Passage To India: A South Asia Special

Arising as a consequence of recent peregrinations...

Non-Fiction

Gita Mehta – Karma Cola (1979)

No doubt in 1979 an important antidote to Western Orientalism about the 'inherent spirituality' of India, these days it reads like a string of snarky and clichéd anecdotes about the dubious aspects of spirituality in the context of East-meets-West globalisation.


William Dalrymple – The Age of Kali (1998)
– White Mughals (2002)
– The Last Mughal (2006)

Dalrymple is, of course, at heart a colonialist sympathiser – though not of the same unrepentant and black-and-white ilk of, say, a Niall Ferguson, he clearly sees the Raj (at least in the early days) as replete with heroic eccentric humanists (despite a few bad apples), and misses the 'order' and rule of law that he thinks India had under the later period of British rule. Yet he is a wonderful, oldfashioned storyteller and an engaging travel writer. The Age of Kali is a series of essays on various aspects of his reporting from India, some of which now seem a bit dated in their discussion of the unexpected juxtapositions of globalisation (reminiscent of Pico Iyer's Video Night In Kathmandu), but featuring some interesting political moments. Far more engrossing, however, are White Mughals and The Last Mughal – the former dealing with a marriage between the British representative in Hyderabad in the late 1700s to a Mughal princess, and the latter with Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, the Sepoy Rebellion and the siege of Delhi in the mid-1800s. Both are rich and tragic narratives, but for my money the latter is the pick – with its Emperor-esque (Kapuscinski) glimpses of the last days of the Mughal court and of important figures such as Ghalib, and its harrowing tales of the atrocities of the siege, tales which bring to mind J. G. Farrell's Siege of Krishnapur, but with the addition of the attempt to give various sides of the story (though sadly the perspective of the sepoys themselves, as opposed to the British and the Mughal court, is lacking).


Yasmin Khan – The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2007)

I've long been interested in Partition from my perspective as a genocide studies scholar – and my personal interest in India, on the one hand due to childhood Orientalism and on the other as a Buddhist. Deciding on a specific book about Partition was difficult, but I settled on Khan's. Khan's work is not limited to high politics or the personalities of the leaders involved; she deals both with everyday experience, and with the specific context and events which happened in different areas. Particularly interesting is her analysis of the fluidity of meaning in terms and concepts like swaraj ('self-rule') or 'Pakistan,' and the outcome of this indeterminateness in terms of human suffering. There is a strong sense of the contingency of the fact that partition happened at all. Khan consciously tries to extend analysis beyond the Punjab, usually seen as the 'ground zero' of Partition or the 'place where Partition happened.' In tone and style, it's somewhere between an academic work and a work of popular history. Without having read other books specifically on Partition it's hard to judge what criticisms might be levelled – the kind which always exist around controversial events such as Partition – but for me this seemed like a thorough introduction which had no obvious agenda in relation to nationalism or religion, and which examined the complexities of the situation within a work of manageable length accessible to the non-specialist.


Katherine Boo – Behind The Beautiful Forevers (2012)

Boo tells a New Journalism-style story of Annawadi, a small slum near an airport, following a number of inhabitants. Boo's previous work had been related to quality journalism about poverty in the United States – here, she transfers this interest to Mumbai. Based on years of participant-observation and thorough examination of sources to corroborate her personal interviews and observations, the book is written in novelistic style, except for an afterword in which Boo speaks in her own voice. It's an interesting story, though at times the pace flags, and also an interesting exercise, but one which raises questions about the choice of presentation which are not addressed, reminiscent of those around works like Capote's In Cold Blood – doesn't the presence of the author change events, and shouldn't it be at least acknowledged in the text, rather than given from a 'God's eye view' with an inevitable whiff of colonialism? How are we to know that the claims made on the basis of interviews and documentary corroboration actually stand up if they are not even discussed? Nonetheless, it's a fascinating and admirable work.


Fiction

Bhisham Sahni – Tamas ('Darkness,' 1974)

Sahni's is an emblematic work on Partition, and has been filmed for television (on 1986). The novel is a lightly fictionalised version of his personal experiences as a young man during the events depicted, in Rawalpinid in the Punjab (today, part of Pakistan). It's not an easy novel – not only because of the violence and trauma of the subject matter, but also because it reads as do accounts of real life events, episodic, and dealing with a plethora of characters. The voice is impersonal, the eye jaundiced, and the tale without redemption, as befits the events in question.


Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger (2008)
– Last Man In Tower (2011)

Despite the Booker, I wasn't particularly impressed by White Tiger, a story of the entrepreneurial and murderous rise of village boy Balram Halwai – it was entertaining enough, but lacking urgency in its narrative, somewhat unsophisticated in terms of language (even taking into account the first-person narration), and a little too knowingly clever in tone. Last Man In Tower, however, is another thing altogether – an impressive and deeply moving story (set in Mumbai) of a lone hold-out who refuses to leave a crumbling apartment building to make way for a gleaming new tower block, and the fate that befalls him. Up there with the best of Rohinton Mistry. Speaking of whom…


Rohinton Mistry – Such A Long Journey (1991)
– Family Matters (2002)

Unless and until he publishes further, A Fine Balance will remain Mistry's masterpiece. But his other works are not far behind. As with Mistry's other works, each deals with Parsi families – Such A Long Journey in Mumbai in the 70s, with the backdrop of Indira Gandhi's machinations and the war with Pakistan, while Family Matters is set in the same city 90s. Each display Mistry's talent for baroque Victorian narrative and observation of everyday detail intertwined with the bigger picture of Indian socio-politics. The former was withdrawn from the University of Mumbai's syllabus in 2010 after complaints from the family of Hindu nationalist politician Bal Thackeray – in typical fashion, reading the views experessed by characters as if they were expressed directly by the author.

...mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita...

a.k.a, recent reading, as follows:

Victorian

Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Aurora Floyd (1862-3)
Classic Victorian sensation fiction – I actually enjoyed it more than the one for which Braddon is now best-remembered, Lady Audley's Secret. The plot centres around bigamy (it's also a canonical work in the 'Victorian bigamy novel') and so, as you can imagine, is of interest on all kinds of levels, but gender and sexuality especially.

Margaret Oliphant – Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
A delightful tale (part of the Chronicles of Carlingford) which bears resemblance to Trollope's slightly preceding Barsetshire Chronicles, of which I'm also a fan. Lucilla, our heroine, is determined to behave sensibly, and also to resolve the lives of everyone around her. Here there are echoes of Austen's Emma (1815), but unlike Emma Woodhouse, Lucilla's management is not wholly unsuccessful. Subversive to an interesting degree yet still moralistic in the classic Victorian mold. I must read the rest of the Carlingford novels.

George & Weedon Grossmith – Diary of a Nobody (1892)
For someone who's got a Victoriana obsession and also a research interest in the rise of the modern bourgeoisie, Diary of a Nobody is perfect. Of course, it's funny, and also a nice counterpoint to more 'serious' Victorian novels (see above) which are yours truly's usual diet.


Assorted Novels

Elizabeth Bowen – The Death of the Heart (1938)
These days I'm not much into 'writerly' writers but I'll gladly make an exception for Bowen, who I hadn't previously read. Her modernist prose makes you want to use clichés like 'crystalline,' and I'm also always a fan of the English novel of manners. In some ways she reminds me of Janet Malcolm (or vice versa) in that both have an exquisite sense of human frailty, but they also like to slyly slip the knife in.

Cornell Woolrich – Rendezvous In Black (1948)
Compared to Chandler and Hammett, Woolrich these days tends to be forgotten as an important noir figure, but the films based on his works are still remembered – Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Night Has A Thousand Eyes (one of my favourite titles) among others. Actually, though, his work is much darker, less procedural-driven and even more psychological than the aforementioned, full of dread. Rendezvous In Black is a revenge narrative following a man whose fiancée has been killed (bizarrely) in an accident with a low-flying plane and an empty liquor bottle. I have two other novels of his waiting, but I'm worried that it'll be too traumatic a reading experience…

Shirley Jackson – The Sundial (1958)
I'm a huge fan of Jackson's fiction, especially the stories other than 'The Lottery' (which is over-proscribed) - and of the great novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived In The Castle (1962). I've been slowly making my way through her lesser known work, which I find uneven. In The Sundial, as in We Have Always…, we find ourselves in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of a village, both filled with eccentric characters. Aunt Fanny has a vision, delivered by her dead father, of an impending apocalypse, and preparations begin. I didn't warm to this novel though it was interesting, and in some ways could be seen as a test run for some of the themes of We Have Always… I wonder, too, if there is an influence on Stephen King's The Shining (King wrote about The Haunting of Hill House at length in Danse Macabre), particularly in scenes set in mazes.

J. G. Ballard – The Drowned World (1962)
It's impossible not to recognise in Ballard one of the twentieth century's great prophets – which is why I'll reiterate. The Drowned World, an early novella, tells the story of a dystopian Earth on which the ice caps have melted, the seas risen, and the entire planet become tropical. The slow impact of this on the psyche of the survivors – the opaque excursions into psycho-evolutionary biology – along with the tropical/aquatic gothic setting make this a fascinating and prescient piece, if not always compelling.

