Something is Afoot

Replacing Feudalism with Capitalism is a process that took two to three hundred years. In reviewing the history and writing about it, historians identify and describe to us the broad trends unfolding. It is difficult, maybe impossible, to see such trends clearly in the history we live. This is the reason to study history. To get a perspective that gives us some ability to assess our times, identify trends and project those trends into the future.

Letters from an American, February 14, 2023

… the sad story of a very sad Valentine’s Day with, eventually, a silver lining… Theodore Roosevelt shed his “dude” image for a cowboy image, ascended to the presidency and began the Progressive Era…

What caught my attention…

In Times Square and Sunset Strip, “American Gurl” Subverts Femininity… as i have stated before, i have an interest in all things feminine…

In contrast to a “singular idea,” the artists in “American Gurl” offer myriad depictions of women in America. Ayanna Dozier’s “Softer” (2020) critiques the societal demands that African-American women “soften” themselves, specifically through their appearance. Christine Yuan’s “Hoyeon as the International Woman of Mystery” (2022), originally commissioned by Vogue, casts Korean model and _Squid Game_ star Jung Ho-Yeon as an Irma Vep-style vamp who remakes herself for international (read American) consumption. “iGurl” (2022) by Sarah Nicole François is a disturbing digital vision of endless surgical enhancements in search of bodily perfection. “Can we keep up with the aesthetic pushed onto us?” questions Ahmed. “Can these surgeries actually work on us as fast as we can change ourselves online?” Other participating artists include Christelle de Castro, Kasey Elise Walker, Kitty Ca$h, and Leila Jarman.

Art Writing as an Extension of Life

As an arts writer, I am always envious when I find that someone has articulated not only art theory itself, but the way it is a natural part of life for someone who takes joy in the consideration of art. Chris Kraus did this brilliantly in _I Love Dick_(Semiotext(e), 1997); Morgan Meis does this with equal (and completely different) brilliance in _The Drunken Silenus_ (Slant Books, 2020). Randall manages this feat, as the title suggests, by contemplating 12 female artists who are important to her life.

With analysis that is either deeply intuitive or directly informed by personal experience or encounters, Randall presents the life of an artist as both subject and narrator. _Artists in My Life_dissolves the fourth wall between artist, art object, and viewer, offering a welcome approach to arts writing as an extension of how artists live.

The US Could Get Its First National LGBTQ+ History Museum… i only wonder how it will get through congress with so much anit-LGBTQ+ sentiment among conservatives…

A national museum dedicated to American LGBTQ+ history and culture could be coming to Washington, DC. United States Representative Mark Pocan introduced a bill on September 29 to establish the National Museum of American LGBTQ+ History and Culture, potentially as part of Washington, DC’s Smithsonian Institutions. Pocan is a Wisconsin Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus.

The bill establishes an eight-person committee to conduct research into the potential museum, including how much its collection would cost and whether it should in fact be part of the Smithsonian. If the bill passes, the committee will have 18 months before presenting their findings to the House of Representatives, who will then vote on a second bill to establish the museum.

Nevada GOP Secretary of State Candidate Promises to Make Trump President in 2024

At a rally for Nevada Republican candidates on Saturday, Republican nominee for secretary of state Jim Marchant promised that he and his fellow GOP nominees, if elected next month, would reinstall Donald Trump in the White House in 2024.

“We’re gonna fix the whole country and President Trump is gonna be president again,” Marchant promised as Trump stood beside him.

Judge Blocks State Abortion Ban As Attempt “To Completely Eliminate The Rights of Ohio Women”…

… who thought Gilead couldn’t happen…

According to affidavits submitted in the lawsuit, two additional minors who suffered sexual assault also had to leave the state for abortions. Cancer patients and other women with severe complications were also denied abortions. The Ohio Capital Journal summarized the evidence last month:

• The descriptions include those of three women who threatened suicide. They also include two women with cancer who couldn’t terminate their pregnancies and also couldn’t get cancer treatment while they were pregnant. 

