Two Cheers for America’s COVID-19 Response, Brent Orrell, The Bulwark

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live… just added this to my to-read list… it’s way down but it looks really interesting… so is the Bulwark article which says we got a lot of things right, even while getting a lot of things wrong…

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Maus Sales Spike After Tennessee School Board Ban, Hakim Bishara, Hyperallergic

Sales of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus on Amazon have soared massively since news emerged last week about its banning in Tennessee. Four editions of the acclaimed Holocaust memoir are currently among Amazon’s 18 bestselling books after a bundle of volumes from the series topped the list during the weekend.

… it might be funny if it weren’t so sad and threatening… this article does a credible job of describing what the Tennessee school board’s objections to the book and the reaction to the ban in terms of sales of the book in question and other Maus books which were written about the same subjects…

… i can’t say whether eighth graders are psychologically ready to address a graphic depiction of a dead, nude woman who has committed suicide… i suspect that with proper guidance they are, but i am not child psychology expert… as for curse words, i find it unlikely that most of the kids didn’t know the words already…

… i am reading about Classical Greece right now… it is so interesting to see that civilizations and cultures inevitably descend down the path of disintegration… book banning is an indicator of such a descent…

… we’ve been there before, we’ve come back from the brink… will we this time?…

The Limits of Liberal Science, Laura K. Field

Published in The Bulwark, November 04, 2021

a review by Laura K. Field of The Constitution of Knowledge, by Jonathan Rauch… the book is an argument for the supremacy of “liberal science” as arbiter of objective truth… Field broadly accepts the premise but objects to its, in her opinion, proposed hegemony of liberal science over all other ways of processing and assessing reality… she quotes “Rauch’s bold claim:”

You have to check your own claims and subject them to contestation from others; you have to tolerate the competing claims of others; you have to accept that your own certainty counts for nothing; you have to forswear claiming that your god, your experience, your intuition, or your group is epistemically privileged; you have to defend the exclusive legitimacy of liberal science even (in fact, especially) when you think it is wrong or unfair. (Page 91)

… and suggests the following rewrite:

You have to check your own claims and subject them to contestation from others; you have to tolerate the competing claims of others; you have to accept that even your own feelings of certainty are fallible; you have to honestly admit that you do believe your mode of engagement to be epistemically privileged (and be able to give reasons why), while at the same time sustaining a radical openness to counterarguments from any and all quarters, even (in fact, especially) when you think it is wrong or unfair.

… i like her proposed changes… it’s a statement of principal that i can and do live by, with varying degrees of success, like any fallible human being…

… i have several related thoughts…

… i remember Kellyanne Conway’s statement, “Facts don’t matter. What people believe matters.”… one of the greatest political truths ever spoken… much as i loath her politics and involvement in aiding and abetting 45, this one statement is both profound honesty and profound truth… i respect her for it… extended a bit further… at the end of the day, for most of us, any truth we claim certainty about is, at bottom, a belief founded on the work and ideas of others… nobody has time to completely investigate and verify all of the “truths” by which they lead their daily lives…

… the second thought flashing through my mind is about the story of Nosferatu as told by Werner Herzog in his movie Nosferatu the Vampyre… in his telling of the story, Nosferatu arrives to suck the blood of unfortunate citizens of Wismar Germany… he brings the plague with him… the heroine, Lucy, tries to persuade the scientific/technocratic authorities that Count Dracula is the problem… they dismiss her… she subsequently sacrifices herself to bring about his demise… the ultimate sacrifice which, unfortunately, is only a victory over the immediate pestilence… science and bureaucratic institutions are not up to the challenge… however, neither is purity and self sacrifice…

Critical Whiteness Theory

Broomberg & Chanarin, Shirley 1, from the series How to Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, 2012

Broomberg & Chanarin, Shirley 1, from the series How to Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, 2012

… hmmm… the above photograph was the lead in to [this article](https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13666/the-camera-is-not-innocent-a-history-of-the-white-gaze-in-photography?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=the-camera-is-not-innocent-a-history-of-the-white-gaze-in-photography “Miller, Daniel-Yaw, “The Camera Is Not Innocent”: A History of the White Gaze in Photography, AnOther Magazine”) about a new book, The Image of Whiteness… the title and lead in image are a bit of misdirection… intentional, maybe clever, but misdirection none-the-less… the book is broadly about how photography and photographers support white hegemony through image making… as the article describes it, it has little to do with the other type of gaze, the (mostly white) male gaze… and yet, we have a lead in image that is reminiscent of pinup girl images of the 40’s and 50’s… i think the subject is interesting… though i am personally more interested in the subject of women in photography (the more conscious reason for pursuing the article further)… in front of the camera, behind the camera, as curators, as critics… and… in general, i admit to being suckered in every time by an image of an attractive-to-me young woman… as i have said, many times, almost all of us are hardwired to have a sexual response to the encounter of possible sexual partners… whether we are enlightened human beings or not depends on how gracefully we can move beyond that first primal instinct to a fuller appreciation of all the dimensions of the human being in front of us…

05 Work Won’t Love Me Back

an article on Sarah Jaffe’s new book, Work Won’t Love You Back… it is a little expensive, even in the Kindle version so i add it for now to my list on Amazon…

… as i read the book, i think a few things… i think that i tried to have a career where i loved my work, but it did not pan out in a satisfying way in the end… then i switched to being a photographic artist… i don’t have to make money doing it, thanks to H mostly, but it is nice when i do… yet, i am ambivalent about the gallery system, the gatekeeping, etc. which has me focusing my art in ways i would not otherwise… still, i have come to a compromise, where i make what i make and wait for opportunities to have something come of it… right now, i write a blog that i think of as part of my artwork… nobody reads it… i don’t publicize it much, i would rather people discover it and let me know if they liked it…