J. G. Ballard – Crash (1973)
Again, although Crash's reputation preceded it, it didn't do anything to dint the pleasure of reading the work. Like a lot of Cultural Studies and pop culture research people, I find that 'body horror' area/era particularly interesting in which the body-machine complex starts to be overtly represented in forms both erotic and monstrous (note to self: Men, Women and Chainsaws is still waiting to be read). Ballard, Burroughs, Cronenberg, Lynch, and so on. I'm ashamed to admit that Crash (and Dead Ringers) are the two Cronenberg films I've yet to see, but I'm glad to have read the book first – and, like a few other of the works I describe here, it is every bit as stunning as one has heard. And amazing to imagine that it was written in 1973. The blank erotics and stark futurity, the sharp vision of the city and technology, the mutual violation and traumatic inseparability of body and machine and body-as-machine… it's all there. See also Mark Seltzer (thanks again for the recommendation Dr Swan) and also, of course, Donna Haraway.

Lew McCreary – The Minus Man (1991)
I have a long-neglected sideline interest in serial killers, and Mark Seltzer's eponymous work brought a number of references to my attention, including this novel. Generally, I tend to find serial killers a tiresome subject for fiction (particularly as they are now so implicated in crime fiction and television, and don't require a motive, hence obviating the plot work that writers would otherwise have to put in), but The Minus Man (Lydia Lunch has also named a song on her most recent studio album after the phrase) is much more of a psychological work (and, unlike my favourite serial killer novel, Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie, or Dexter, that other tale of a killer hero, uninterested in satisfying gruesome voyeuristic fantasies). While the controversy around the novel (which was also filmed) centred around the sympathy that the reader feels for Vann Siegert, the serial killer from whose perspective the story is told, in fact this seems like a ridiculous over-simplification; in straightforward prose, McCreary sets out a cold but very human psychological study of the killer as a human inhabiting a lifeworld which happens to include the compulsion to destroy others. A work which, as Seltzer pointed out, is thought-provoking both in terms of its original approach to its content, and when considered as a symptom of the violence and trauma at – and reflexively considered to be at – the heart of the modern social-technological complex.


Assorted Non-Fiction

Jessica Mitford – The American Way of Death Revisited (1998)
As is evident elsewhere, although death has been an ongoing theme – as it is for all of us – my recent Death Studies sojourn has been the locus around which various reading has centred in recent times. Mitford's revised version of her classic work takes us through the usual hideous juxtaposition of the biological and the consumer banal (as well as the institutionalisation of capitalist profit-making on the backs of the bereaved). Little of the older material will be news to anyone who's read Waugh's classic, The Loved One – but what rankles and intrigues is the extent to which, despite her original revelation, the deeply cynical corporatisation of the funeral industry has continued unabated. As with any good piece of muckraking – and Mitford's up there with the best – the indignation and disgust flow unabated (to take just one of myriad examples, the fashion for expensive 'double coffins' in which the outer layer is intended to be impenetrable by the elements - causing a build-up of gas inside the coffin due to anaerobic bacterial decay and leading to explosions - the solution being 'burping coffins,' which vent the gas so as to avoid the former, and presumably greater, indignity).

Simon Reynolds – Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past (2011)
There's so much that could be said about this book, but that will have to await a more thorough review. I loved Reynolds' work on post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again, but this one is a bit more personal, also more theoretical and coming from a position of critique, which is interesting but at times fails to gel or seems a little like a mid-life crisis. What I will note here, which others have before me, is that the irony is that Reynolds' thesis - that we now create music which does not attempt to be new, and that this is a bad thing - actually looks back to the time when music saw itself as new (Reynolds thinks '65 was the turning point) as an original golden age. Definitely worth reading - both enraging and engaging.

Scott Carney – The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers (2011)
This book is as gruesome as the title sounds, but it's necessary reading for anyone interested in necro- or thanatocapitalism and the reification of the human body on the unequal playing field of the global 'free market' – while not being as heavy a read as any of that sounds (it's written in an easy journalistic style). Carney's interest in the area began when one of his students, on a group tour to India, committed suicide and he was in the position to supervise the treatment and return of the body. From that point, he explores the various areas mentioned in the subtitle, including the fascinating nexus between holy or ritual head-shaving and the hair industry. For those who enjoyed Mary Roach's Stiff, there are many more interesting explorations to be had into the 'afterlife' of the human – or human biological material. Particularly recommended for the Death Studies cohort (Tim and Pia – also Meredith, you may find this one interesting if you haven't seen it already).

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011)
I'd really enjoyed Jon Ronson's Them, and so I had high hopes for The Psychopath Test, particularly since, as you're now aware, it deals with a subject I have a deep interest in. But although, as always, Ronson uncovers various near-unbelievable histories and anecodotes, and employs his typical and typically entertaining strategic deployment of his own awkwardness and his unique style of reported dialogue, I found the book a little all over the place. Ronson isn't quite sure what he's interested in (Psychopathology itself, as a concept and as manifest? The 'madness industry' and its pernicious allies in other state and corporate institutions? Institutions and their impact on mental health?) and there is a particularly problematic chapter in which he interviews a former Tonton Macoute, trying to apply his new knowledge of psychopathy checklists – whereas those of us who know much about the area of organised mass violence know that it's precisely necessary not to employ sadists or psychopaths as violence workers because they're too unreliable and anti-systemic - you would think a book on psychopathy, even if not an academic work as such, might pay attention to this kind of thing. Still, all in all a lot of fun.


India

Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance (1996)
Just as good as I'd always heard it was – a Dickensian (I'm not always a huge fan of Dickens, but that's another conversation), addictive narrative set during the massive upheaval of Indira Gandhi's Emergency. In terms of other great recent English-language novels of India, I didn't love it as much as A Suitable Boy, but although Mistry's writing is less exquisitely fine-tuned than Vikram Seth's, the story itself grows powerful very early on.

Gita Mehta – Karma Cola (1979)
A good corrective to the neo-orientalist New Age view of India as a source of wisdom, particularly prevalent in the '60s and '70s – there are some great anecdotes of gurus and devotees, and the intermesh with capitalism, but I found Mehta's 'flip' style to be a bit casual and offputting.

William Dalrymple – The Age of Kali (1998)
Edward Luce – In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007)
I'd already read, and mostly enjoyed, Dalrymple's book on practitioners of different spiritual traditions in India, Nine Lives. But reading Western travel literature on India is difficult in that the writers often haven't caught up with post-colonialism, and that's unfortunately the case both for Dalrymple, who at times appears something of an imperialist nostalgic (I'm also finding that in the work of his I'm presently reading on Delhi, City of Djinns); and for Luce, bureau chief for the Financial Times in South Asia (and now Washington), who is too sympathetic to anti-statist freemarketism for my tastes (not saying that there aren't any problems with the Indian state as such). Nonetheless, Dalrymple's descriptions are gorgeous (and his encounters with Benazir Bhutto particularly stick in the memory), while Luce had access to some very interesting people and the anecdotes, situations and interviews he lays out are both hilarious and chilling, the latter particularly in relation to Partition and inter-communal violence (again, a theme of City of Djinns). I now intend to read some specific Partition histories, which I think may also be helpful for my mass violence research…

Matteo Garrone - Gomorra (2008)

This sleek and brutal film, like Roberto Saviano’s book on which it is based, is a work of docu-fiction, but it is only a light transposition of the everyday reality for Neapolitans and their ongoing relationship with the Camorra (while the Sicilian Mafia/Cosa Nostra are the best known, they are not the only Italian criminal organisation; others include the aforementioned, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita). The film traces a number of different individuals through their generally tragic trajectories through the poorer echelons of Neapolitan society (though while much of the ‘action on the ground’ happens on the streets, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Camorra and other similar organizations exist at every level, including the highest, of Italian politics and commerce - in this film this is evident for the world of high fashion in particular, though in a way which can also be considered representative).

In this world of scummy, decaying concrete high-rise projects (Italian criminal organizations have a lengthy history with the construction industry, and concrete in particular), the Camorra are so deeply implicated at all levels of society that the attempt to remain disentangled, or worse, to disentangle oneself, may be impossible, except at the price of one’s life (not to mention the lives of one's family and friends). Rampant poverty and the standard social and economic alienation of urban underclasses only contribute to these patterns. While we are fairly familiar with this kind of narrative from films such as City of God or La Haine and television series like The Wire, it remains shocking to see the scabrous underbelly of an affluent European society revealed when the rest of us are more used to the Tuscany of tourist dreams and the Italian self-image as bella gente (although in Italy the social and racial tensions, sense of doomed inevitability, and corruption which permeate the society depicted here are equally apparent, and equally repellent, in politics and the media). The film itself is both violent and viscerally beautiful, a treat for aficionados of post-industrial decay and tawdry glamour, and anyone who has visited Naples will recognize, if not the scenery, the atmosphere greasy with fear, history and opportunity.

Italian criminal organisations in themselves are a fascinating subject – some of the books that I’d recommend on the topic include Peter Robb’s Midnight In Sicily, Toby Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy and John Dickie’s indispensible Cosa Nostra, as well as the moving documentary Excellent Cadavers (based on the book of the same name), telling the story of heroic anti-Mafia judges and martyrs Giovanni Falcone & Paolo Borsellino - and I’m about to embark on David Lane’s Into The Heart of the Mafia – and they are important not only as interesting histories in their own right, but in any attempt to understand contemporary and historical Italy – not to mention all countries of Italian immigration, but in particular the USA and various South American nations.

