-workers who said Abbey spent half of her time at the Sheriff’s Department attending to personal business associated with her family’s rental properties.

With the plea deal, Abbey pleaded no contest to unlawfully entering a home and possessing steroids, both misdemeanors. The felony charges were dropped.

Abbey, 39, was sentenced to three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and $225 in restitution to the Sheriff’s Department, according to Assistant District Attorney Dave Harris, who prosecuted the case.

Michael Rains, Abbey’s attorney, said both sides took a more realistic and pragmatic approach to the evidence after further review of the case.

“Some of these charges, in my opinion, wouldn’t have held up in court in front of jury,” Rains said Friday.

He said he didn’t think Kari Abbey committed the crimes to which she pleaded no contest, but said his client did not want to spend more than $100,000 taking this case to trial. Rains said the taxpayers also would have had to pay for what likely would have been a three-week trial.

Rains, based in Pleasant Hill, has a connection to a case involving the prosecutor. A year ago, Harris and prosecution investigator Steve Jacobson faced contempt-of-court charges related to allegations of improperly contacting an alternate juror and failing to notify the court in a trial of Modesto bail bondsman Aleo John Pontillo. Rains represented Jacobson in that case.

Learn more at THE MODESTO BEE.

***

[22 JUN 2016]

[Last modifed  23:50 PDT  22 JUN 2016]

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Show Me A Hero on HBO Analyses Racial Residential Segregation

14 Mon Sep 2015

Posted by ztnh in Fiction, urban economics

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HBO, housing policy, racial residential segregation, Show Me A Hero, The Baltimore Sun

Show_Me_a_Hero_Poster LUMPENPROLETARIAT—It is, indeed, appalling how large a percentage of our incomes some of us spend on cable television.  But, at least, there are some perks.  Show Me A Hero is one of them.  This new mini-series starring Oscar Isaac with Jim Belushi, Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder and various other notable actors is a fascinating view of urban economics and politics.

—Messina

Show Me A Hero on HBO (start date: August 16, 2015)

***

TAKE ON TELEVISION—(14 AUG 2015) “Welcome to Take On Television. I’m Andy Bienstock with Dave Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun. Dave, starting on Sunday night on HBO, a new series from David Simon.”

DAVID ZURAWIK: “Yeah, Andy. And it’s far and away the best production of the summer. I think it’s one of the best productions I’ve seen in years on television—period. It’s called Show Me a Hero. It’s a six-hour mini-series the next three Sundays on HBO—two hours a night. It’s really outstanding work. It’s written and executive produced by David Simon and Bill Zorzi, both of whom had been [Baltimore] Sun employees. And it’s directed and executive produced by Paul Haggis from [the film] Crash, who’s outstanding—great, great talent.

“It covers a desegregation battle in Yonkers, New York, a city of about 200,000 north of New York in 1987. It started in 1987. This mini-series covers 1987 and 1993. It’s based on a non-fiction book by then-New York Times reporter Lisa Belkin. And it’s a terrific, a really outstanding book. They went and re-reported it. They did the story.

“It follows a young, on-the-rise, elected official in Yonkers named Nick Wasicsko. And he’s played in this by Oscar Isaac. You may not have heard of Oscar Isaac. He is outstanding—honestly. An Emmy doesn’t even seem good enough for the performance he turns in as the city councilman who becomes mayor at 27, the youngest mayor in a mid-to-large American city. But, then, there’s a desegregation lawsuit from the NAACP and the Justice Department, that aims only, really, to build 200 units of low-income housing in the part of Yonkers, that was predominantly white. He is chewed up in this battle. His career is shredded. His life is disrupted. It’s a great story.

“In addition to his story and the desegregation narrative, two of the major story lines, you have stories of four women of colour, who are trying to move out of really bad low-income housing into these new units. They’re hoping to move into these new units. The new units are the promised land for them. The way they juggle these story lines is fantastic. I think a lot of that, of course, is the script. A lot of it is also Haggis. But this is—you know—the title is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous saying: Show me a hero; and I’ll write you a tragedy. I’m not gonna give any spoilers. It’s a tragedy in the end, but it’s one of the richest productions I’ve seen. And it speaks to post-Ferguson, post-Freddie Gray America like nothing else in American art.”

ANDY BIENSTOCK: “Show Me a Hero starts Sunday night on HBO. That’s Dave Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun. And I’m Andy Bienstock for Take On Television on WYPR.”

Transcript of WYPR radio broadcast by Messina

***

THE BALTIMORE SUN—(14 AUG 2015) When David Simon first contacted William F. Zorzi in the fall of 2001 about the book “Show Me a Hero,” Simon’s former Baltimore Sun colleague says he was mainly annoyed.

“I was on the desk and on deadline at The Sun,” said Zorzi, who was then working as an assistant city editor.

“Could you [expletive] call at a more inconvenient time?” he remembers asking Simon, who had already left the paper to write for television. “Clearly, you’ve not been doing this very long or you’ve forgotten what it was like.”

But when Simon called back three weeks later, Zorzi still had not read the book. He couldn’t even remember the title.

“Well, you better read the [expletive] thing,” Zorzi quotes Simon as saying after he repeated the title, “because we’re going out to HBO in three weeks.”

Not only did Zorzi read journalist Lisa Belkin’s non-fiction book about a community-wrenching housing desegregation battle in the late 1980s in Yorkers, N.Y., he came to live it for the next 13 1/2 years.

The veteran political reporter quit The Sun in 2002, went to Yonkers to “re-report” the book, and has been working on the project on and off ever since. Off includes three seasons on Simon’s “The Wire” as a writer, including the final year of episodes in which he also played himself onscreen as a Sun reporter named Bill Zorzi.

The result of that kind of commitment shows in virtually every frame of this six-hour HBO miniseries that speaks to our post-Ferguson-post-Freddie-Gray America like no other work on TV — or in any other form of art so far.

Learn more at THE BALTIMORE SUN.

***

Also see this related Lumpenproletariat.org article:

  • “Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development (2002) by Kevin Fox Gotham, Ph.D., University of Kansas“

***

[12:45 PST 17 SEP 2015]

[Last modified 10:25 PST 18 SEP 2015]

[Thanks to brother RDM for screening this for me; and, priorly, to Democracy Now! for sharing this with non-HBO-subscribing people.]

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