Bruno Latour’s 1993 We Have Never Been Modern is a neglected masterpiece. Its argument is compressed, the terminology idiosyncratic. Latour is witty, ironic, and funniest when he’s outraged. It’s not an easy book, but it’s worth the effort. As a diagnosis of us “moderns,” it’s more penetrating, and rings truer, than many better-known works. Continue Reading »
From the City Journal, this time, a full essay, with a title that says it all “City, Empire, Church, Nation.” Here’s a taste: During the premodern era, competing political forms—the city, the empire, and the Church—checked one another, so it was necessary to . . . . Continue Reading »
This is the conclusion of the long series of Songbook posts kicked off by my simple observation that many bands championed as representative of new music , such as Crystal Castles, really aren’t . While many themes have been touched upon, overall, Songbook posts #36-51 have been about 1) . . . . Continue Reading »
From a book review highlighted by our friends at First Thoughts: “Marxists can account for the singular, closed character of modern society by invoking Marx’s theory of historical materialism. As we produce, so we are. Our families, our friendships, our associations, our imagination, . . . . Continue Reading »
It didn’t become a hit, but this version does contain one of the band’s better guitar solos, and what matters more for our purposes, anti-oligarchic lyrics. (Read my long post below to see what I mean by oligarchic.) Here’s how it starts: You keep sayin’ no to her, Ever since . . . . Continue Reading »
Okay, here’s a shorter way, for those of you who haven’t the patience for my full cinemascopic link-littered prose, to get at what I mean by Intermediate Modernity In Book VIII Republic terms, intermediate-modernity was the era of the self-repressing Oligarchic Soul, and “the . . . . Continue Reading »
Here’s the basic schema I laid out in #26 : 1) quasi-modernity –approximately 1776 to 1918 2) intermediate modernity –approximately 1919 to 1965 3) full modernity –approximately 1966 to the present. Now, for some flesh upon these analytic bones. Everyone knows WWI and the 20s . . . . Continue Reading »
The Songbook inevitably has to analyze modernity, precisely because it is interested more in what rock reveals about our overall sociological and spiritual situation than it is in rock itself. So what follows are two organizing posts concerning this. Here, I’ll quickly lay out my . . . . Continue Reading »
For the seventh Songbook entry, it’s time for sounds that remind us of, or at least make us long for, God’s goodness. Here are two pieces I can recommend unequivocally as fine music, one initially composed without words, from the jazz tradition but veering into the classical, and another . . . . Continue Reading »
Chris Dierkes at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen has a thoughtful post up contesting Sir Edward Downes’ son’s description of his parents’ decision to undergo voluntary euthanization as “a very civilized act”. This passage was perhaps the most interesting: All I’m . . . . Continue Reading »
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