The representation of the Mafia in documentary and fiction itself is worth considering, with all its connections with dietrologia (‘behind-ology,’ the Italian obsession with conspiracies and ulterior motivations for action, one which is hardly surprising given the history of moments and organizations such as the Calvi case, the P2 ‘shadow government,’ and the murderous intrigues of Rightist and Leftist terrorist groups during the anni di piombo, the ‘years of lead’). This sense of shadowy manipulation from behind the scenes is reflected in the Italian giallo (and, perhaps, deflected in the love for the Manichaean Western) – but there have also been (rare) Italian cultural figures (such as Dario Fo) who have more openly addressed the issue - in particular the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia in works such as Il Giorno della Civetta ('Day of the Owl') and Il Contesto (published in English as 'Equal Danger'), which give a sense of the Borgesian, truth-defying mazes within mazes which are encountered when one delves into this subject. But the semi-fictionalised presentation given here - in the emerging Italian tradition of the Unidentified Narrative Object - is a novelty; one, however, which does not impede the seriousness of the topic at hand (Saviano himself has been subject to serious death threats and has been granted a permanent police escort).

Like the film itself, the present Italian situation can be seen as a tragedy garbed in beautiful raiments - particularly while a corrupt and well-connected Berlusconi continues to prosecute his war against the judiciary, the meaningful Left, and the independent media.

John Vaillant – The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

Some time ago, I watched a documentary about the coldest inhabited place on earth, a town in Siberia where, if the generator failed, everyone would die within four hours – where the seasonal melting of the highest permafrost caused by the warmth of buildings gave the architecture skewed, Lovecraftian angles – and where the coffins, due to the same process of thawing and refreezing, would gradually make their way to the surface, re-emerging twenty to twenty-five years after the burial.

The world in which the events John Vaillant describes takes place – a remote region of Siberian Manchuria – is similarly surreal. Trees explode in the cold, as the heat and pressure of the sap bursts the frozen exterior, while flora and fauna of the cold North (deer, wolves, pines) mingle with those of the tropical South (leopards, large and exotic insects, and, the animal in question here, tigers). Indeed, Vaillant suggests that the region was a refugium – an isolated area which remained uncovered by snow and ice during pitiless glacial periods. But this is also an area of flux ethnically, in the mingling between ethnic ‘Russians,’ indigenous people, and Chinese; but, even more shapingly, in the aftermath of perestroika and the frontier-capitalist instability which resulted (Vaillant suggests that there are very numerous parallels between this area and the American frontier, both in terms of this lawlessness, human and natural danger, and in terms of colonialisation and resource exploitation). But although this environment may seem bizarre to ‘we moderns,’ in fact, despite the encroachments of nature in the form of logging, mining, roads and guns, life here is in many ways akin to our ancestral patterns, wherein the forces of nature continually pose an existential threat and where hunting (and not agriculture) forms an important part of most successful survival strategies. In this arena, the danger that tigers (and other wild animals) can pose is not just, as more usually, a convenient justification for humans’ meat-eating habits.

This isn’t to say, though, that human-tiger relationships are such that the killing of the tiger is justified. There is, in this area, a long tradition of what can only be described as ‘honourable’ interaction between the human and the tiger – an uneasy ceasefire, but one which generally holds (it may seem anthropomorphic to refer to honour among tigers, so to speak, but even I, someone who usually considers our understanding of the mental and emotional capabilities of animals to be radically undervalued, was astonished by both the clear laws obtaining between human and tiger and the purposiveness and forethought with which tigers here behave). Vaillant’s tale is a story of the breaking of that covenant by a human, and a feline quest for revenge – one in which the circle of human targets grows ever wider, and no-one is safe.

The story, which begins with this particular tiger’s ferocious and well-planned killing of a poacher, traces both the pre-history and the consequences of this moment, and in doing so brings in not only issues of human and tiger (we might combine these in saying ‘animal’) nature, but also politics, environmentalism, colonialism, spirituality and the relationship with land itself. The hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, suicide-prone, stoic characters (almost all men) who make up the human cast are in some sense familiar Russian figures, but at the same time their relationship to the taiga, the way in which they read it and feel a qualitative relationship with it as an entity, partakes in a spirituality which isn’t confined only to those with indigenous heritage in the area (though obviously it functions in different ways for those who have such heritage). In ‘man vs wild’ tales of this kind I usually tend to feel less sympathy with the human characters than the author intends, but in this case, Vaillant presents not only the plight of the Amur tigers but also the travails of these people trapped in a dying society, with few economic opportunities, caught in a pincer between the corruption of Russia’s new elite and the harshness of their natural circumstances. The tiger itself, meanwhile, is a character sprung from a Greek tragedy, wronged, injured, and with furious calculation lashing out at those whose injury can only bring cyclical retribution.

Given that I’m a sucker both for cats and for nature documentaries (especially those set in extreme environments), I may be the ideal audience for a work of this kind, but certainly there was little to forgive in this book, which is well- and tautly-written, deeply atmospheric and incisive (if we put aside a few regrettable diversions into bio-evolutionary speculation and ruminations on human nature). This is a tale both sorrowful and steeped in what I can only term majesty, a report from a front line tense with dualities – arctic and tropical, socialist and capitalist, spiritual and material, colonialist and indigenous, ‘human’ and ‘natural’ – which are both symbolic and prefigurative of ‘our’ present condition.

James Young - Nico: The End (1994)

It’s been some time since I read James Young’s other work on that paradigmatic Germanic femme fatale, Nico: Songs They Never Play On the Radio. From memory, this volume contains some of the same material but is an expanded version which also includes a great deal of later material, including the making of Camera Obscura (produced by John Cale) and extended tours behind the Iron Curtain. As a full-fledged Nico obsessive (and one who holds the view that her critically neglected work of the ‘80s, in particular Camera Obscura and The Drama of Exile, represent the pinnacle of her achievements) this was an essential document.

Young himself gives the impression of a slightly unreliable (not to mention bitter) narrator, at least as far as his faux-deprecating picture of himself as naïve outsider is concerned (he left a degree at an Oxbridge to become Nico’s pianist, thereby entering a bizarre, shabby and deeply seamy underworld of addiction, immorality and eccentricity). Having said this, however, is prose is poetic without being overblown or over-reaching itself, perfect for the task at hand, and in itself this book is an important historical document of a figure whose genius, at first so little recognized as a result of her beauty, was never eclipsed by her spiral into the darkness of addiction and poverty (indeed, Young suggests that she herself had felt that beauty as a burden in that regard).

I generally don’t read biographies of artists in whom I’m interested, because I often emerge liking them less, but in this case – well, Nico certainly doesn’t come across as a likeable character per se, as one who you’d trust or lend money to, but (as in the case of White’s biography of Genet) my respect for her was, if anything, heightened by this severely unglamorous work which scours the depths of the abject. John Cooper Clarke, on the other hand, another pet cult figure of mine, doesn’t come across quite so well during his cameo role (though if any song encapsulates the mood and environs of this book, it’s his most well-known piece Beasley Street). On that note, other figures are also dragged down from their pedestals – in particular, John Cale, who appears as a thoroughly nasty piece of work in both his drug-addled and health-yuppie phases (which casts an interesting light on his appearance in the essential documentary Nico:Icon, which closes with his particularly moving cover of Frozen Warnings). Nico’s son Ari (fathered by Alain Delon, who refused to acknowledge him) is also depicted as almost unbelievably venial, although with his background (disavowed by his father, abandoned by Nico and raised mostly by Delon’s mother) one wonders what chances he had. As in other junkie narratives, the pursuit of a fix forms part of a rambling and cyclical rather than traditionally-shaped story arc, but unlike those (with the singular exception of William Burroughs’ work of that title) this in no way becomes frustrating for the reader. Ultimately,as a tale of the dark underside of fame’s excesses and the characters who inhabit it, Nico: The End outranks in darkness even other notable works such as Marc Almond’s Tainted Life.

Nico, like certain other artists (Emily Dickinson springs to mind) is an anomaly, inasmuch as one is bound to ask – where did her art come from? It seems to have emerged fully-formed from an alien place, unprecedented, with a quality of liminality in its very appearance in our reality. One of the interesting things about this book is the fact that Young doesn’t really recognize or discuss Nico’s work as such. This is refreshing, given how many books are written by adoring fans, but he does, at least from the perspective of my taste, misrecognise the value of the work that he was actually involved in – in particular, the amazing, experimental synth-driven Camera Obscura, and in particular its cover of 'My Funny Valentine,' personally by far my favourite rendition of that standard, which Young excoriates in detail. Finally, though, the inherent and unaffected alienation of this subject position is nothing if not apt.

