I’ve recently had a few publications you might want to check out. The first is a brief essay in Mark Fisher’s excellent collection, The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, called “The King of Pop’s Two Bodies”. It’s an allegorical (in Benjamin’s sense) interpretation of the Thriller album and videos as eerily chronicling Michael’s real-life downward spiral. The book also has great pieces by Mark, David Stubbs, Alex Williams, Steve Shaviro, Evan Calder Williams, Dominic Fox, Owen Hatherley, and many others. Also, if you have read it or plan on doing so, consider posting a review on the Amazon US page, which got hit early with a few rather harsh ones.
The second is a paper in the current special issue of the International Journal of Zizek Studies, Zizek in Tehran, called “Iran’s Utopian Melancholy”. It’s a bit problematic, but came out rather well I think. It also is relevant to the debate about revolution spurred by my last post. You can get the pdf here.
What did you make of Hamid Dabashi’s article? I don’t think I’ve ever come across an article quite like that before…though I’m loving the open access format. Currently combing my way through the back issues.
It’s quite strange. I thought the tone was a bit off-putting, to be honest, but I’m glad to see stylistic ingenuity.
What is strange about it? It might be helpful to keep in mind that English is his second language. His book Islamic Liberation Theology suffered from a lack of editing (so lots of definite articles when that isn’t really how we do it in the English), but I find his work rather interesting if less of the “bad-assisity” characteristic of Zizek’s contrarianism.
No offense, but the whole definite article business is just plain fucked up – I put them everywhere I can and then my wife has to take them out and cannot explain to me why they don’t go where I put them or do go where I don’t care for them to go – seriously!
On MJ – great book. I’ve a little post on it here. Cheers!