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009)

It was with some interest that I embarked upon Mark Fisher (better known as k-punk)’s new work of theory – his widely- and justly-feted pop culture blog being one of the most impressive meldings of theory and cultural analysis online (and one which never strays into inaccessibility), as well as being impressively prescient. His new work deals initially with the title concept, ‘capitalist realism’ – that is, the way in which capitalism installs itself in the psyche, individual and collective, as a ‘least worst,’ naturalised-normative system, one which slavers over the defeated corpses of grand-narrative ideologies; a sterile end to history in which, for the ironically distanced and thereby consenting, apathetic consumer-spectator whose cultural subjectivity is increasingly constituted by pastiche and revivalism, no alternative is imaginable. This term (‘capitalist realism’) is described as an alternative to Frederic Jameson’s definition of postmodernism as ‘the cultural logic of late capitalism’ – in contrast to the period in which Jameson’s concept was developed, ‘capitalist realism’ would encompass the collapse of political alternatives, the commodification and aestheticization of modernism, and the post-cold war settlement in which the problem faced is not one of colonisation and appropriation per se, but rather of a lack of externality to colonise.

In exploring the capitalist territorialisation of opposition, Fisher does an admirable job of taking to task the ostensible resistance of present-day texts, authors and genres such as V for Vendetta, Frank Miller, Wall-E and gangsta rap (on this note, I hear that Prince of Persia encompasses a plotline in which the supposed presence of weapons of mass destruction justifies brutal invasion, even while ‘whitefacing’ the main characters… and is it just me, or were Hollywood anti-Iraq movies all about five years too late?) – as well as taking to task the deceptive realist authenticity of the documentary style (a particular target is Supernanny). And he accomplishes this without undertaking the converse, that is, the all-too-common elite-contrarianist position which would present counter-readings of populist works such as Bruno, Antichrist, Kick-Ass or Life Is Beautiful as radical despite their populism. Texts Fisher lauds as diagnostics of the present malaise include Alfonso Cuarón’s film of P. D. James’ Children of Men; Franz Kafka (who only seems to grow more relevant with the passing of time, and who is delightfully used to analyse the call centre as distilling the political phenomenology of late capitalism); William Gibson’s Neuromancer (in the figure of the debtor-addict as paradigmatic subject in the control society); Michael Mann’s Heat; Mike Judge’s Office Space; Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven (in regard to the dreamwork-esque overwriting of the real, to memory disorder as symbolic of the capitalist destruction of narrative memory combined with a nostalgia for authenticity); Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View (a central concept for Slavoj Žižek); and the videodrome-control trinity of Burroughs, Dick and Cronenberg.

Capitalist Realism, like Fisher’s blog, is a deeply engaging (and slim) read – I devoured it in a few days – which is peppered liberally with intriguing offhand concepts (many which I would have liked to see further explored) while never collapsing under the weight of theoretical density. There is some repetition throughout, and in this light the book sometimes reads like a collection of short pieces rather than a coherent or logically-organised whole (and indeed, although structured as numerical chapters, some of this work has appeared separately online). Not quite either a piece of strictly cultural or strictly political-economic analysis, nor one of original theory, this is, rather, a work of synthesis, with cultural texts analysed as examples of the theories of the scholars with whom Fisher is engaged. Neither of the two theorists of whom he makes the most use, Žižek and Jameson, are authors whose work I’ve read extensively, so I can’t say to what extent his arguments build upon their work rather than re-presenting it (having said which, the back cover features a Žižek endorsement).

As far as Fisher’s themes, I was particularly taken by the skewering of the way in which, in direct contradiction to the promises of anti-Stalinism and the supposed streamlined efficiency of the market, sclerotic bureaucracy (as a means of surveillance and auto-surveillance) is a deeply systematised feature of late capitalist society, one with which any reader will be deeply familiar (Fisher’s particular and personal concern, one which I share, is the deeply disquieting progress of this process in the academic sector). The demise of the big Other, he argues, has been greatly exaggerated: rather, the audit is our response to that Other, meaningless data our offering (I would add that the other big Other, so to speak, of the present day is ‘the market,’ comparable to the role of the natural deities in agricultural societies: the question always being, how will the market respond?)

One problematic here, which is becoming a bugbear of mine, is the Lacan – Deleuze & Guattari – Žižek engagement with psychoanalysis (not to mention schizophrenia) as a central heuristic of meaning. While Fisher is not solely indebted to these models, in taking these thinkers as paradigmatic in developing his critique this model is clearly visible throughout. For all the problematising of original Freudian models which has been done by these and other theorists (and for all the mythological beauty of psychoanalysis considered as an artistic system of meaning rather than as a praxis), I can’t help wondering why the employment of or engagement with this discourse is necessary or useful. I find, for example, the use of ‘symbolic castration’ as an explanatory tool to be a real ballbreaker, as is an analysis which damns the subsumption of the ‘paternal’ concept of duty into the ‘maternal’ imperative to enjoy (Fisher’s quotation marks) – and really, if we take the insights of the cultural turn seriously, shouldn’t we recognise that however much we problematise and interrogate these terms, to use ‘castration’ as a signifier of disempowerment (along with the rest of the gendered framework of psychoanalysis) will never be other than reactionary?

In questioning the basis for this model, one wonders about its groundedness – for example, Žižek’s latest work takes the stages of reaction to grief (and death) as a model for historical reaction to the death of capitalism, whereas in fact this ‘stages’ model is completely discredited, existing rather as a popular myth comparable to popular understandings of various Freudian concepts. And, for all the theoretical predecession, with what conceptual justification do we apply psychological processes which were developed in regard to the individual to society or societies as a whole (which are thus defined as single, if internally divided, units)? Indeed, with regard to the application of this problematic in another scenario Fisher explores Žižek’s ‘temptation of the ethical,’ the way in which the system counters critique by deflecting blame onto pathological individuals, rather than the institutions (for example, legally personified corporations) within which they operate – which conveniently cannot be treated as individuals for the purposes of ascription of responsibility.

With regard to the individual and the social unit, I would have liked to see further questioning of the intimate personal relationship within capitalism, which, I would argue, has become a quasi-religious repository of the wished-for transcendence provided neither by labour nor by consumption; but one which is not only futile in achieving this end (hence, the increasing popularity and franchise of marriage paired with serial monogamy in general), but which subsumes the individual into practical and psychological-ideological networks, in particular but by no means solely the family, which only serve to tighten the coils of the system within which we are enmeshed (and how would the heuristic use of psychoanalaytic theories centring on libido, castration and so on fit in here?)

In speaking of psychology, there is also the contention here, popular in contemporary discourse, that the increasing levels of mental illness in affluent societies represents an inherent systemic dysfunctionality, which the system deflects by privatising that illness, by making it a quality of the individual to be treated with commodities like drugs, therapy and ‘positive thinking.’ While I wouldn’t contest that this is the case – that the nature of late capitalist labour, in particular, is implicated in a spreading existential crisis of meaning which is sublimated by the burgeoning self-help industry – at the same time, this is dangerously close to the sixties and seventies view which saw mental illness (which is undeniably related to biological factors, though not reducible to them) as treatable by what Fisher calls ‘effective antagonisms,’ politicised acts, that is, by strength of willpower put into action.

Despite making extensive use of direct quotation, and building on the theories of figures like Žižek, Jameson, Alain Badiou, and Deleuze and Guattari, among others (and, pedantic as always, I could have done without the Americanised spellings), CR is completely free from formal referencing, and contains neither index nor a bibliography, which is frustrating and which seems problematic inasmuch as the desire to engage with the academy surely necessitates a certain capitulation to its formal structures which are, for all the absurdity which they occasionally entail, designed both to facilitate dialogue, and to ensure a certain standard of intellectual attribution – that is, a (neo)modernist ethics with the goals of which this work seems elsewhere to be in sympathy. Incidentally, the book is printed by Zero Publishing, a small anti-capitalist publisher who print their manifesto on the final page – and, while wanting cultural production to provide a livelihood for the creator, one wonders whether market distribution (rather than, for example, free internet distribution) is the best way to achieve anti-capitalist goals.

And this raises a bigger question about theory in general. A major subject for CR and for much of the work upon which it draws is the way in which capitalism devours and territorialises not only that which is external, but ostensibly adversarial forces (Fisher gives not only obvious examples such as the commodification of rebellion, but critiques the recent Paris student uprisings, and, more generally, the carnivalesque oppositional mass movements of recent times). So, while supposedly oppositional cultural products make transgression into a saleable commodity (as noted and exemplified by The Clash), we are all able to function immersed in the realm of capital and its ‘market Stalinist’ bureaucratic structures, and to bolster these structures through our every action, by individualistic disavowal, by Marxist false consciousness or Sartrean bad faith (and here I think also of the concept, from genocide studies, of ‘internal resistance’), which means that we internally tell ourselves that we do not ‘believe’ in bureaucratic administration or growth and consumption as the path to meaningful functionality, freedom or happiness, even as we enforce the structures and pursue the aims which they propose, and act to impose these upon others. But couldn’t the exact same criticism be made of works like these, in themselves?

In other words, to take one example, how has the existence of Žižek’s body of work changed the nature of resistance to the present world-system to make any actually-enacted praxis of resistance more meaningful than it would be had he never written (other than making us get a warm glow inside by reading them)? Despite the subtitle, proposed strategies of resistance in CR are thin on the ground. The final prescription, which could be described as neomodernism (as might Fisher’s position throughout) is an argument for the Left to subordinate the state to the public will (hence resurrecting that concept) – for a progressive return to a grand narrative at least as far as a systemic critique of Capital. However, despite my sympathy with the second part of this equation, the first fails to convince: to what extent is a public will identifiable as something detached from the structural conditions which give rise to majority desires, and isn’t there a certain resemblance here to an unquestioning ideology of ‘democracy’ which fails to recognise the tyranny of the ‘public will’ (if I may be permitted to employ that hoary old chestnut)?

Fisher is hopeful that, although the response to the global financial crisis was undoubtedly a reassertion and strengthening of neoliberal practice, this epsiode has nonetheless discredited the discursive framework in which the system operates: neoliberalism can no longer be ‘an ideological project that has a confident forward momentum’ but one running on ‘inertial, dead defaults.’ In order to take advantage of this moment to occupy political terrain, the Left could, for example, promise to ‘deliver what neoliberalism signally failed to do: a massive reduction of bureaucracy.’ In regard to such strategies in concrete form, as a casual academic I particularly appreciated Fisher’s point that traditional strikes in the educational system are becoming meaningless, whereas a ‘strategic withdrawal of forms of labour which will only be noticed by management,’ a concerted refusal to carry out the endless stream of bureaucratic paper pushing chores demanded by the system, would actually constitute functional resistance (and Fisher seems to be pursuing these ideas 'on the ground' through the medium of conferences). Indeed, one of the pleasures of the book for me was the shock of recognition in Fisher’s grounded analysis of both the bureaucratic neoliberalisation of the post-disciplinary education system from a structural and labour perspective, and the attitude taken by many students (or should that be customers?), the ‘depressive hedonia’ and ‘post-lexianism’ which they live out in relation to their subject position as wired-in consumers of culture (the danger here, of course, is nostalgia for the good old days of patriarchal, hierarchical models of learning which focus solely on content not meaning – but I don’t think negotiating between these positions need be a zero-sum game).

But having said this, ‘offers no solutions’ is in itself, of course, a classic bastion of opposition to change – and indeed, it seems likely that, given the inevitable limitations of discursive horizons in lived experience, an alternative to late capitalism is unimaginable except as we begin to live it, to bring it in to being. In doing so, opening up a dialogue – particularly one which also proves a pleasurable and well-achieved model of the classic erudite, highbrow-lowbrow pleasure of cultural theory – is an act not to be sniffed at.

John Lanchester - Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (2010)

Knowledge may be power, but sometimes acquiring that knowledge seems too tiresome a task. In this light – and given that my professional life increasingly involves knowledge about global finance and economics – I’ve been attempting to get past the usual click:off response that my brain has in regard to anything about economics, in order to try to actually gain some understanding of the way power structures in the world operate, inseparably intertwined as they are with financial issues.

My first foray into this field was Joseph Heath’s Filthy Lucre: Economics For People Who Hate Capitalism, a slightly misnamed book given that its premise was the debunking of influential economic myths from both the right and the left, but nonetheless an interesting and informative read. My next step into the labyrinth of boring and incomprehensible jargon that is economics – not known as 'the dismal science' without reason – was John Lanchester’s new book (published in the US as I.O.U), which belies that discipline’s often well-earned reputation.

One of my problems with trying to understand these issues, as someone with a background squarely in the humanities and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences, is that even if I look up basic explanations of particular financial instruments (presumably so called because we all get played) on Wikipedia, I have to back up four or five pages in order to understand the concepts behind them. The issue here is that it’s an entirely different discourse, with all kinds of assumed underlying knowledge – I imagine mine is a similar sensation to what an economist would feel reading, say, Can The Subaltern Speak? or The Archaeology of Knowledge (i.e. this is boring, pointless, jargon-filled cobblers). The point regarding postmodernism is one to which I’ll return – but Lanchester’s book is a different story altogether. Lanchester is a novelist – his first book, the delightfully black The Debt To Pleasure (which won the Whitbread) is a particular favourite of mine, but I also enjoyed his others, Fragrant Harbour and Mr. Phillips. So when I heard that he had unexpectedly written a book on the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), I thought it might be a good place to continue my conceptual pursuit of Mammon. The book has its genesis in Lanchester’s research for a novel involving aspects of the GFC (and Fragrant Harbour, a novel of Hong Kong, was partially concerned with the human impact of global finance as reflected in that deeply trade-focussed city), and a prescient article which he wrote just before the GFC broke.

Given this background, Lanchester’s is a lucid and blackly humorous introduction to the processes which made the GFC possible, from an outsider’s perspective which doesn’t assume any previous familiarity with – well, anything he talks about, really. I now understand derivatives - options and futures, collateralized debt obligation, credit default swaps, securitization and a host of other nasty acronyms (the book could’ve used an acronym index). And I understand what actually went wrong with the financial system (if one makes the, in my opinion incorrect, assumption that it was somehow right before any of this happened). And basically, it was this: it became entirely postmodern.

The arcane nature and mind-boggling mathematical complexity of economic processes is not just incidental; it’s actually a central part of the reason why a catastrophe like the GFC could occur. It means that insiders all think in the same ideology – the more risk, the more profit; mathematical models can accurately reflect real-world behavior; limitations on particular types of trade and instrument are imposed by clueless outsiders and are there to be bent and broken (Lanchester suggests that an appropriate metaphor would be if the invention of seatbelts were to be taken as indicating that drunken speeding should now become standard practice). The failure of outsiders to understand these processes, combined with an unwarranted trust based on the shared quasi-religion of neoliberal ideology, meant that governments failed to rein in institutions either before or after the crash – a fact which contributed to heedlessness of institutions fully aware that they were too big to fail (indeed, in complete contradiction to the unfettered free market ideology which supposedly guaranteed the success of the global financial structure, the crash itself simply provided what Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism,’ a perfect opportunity to transfer more money from the public to the private sector and, despite some sharp but meaningless words, to shore up the lack of accountability of powerful individuals and institutions). This was combined with the arrogance of workers in the sector who are, as Lanchester points out, in immediate touch with proof of their rightness every time they make a successful financial decision, in contrast to most professions, where right or wrong decisions are generally more grey-shaded, less quantifiable. All of these things led to a situation in which those in the industry were completely insulated from any commonsense view of the probabilities and risks with which they were dealing.

But perhaps the most fundamental issue here is the aforementioned fact that finance went post-modern. As new instruments were invented to insure against risk and to ‘leverage’ initial capital into ever bigger sums – which in turn led to incentives to make irrecoverable loans and a drop in the perceived necessity for capital reserves against unfortunate, but now supposedly impossible, market downturns or runs – transactions were no longer attached in any meaningful way to their initial base, while attitude – in terms of bullish projected confidence, optimism and expertise – came to dominate analysis (a trend Barbara Ehrenreich documents in her brilliant work Smile or Die). Thus it was that nobody noticed that it was fundamentally impossible for a complicated system of refracted abstract meaning to transform a myriad of home loans to the destitute into a lasting financial bonanza. In this sense, postmodernist thinking (of which, let it be known, I am by no means a critic) is far from an ivory-tower game of inaccessible and meaningless jargon; rather, it is a reflection of the actual characteristics of the so-called ‘real world’ (if by ‘real’ we mean actually-existing structures of power with massive impacts on global living conditions), and the best tool to use to understand these characteristics.

But the question on everyone’s lips in relation to this situation is: who’s to blame? Those who have an interest in taking the heat off the banks and financial institutions blame politicians or the consumerist public’s insatiable desire for free money and disregard for the future (or, in the most right-wing scenario, China), but the fact is, not one point of this unholy trilogy - a Bermuda triangle into which cash keeps on vanishing - is off the hook. Addicted to consumerist capitalism, the pursuit of happiness through materialism, and lockstep free market ideology, these things are in fact not even separate as such, but facets of the same underlying societal malaise. And while John Lanchester looks mainly at the former, if you’re looking for an introductory explanation to this deplorable state of affairs, there’s no better place to start.

Lawrence Osborne – Bangkok Days (2009)

For a country which has been a Mecca for tourism, it’s surprising how little literary travel writing there is about Thailand (particularly on the part of Australians, for whom Bangkok is a likely stopover on the way to, gosh, nearly anywhere else). But perhaps that relates to the reasons many go to the country (sex tourism, backpacker parties or beaches), or to the cultural capital that it holds in Western discourse (very little in comparison to France or Tuscany). While the shelves hold Bangkok Babylons and jail memoirs, quality travel writing on Thailand remains a niche crying out to be explored – as I found when I became interested in the topic. Lawrence Osborne’s work bears an interesting relationship to this subject – his prose is accessible and not always a triumph of style (though on the other hand, he avoids floridity, a frequent danger in travel writing), but at the same time he has a gift for the arresting and original image or metaphor which elevates the work above its already-mentioned peers, while still dealing with salacious material – sex, drugs, and the expat life.

Osborne arrived in Bangkok in pursuit of affordable dental treatment, and, beguiled by the city, ended up drifting around for long enough that he eventually made it his home. Essentially a flâneur, it is his melancholy relationship with the city and its seamier denizens, Thai and farang, which form the nucleus of the work. Like Osborne himself, the narrative drifts from subject to subject, but this aimlessness reflects the expat life and the interaction Osborne has with his adopted home – if he can decide whether, indeed, this is his relationship to Bangkok. While there are evocative descriptions of the city, the book is better considered as a reflection on the West and the Orientalist image of the East (although this is generally reflected, rather than reflectively considered, in the text) – Osborne has few if any meaningful interactions with Thai people, and doesn’t give deep consideration to their perspective. Rather, it is the ageing farang’s place in (usually) his own culture, and the way that that shapes the relationship with Thailand as a cut-price pleasure garden combined with an understrata of poverty and desperation, which is the central issue in focus (Osborne's lack of knowledge of Buddhism, given the use that he tries to make of it as a theme of analysis, is also problematic).

While these points are certainly worth criticising – in particular, there is little consideration of the systemic dynamics and personal empowerment, or lack thereof, of Thai sex workers and the trade, but rather a typically Western valorization of a culture of sexual freedom and lack of shame (combined with an unfortunate anti-feminist rant) – the question of intercultural understanding per se is, in any case, not really the focus of a work which is more concerned with surfaces and with introspection. Osborne alternates between detached observer and hedonistic participant in the tawdry or kitschy bacchanalia on offer, and this combination also lends interest to his book. A flawed but fascinating exploration – literally and metaphorically – of a labyrinthine and contradictory metropolis.

Jonathan Safran Foer - Eating Animals (2009)

For those who have seen the spread of vegetarianism as reaching its zenith, it’s interesting that the major contribution of meat-eating to global warming is providing a new impetus to vegetarianism, one based on self-interest rather than compassion for others (and therefore, one might assume, providing an argument more likely to be accepted and acted upon). Despite this, many of those who are happy to go on anti-warming marches or install solar panels remain resistant to a basic, and easy, change which might be one of the most significant possible for an individual to take in terms of acting on climate change. I would put this down to what might be termed ‘identity protest’ – a willingness to endorse an identity as a protester (to which, heaven knows, we’re all liable) as long as it doesn’t actually demand any meaningful change in our own lives – in other words, the incorporation of protest as a purchased identity in the context of capitalist social structure. But all this is by the by. From this vantage point, Jonathan Safran Foer’s new work on the meat industry is timely and important, and most important in that it is likely to reach a new audience who have been dismissive of earlier central works such as Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.

The most successful parts of Foer’s book are the beginning and the end, dealing with his personal experiences with food, bringing in cultural theory from Benjamin to Derrida, and touching on interesting issues such as the continuing sociocultural importance of eating (or refusing to eat) with another, the community and emotional aspects of food practices. The central part of the book, in which he presents the case against factory ‘farming’ both in terms of cruelty and in terms of health consequences for humans in the natural environment and the nature of food produced by industrial methods, will not present factually new information to anyone familiar with the hideous cruelty and the gruesome and disgusting aspects of industrialized animal ‘husbandry,’ but are still shocking even for those who do have such familiarity.

So far, so good. However, to use an appropriate metaphor, there are a number of elephants in Foer’s room. The first of these is capitalism. Foer spends a great deal of time with non-factory farmers, for whom he evidently has a great deal of admiration – and although he acknowledges that even in this context killing is problematic, and that any argument for meat-eating supports the factory system, what is most in evidence here is a characteristically American desire for a pre-capitalist system of community agriculture which contains an inherent ethic of care – and while there is certainly some truth to this evaluative comparison of past and present, in terms of human health impact as well as cruelty, one wonders whether this basically conservative-nostalgic perspective is somewhat overstated (indeed, a deep and peculiarly American nostalgia, whether for old-fashioned farming communities or for the family circle and celebrations such as Thanksgiving – according to Foer, despite the crimes of the past, ‘the holday that encompasses all others,’ one about which ‘there is nothing specifically American’ as a celebration of American ideals). Essentially, the reason for the existence of factory ‘farming’ (and, incidentally, a contribution to the cruelty practiced in factory farms and slaugherhouses due to the dehumanisation and exploitation of workers) is the social system of industrialized capitalism and bureaucratic management, and while Foer recognizes this in terms of the problems in the industry, he does not address the question of whether a better system (if that is indeed to be the goal) is possible within that structure. Indeed, in demonstrating the way in which labels like ‘cage-free’ are false, and in documenting the takeover of Niman meats, Foer points to this conclusion.

But this issue points to a deeper problem – the status of animals with regard to humans. Why should we consider that, as long as animals have had an acceptably comfortable life and a sudden death, it is acceptable to kill them for the unnecessary pleasure of our palates (this issue – the pleasure of palate as a concern overriding morality – is one Foer does raise)? In numerous places Foer cautions that we should not think of animals as (morally) equal or equivalent to humans – but if not, why not? I would argue that it is thinking of animals as somehow lesser or inferior, morally or otherwise, which gives moral license to use them instrumentally, and that while this view persists we - or rather, they - have no chance of decent treatment. The old canard is also brought out that we are ‘unable to avoid violence and therefore should do it more humanely, ’ but again, it is not explained why this is so, or, if indeed it is so, why this would legitimize any killing we choose to do. Given Foer’s extensive research, it would have been nice to see at least a little more consideration of ethics as a subject in regard to these issues (a topic on which much has been written) – and in terms of Foer’s interesting but somewhat facile engagement with theorists such as Derrida and Benjamin, I would have been interested to see his approach to these issues. On the philosophical note, the issue of gender is also one which could be more closely examined, given the connection, on the one hand, between meat-eating and masculinity and on the other, in practice toward animals (females as machines for re/production, males for slaughter).

Another central issue, and one which has sometimes been neglected, is brought into focus here (though being the scholarly type I am I would have liked to see further historico-social exploration rather than Foer’s meandering approach) – the social nature of eating, even in our society in which this centrality, and eating as an act of community and social bonding, has been gradually elided and fetishised as a boutique activity for special occasions. It is still difficult to reject the food another offers you, to refuse to partake in the community of the table, and such refusal is often experienced as a hurtful rejection and an insult. This is a deeper question than that of social conformity to custom, although that is one which also plays a significant role (imagine the response to meat-eating which might arise in someone brought up in a veg/etari/an society – somewhat like most people’s presently to murderous cannibalism, I would imagine). The abovementioned nostalgia expressed by Foer dovetails with this aspect of food practice as one which still plays a greater role in social relations than we might assume. Nonetheless, as the conclusion points out, it is the social aspect of eating, the way in which our own choices influence others, which makes a change of diet an act which has effects beyond those of an individual boycott.

A final unconsidered question is the milk and dairy industry, and the issue of pets – Foer relates the complexities of his relationship with his own dog, but there is no exploration of the cruelties of milk, egg and honey production (or wool, silk and leather), or the perspective that the relationship between humanely farmed animals and their 'owners,' or between pets and their 'owners,' is in a best-case scenario one of benign slavery and dependence. And why go vegetarian if one is to feed meat to a cat or dog? Indeed, for this reader at least, slavery is a theme which often comes to mind while reading this work, from the too-convenient ‘knowledge’ of inequality which justifies turning a being into a thing, to the widespread invisibility of the moral aspect of the problem, and the issue of kindness or humane practice as one which invisible-ises the problem rather than resolves it (despite issues of pragmatism). This similarity, indeed, has been extensively explored by Marjorie Spiegel - while the fact of the connection between killing animals and killing humans has likewise had proponents such as Charles Patterson and David Sztybel, in particular his paper 'Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?'. Unlike the case of slavery, however, short of technology which today is unimaginable it seems unlikely that animals will ever be given the opportunity to voice their sufferings in the way that slaves could – for the ‘humanely farmed’ but slaughtered turkey to talk back to the farmer.

Despite these flaws (not to mention the perpetuation of the thoroughly exploded myth of Hitler as a vegetarian), this is an important book and one which brings out some important and under-considered points. While many of these originate with other thinkers, in weaving them together Foer nevertheless does the reader a service. He takes to task ‘humane omnivores’ such as Michael Pollan, quoting B. R. Myers on a common, but little-noted, intellectual sleight-of-hand when discussing eating animals: 'One debates the other side in a rational manner until pushed into a corner. Then one simply drops the argument and slips away, pretending that one has not fallen short of reason but instead transcended it. The irreconcilability of one’s belief with reason is then held up as a great mystery, the humble readiness to live with which puts one above lesser minds and their cheap certainties.' On a similar note, the argument that it is (more) acceptable to eat animals when one has demonstrated oneself capable of hunting and killing them personally is also characterized as a ‘forgetting,’ one which is greater than that undertaken by everyday consumer meat-eating because it pretends to have addressed the question.

As one who has done a fair amount of reading and thinking on this issue, I am not the book’s intended audience. Without obviating the seriousness of the problems I raise above, it may nonetheless be, if not necessary, at least pragmatic, to avoid philosophical complexity and ethical consistency in the name of reaching out to a larger audience, and in putting thought-experiments (like a meatless Thanksgiving) which may reach where logical argument cannot. Indeed, where pragmatism should end is a highly vexed question in the case of meat-eating – is it more positive, for example, to encourage one meat-free day a week with the aim of reaching more people, rather than encouraging a more ethically acceptable vegetarianism which is also more alienating and easily dismissed? The case of the vegan who builds slaughterhouses, which Foer presents here, exemplifies these difficulties, although for me they are not so 'difficult' as it is convenient to make them appear – one asks oneself how one would behave if one was advocating for humans. Nonetheless, Foer’s enthusiasm is apparent throughout, and for all its shortcomings this is a highly accessible book, and as enjoyable as a work detailing the gruesome treatment of animals ever can be, one which will reach a wider audience than other works on animal rights or animal ethics, and one which will change behaviour – and as such, it is an important contribution.

Barbara Ehrenreich - Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World (2009)

Place your hand on your heart and say…
‘I admire rich people!’
‘I bless rich people!’
‘I love rich people!’
‘And I’m going to be one of those rich people too!’

If you find this a chilling statement, you’re not alone. In her new work, Barbara Ehrenreich’s target is ‘positive thinking’ in the United States (although the situations she describes will be familiar, though in some cases somewhat less extreme, to those in other societies). In eviscerating this ideology she traces its inception from a rejection of Calvinist roots in the New Thought of the nineteenth century (here we might think particularly of Transcendentalism and Christian Science) – the first flower of American ‘alternative culture’ – simultaneously arguing that the Calvinist 'predestination' model in which failure is a demonstration of blameworthy unworthiness, and the psyche must be continually examined for signs of ‘sin’ (now under the guise of ‘negativity’) remains the basic form of this discourse. In the present day, positive thinking has become manifest in ‘self-help,’ motivational literature and speaking (both personal and economic), psychology, life coaching, and in relation to physical and mental health and wellbeing. Each of these are evaluated in turn – and, while Susan Sontag’s writing is more high-brow and more spare, the way in which she evaluated a particular ideology across a number of different spheres, pursuing ideas from one intellectual stratum to the next, is a good point of comparison for Ehrenreich’s work here.

Ehrenreich’s starting point is the application of ‘positive thinking’ to illness, and, particularly, cancer – her own experience with breast cancer leads her to question both an ideology which, while seeming helpful or at the least innocuous, in fact leads to the placing of a huge burden on the subject as well as a blame-the-victim mentality (on the part both of fellow subjects – in this case cancer-patients – and non-subjects, each in denial about their ultimate lack of power and control). She also takes this as a starting point to debunk the science of ‘positive thinking’ and demonstrate the way in which dodgy evidence has been spun into the present-day equivalent of unquestionable folk wisdom: ‘research demonstrates.’

But Ehrenreich is not content to leave the issue here. Her next target is the economic sphere, to the individualism of this discourse on the terms of which the poor may be blamed for their poverty (conveniently dovetailing with the Horatio Alger myth), in which circumstance and context are discounted as factors influencing outcomes, in which recklessness is encouraged (optimism can be dangerous, if it leads to underestimation of risk) and which means that, in the post-industrial age of downsizing and the super-CEO, the way to manage a mistreated, unmotivated workforce is not to improve their conditions, but to insist on ‘positivity’ as a necessary aspect of work, no matter how unjust the treatment dished out from above. Meanwhile, the spiritually-framed anti-intellectualism of this discourse (and here again the crossover with New Ageism is apparent) means that celebrity CEOs are encouraged to act, not think, with disastrous consequences for others – and a groupthink mentality is created in which the rule is to shoot the messenger, leading to unforeseen crises from the response of Iraqis to the invasion of their country, to the credit crisis. The capitalist, and, now, neo-liberal ideology of perpetual growth ties in neatly with the ‘positive’ maxim that one should never be satisfied with one’s present circumstances.

According to this hegemonic ideology, criticism of massive and growing economic inequality can be suppressed not externally but internally, as the individual comes to believe that such a view is damaging to their own success – and their optimism leads them to politically reject brakes on conspicuous wealth accumulation as they envisage themselves as the rich-in-waiting. In other words, positive thinking creates a false consciousness (though Ehrenreich doesn’t use the term) which demands the cheerful acceptance of economic subjugation, justifies inequality both for those who enact it and those who are subjected to it, and stymies any recognition of, and hence resistance to, this process.

Christianity, too – at least in some forms – is deeply implicated in this mess. The present-day mega-churches, founded on market principles of determining what the customer wants (not to be lectured about morality or punishment) have jettisoned Biblical theology in favour of a prosperity gospel which sees individual material rewards – right down to praying for a table to be free at a restaurant – as the inevitable outcome of a positive attitude. The connection between religion and commerce is clear here inasmuch as, on the one hand, mega-rich televangelists preach material success as the reward of faith, rather than any otherworldly salvation, while their churches provide ever-growing tithes – while worshippers are encouraged to reject plans for negative outcomes (plans such as saving), and to see gains which might otherwise be recognised as unwarranted or risky (such as loans on little credit) as the God-given result of their positive faith. Furthermore – and here Ehrenreich reveals an interesting divide within US Christianity on the part of those who oppose this popular style of religiosity - ‘God’ becomes a cipher figure whose role is to reward positivity, whereas the primary power to alter reality is put in the hands of the human individual – and although Ehrenreich doesn’t extrapolate this far, here we see a discourse in which the individual in fact becomes their own God, the centre of a universe which they materially alter to suit their own needs (The Secret is a particularly egregious example of this kind of thought, one which Ehrenreich rips into). The question of whether one’s own material success may necessarily be incompatible with another’s is one which does not arise.

Ehrenreich recognises that this discourse cuts across the political spectrum, but it would have been nice to see more connections drawn between positive thinking and the hippie beliefs of the 1960s and ‘70s, ideals which shaped many of the present generation of those in charge, even when they have rejected their political content. The belief in mentality as shaping reality, and in purposeful positivity and optimism as ends in themselves, seem deeply indebted to that era. Another cavil is that for all her debunking of the ‘science’ of positive thinking – junk new-ageism which is pushed by people including Martin Seligman as head of the American Psychological Association (and indeed research into ‘happiness’ and ‘positivity’ is demonstrated as perhaps the major growth area for the lucrative interface between psychologists and corporations, leading Ehrenreich to question as to the difference between a ‘life coach’ or ‘motivational speaker’ and a qualified psychologist) – Ehrenreich fails to address the question of how we actually define ‘happiness’ (or is it ‘success’?) and the concomitant question, vital for scientific empiricism, of whether we can regard experiments in which participants self-report their own ‘happiness’ as reliable, or whether holding ‘positive thinking’ as an ideology in itself means that subjects are unable or unwilling to admit to a lack of happiness, either to themselves or to others.

Throughout, Ehrenreich’s dry writing is a pleasure to read, and this book is one to be devoured over a day or two rather than one to plough through – but she also exercises a cutting insight and a finely honed intellect – more so, I think, than in her earlier works for which she’s best-known, Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. Lack of positivity, she argues, need not mean pessimism and despair – rather, in the best Enlightenment tradition (and this is a work deeply premised on the exercise of reason in the ascertainment of empirical truth, a position with which I’m not always one hundred percent in sympathy, but which is absolutely appropriate as an heuristic here) she suggests that the best approach to life is a realism based on the gathering of knowledge and on critical thinking, one which recognises and plans for both best- and worst-case scenarios. Like her earlier works, Smile Or Die (released in the US as Bright-Sided) is both an expose in the finest American muckraking tradition, and a wake up call.

Catharine Arnold - Bedlam: London and Its Mad (2008)

Catharine Arnold has already taken us through the history of burial practices in London, in her fascinating earlier work Necropolis; here, she explores the treatment of the mad – and theories of madness – through a history of London’s Bethlehem Hospital, better known as ‘Bedlam,’ a byword for unwanted disorder and uproar. Bedlam doesn’t reach the high standard set by Necropolis; given that this work is more closely focused, the early part of the book, in which we wade through the a maze of dates and figures tracing the early history of ‘Bethlem’ from its establishment as a priory in 1247, is heavy going at times. Also, in contrast to her earlier book, histories of Bedlam, though more scholarly than this work, are already in circulation – so what we have here is an at-times frustrating mélange of the straight history of a single institution, a broader history of ‘madness’ and institutionalisation in English history, and a narrative of the evolution of concepts and treatments of ‘madness’ from roots in Greek thought and the theory of the humours,through to the bifurcation of models and of treatment into an organic-psychiatric model, as opposed to a psychoanalytic-therapeutic understanding, and the failures of so-called ‘care in the community’. Cultural history is also engaged in looking at representations of madness including Hogarth and the Victorian sensation novel. We meet a great number of significant (and often tragic) characters here, including Richard Burton, George III, Richard Dadd, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

The later part of the book – that dealing with the Victorian era onwards (or is that just me?), takes off, exploring subjects such as gender, sexuality and inequality, institutionalisation by husband or family as a form of control, to the unexpected phenomenon of shellshock in the First World War and the ways in which it changed both theories and treatments of mental disturbance – for the most part, for the better. The rise of bureaucracy and institutional culture casts a constant shadow over the work, and those with an interest in other authors who’ve been concerned with these questions may find this interesting, though not necessarily new – in particular, there is an obvious resonance with the more scholarly themes of Michel Foucault, although Arnold doesn’t share his interest in the (identity of the) subject as the locus of the processes taking place here. The constant swing of the pendulum between sympathetic care (often characterised as ‘moral treatment’) and brutal violence, neglect and corrupt mismanagement is an ever-present theme. Arnold doesn’t treat some of the more interesting aspects of twentieth century mental treatment – for example, later developments in electro-shock therapy, the infamous lobotomy, or the development of Freud’s ‘talking cure’ – although these may extend beyond her (admittedly rather unclear) remit.

Although the work is endnoted, here more than Necropolis, the lack of a thorough scholarly framework for the work peeps through at times – for example, one wonders about undocumented claims such as that that the beauty marks of the seventeenth century were designed to hide syphilitic sores. More seriously, I was extremely disappointed by a coda in which Arnold trots out the damaging and hackneyed argument that antidepressants are overprescribed for the slightest lack of happiness, whereas ‘some of us’ (presumably those both wiser and more admirably fortitudinous) prefer to ‘endure melancholy in its various manifestations’ and ‘accept it as part of … identity,’ to embrace and welcome it as a teacher. Anyone who has actually experienced depression or other forms of mental illness recognizes the complete absurdity of this argument, which, though based on a soupçon of truth in its criticism of the modern self-help industry, is nothing more than a deeply self-congratulatory myth perpetuated by those fortunate enough not to have encountered serious psychic disturbance, who mistake unhappiness for mental illness, which is hence conflated with weakness, self-absorption and self-pity. One would hope that an author who had done enough research into the subject to write a book on it would have recognized this fallacy for what it is.

Despite these criticisms, however, Bedlam is an interesting work, one which I found worth persisting with, and one which, if not a thorough treatment of any one subject, is nonetheless a pleasure to dip into and an excellent collection of fascinating anecdotes and characters.

Tom Vanderbilt - Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) (2008)

So I keep telling people, "I'm reading this fascinating book about traffic,' and they're like, 'that doesn't sound that fascinating...' But actually, anyone who drives tends to have strongly held pet theories and peeves (and those who don't will generally have their own, from the vantage point of a non-driver), and this book explores them all.

It's essentially a work about systems and human input into them; so we move from 'traffic' as a phenomenon to efforts to influence it (whether in terms of safety or flow) which inevitably bring us to the question of human psychology. A lot of common assumptions are squashed here: for example, 'safer' roads, and safer cars, aren't actually safer because they lull us into a false sense of security and encourage us to ramp up the risk level of our own driving. As Vanderbilt points out, if an engineer built a dam to hold a certain water pressure, they wouldn't have to factor in how the water would respond to its knowledge of the dam being built to those standards...

It's the psychology that's the most interesting issue here. Although I'm not generally a fan of evolutionary psychology, Vanderbilt suggests convincingly that humans are not 'designed' to deal with moving at any more than 20 miles an hour, nor with interactions in which the other parties are 'faceless' and we have no investment in the local community. In such a situation, all of our methods of assessing risk, coping with crisis, and so forth, can be highly maladaptive. He also explains a lot of misperceptions: why, for example, does it always seem like we're being passed more often than we overtake? (because cars we pass immediately disappear from our field of vision, whereas those which pass us stay there for much longer).

You'll also find a lot of your ideas about the 'morals' of driving challenged. For example, I tend to be a driver who thinks that going up the empty outside lane then merging at the last moment is queue-jumping, but Vanderbilt points out that everyone will get where they're going faster if two lanes are being used to their capacity.

Ultimately, this reader came away thinking that we're never really going to be able to scientifically 'figure out' answers to any of the big questions in regard to any activity as complicated, and subject to human factors, as driving. That also goes for safety, which is a somewhat scary prospect... Nonetheless, for an activity which the majority of people spend a great deal of time doing, and doing in a mostly 'unconscious' fashion - as well as one for which we're prepared to accept tens of thousands of deaths annually - driving, and traffic, haven't been the subject of much writing outside the realm of the specialist, and this is an amusing and thought-provoking book, written in a light and humorous style, which goes some way to addressing the issue.

Michael Veal – Dub: Soundscapes & Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae (2007)

So you might think to yourself – I don’t like reggae (I’ll resist the urge to say, ‘I love it!’), what does a book about a subgenre of reggae have to interest me? In fact, ethnomusicologist Michael Veal’s carefully written book illuminates all kinds of aspects of popular music: not only reggae, Jamaican music, and Jamaican history, but also the history of recorded music and the nature of changing perceptions and uses of recording technology, and, specifically, the changing role of technology as an art form in itself rather than simply a medium in the musical context; the way in which economic and demographic necessities shape art forms; the interaction between recorded music and memory, as well as music, physicalities, and socialised geographies; the evolution of dance music and the remix; and the history of black music and art forms (in particular, afrofuturism) and diasporan music and culture.

Veal takes as his subject dub, that is, the deconstructed ‘versions’ of Jamaican reggae that began as vocal-less or instrumental b-sides, played at sound systems as a palette for DJs to 'toast' (rap) over the top of, a way to stretch source materials to their fullest extent in a context of limited economic resources (which also limited live music as viable public entertainment for any but the economic elite). To me, the best description of dub is ‘x-ray music’; it deconstructs the traditional unity of the various parts and puts them back together in mutated ways which can foreground the unexpected, withholding traditional musical resolution, and uniting a longing for wholeness (emerging from the ‘roots’ Rastafari discourse extolling naturalism and repatriation) with the pleasures of a technologically-mediated and decentred aesthetic.

In the first place, Veal’s book is an excellent history of dub for those who are interested in the genre as such, or in Jamaican music generally. He gives excellent potted histories, firstly, of the development of dub in Jamaica, both musical and in terms of culture, society and politics, and secondly, of the ‘post-history’ of dub, its fate in the context of the (in my opinion, lamentable) evolution of reggae into dancehall and ragga, and its interaction with non-Jamaican forms of music, particularly psychedelia, rap and dance music; the different experiences of ‘head’ music and ‘body’ music (to draw a crude differentiation) and the way these are combined in dub; and the way dub has become an influence in technological music of equal importance to European experimental art-music traditions. Particularly valuable are his histories of the most important Jamaican dub mixers and their studios: Sylvan Morris at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One, King Tubbys (and Tubby’s associates and protégés Bunny Lee, ‘Prince’ Philip Smart, King Jammy, and Scientist); the Hoo-Kim brothers’ Channel One studio; Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Black Ark; and Errol Thompson at Randy’s and Joe Gibbs’ studios.

Another important aspect of Veal’s work is that he combines the role of historian, cultural theorist, and musicologist. What this means in practice is that he carefully analyses individual dub tracks and the originals on which they are based from a musicological point of view, creating a vital bridge between the actual musical qualities of the works he examines and the context in which they are placed in terms of history and culture. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t come with a CD (the costs and effort of tracking down rights were apparently insuperable), although it does include a long list of recommended albums. Particularly insightful are Veal’s arguments regarding the role of echo and reverb, two defining techniques of dub, as related both to memory and to space, in the context of a diasporan people confronting the fact that an attempt has been made to erase their past through the process of colonisation and slavery, leaving a fractured relationship both to memory and to geography in which resistance attempts to re-imagine identity on the basis of unknown ideals (in particular, Africa as a Utopian historical homeland) as well as present lived reality.

The work is not entirely unproblematic; in the realms of cultural theory, Veal sometimes draws a long bow, particularly in his comparison of likeness between dub and literary magical realism (I’m not a fan of magical realism in any case, but from a cultural point of view it seems to me, to take one example of the problematics of this comparison, very much narrative-based rather than deconstructory).

There’s a tendency to accept the self-proclaimed ideology of rasta reggae and other diasporic black cultural forms which often manifests in an unproblematic acceptance of the fact that these forms are literally ‘African-derived,’ ‘African-influenced’ and so forth, rather than what I’d see as the reality, that links with anything which is ‘authentically African’ (whatever that might mean, either historically or culturally) are tenuous, whereas what’s being put into play tends to be very much an imagined and often idealised ‘Africa,’ or else traditions which do have ‘African roots,’ but which have transformed into something entirely different in a transplanted context (but which may nonetheless be contrasted with practices which are developed from distinctly European forms).
In a similar vein, we might also give more consideration to the cultural discourses of Christianity and the Bible, so vital to Rastafari, in dub.

Veal’s work sometimes has the typical problem of much work in the realm of postmodern subaltern or postcolonial studies in that it tends to lionise every and any activity as a form of resistance, without ever looking at the ways in which such resistance demands obedience to other exclusionary narratives. Here we might think firstly of the exclusion of women – and Veal also refers to dub as problematising gendered music with little exploration of this aspect of gender; secondly, we might also ask what the relationship of dub was to the violent macho braggadocio, and extreme homophobia and misogyny, which came to the fore in later Jamaican music in the digital era; and, finally, question how, in narratives of diaspora, we might consider the traditions of Chinese and Indian-subcontinent immigrants in Jamaica, as well as, in terms of cultural destruction, the place of the original Arawak and Taíno inhabitants of Jamaica, who are never mentioned in this work.

Overall, though, these are minor issues in a work which skilfully blends different disciplines to provide a deeply satisfying history of dub, its major players, and its often-unsung role in the development of Western musical trends; a fascinating close musicological reading; and a thought-provoking grounding of both in cultural and sociological theory which encompasses historical concerns as well as the reading of texts per se. King Tubby’s phrase characterising dub could be applied equally to Veal’s work on the subject: ‘jus like a volcano in yuh head!’