• Another three examples were of women whose fetuses had severe abnormalities or other conditions that made a successful pregnancy impossible. Even so, they couldn’t get abortions in Ohio. 
• And in three cases, debilitating vomiting was caused by pregnancy—so bad in one case that a woman couldn’t get off the clinic floor. But neither could these women get abortions in Ohio, the affidavits said.

National Constitution Center Project Offers Constitutional Amendment Proposals with Broad Cross-Ideological Support

In 2020, the National Constitution Center sponsored a constitution-drafting project in which   it named three groups to produce their own revised versions of the Constitution: a conservative team, a libertarian team, and a progressive one—each composed of prominent academics and other experts on constitutional law issues. The exercised revealed some important points of agreement between the three teams (even though they also predictably  differed on other issues). This year, NCC reconvened the three teams and asked them to come up with a list of constitutional amendments they could jointly agree on.

… and these were…

• Term limits for Supreme Court justices
• Making impeachment easier (would actually make starting impeachment harder, convicting easier)
• Legislative Veto (wherein the legislature could veto executive action)
• Eliminating the requirement that the president be a natural-born citizen
• Making the Constitution easier to amend in the future

… most make sense on the face of it… the rest make sense upon reading the explanations…

In the world of wordsmithing:

• I have been reading Etel Adnan’s Sea and Fog a few pages at a time. That’s how it is with poetry. I need to go low and slow. As if I am smoking a brisket, but poetically. This take on Photography stood out to me:

  Photography is akin to medieval thinking: it values the instant, is based on the microcosm, the atom which mirrors the whole, the DNA which identifies. To see is to arrest the world, to save it from submersion.

  Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog

• I learned about Eve Babitz from this article in The Atlantic.

  Eve Babitz was one of the truly original writers of 20th-century Los Angeles: essayist, memoirist, novelist, groupie, feminist, canny ingenue.

  Babitz was four inches short of that 5 foot 11, but she had other attributes that made her presence, and her femininity, impossible to ignore. Her most explicit attempt to address this challenge was “My Life in a 36DD Bra, or, the All-American Obsession,” a piece she wrote for Ms. in April 1976.

• And there was this interview with [Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/14293/lisa-taddeo-on-her-short-story-collection-ghost-lover?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=lisa-taddeo-on-death-desire-and-her-super-dark-view-of-the-world “Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World”) in AnOther Magazine.

  Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women (2019) was a work of devastating brilliance, flooring readers with its illuminating investigation of female desire. She spent eight years creating this compelling feat of literary reportage (which is currently in production as a new television series starring Shailene Woodley as the author). Immersing herself in the stories of her three subjects, Sloane, Lina, and Maggie, Taddeo moved cross-country multiple times, bearing witness to these women’s lives as they unfolded, exhaustively recording their testimony and speaking to those closest to the book’s trio of central figures. What emerged was a complex, candid, and deeply compassionate portrait of labyrinthine female sexuality.

  I purchased Three Women for Kindle. Anything to do with feminine sexuality attracts me. I expect to be titillated by it but also hope to be educated by it.

In the world of film:

• A review of ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’

  It’s just that modern competition revolves around the ability to claim persecution: In a land of modern strivers granted wealth and power the likes of which the world has never seen, she who can lay claim to the greatest number of handicaps and the lowest number of privileges is Queen Victim.

  A competition based on the greatest number of handicaps and least number of privileges strikes me as an apt metaphor for the present moment in America in lots of ways.

• Why Japanese Director Kinuyo Tanaka’s Films Are Criminally Overlooked

  Kinuyo Tanaka: A Life in Film, it explores the outstanding works of one of the country’s first-ever female auteurs – whose incredible and under-seen films have been newly restored in 4K. A screen icon in her own right (highlights from her incredible acting career, including collaborations with nearly all of the aforementioned filmmaking giants, are to be shown in September), Tanaka defied the male gatekeepers of the industry to carve out her own career behind the camera. She thrived in the process, delivering works that matched those of her male counterparts and often surpassed them.

  Though her directing career was short (Tanaka completed six films in nine years in total), the stories she told were vital tales of female agency and desire that were essential to the cinematic development of one of the world’s great filmmaking nations.

• Lena Dunham’s new film, Sharp Stick, seems like a must see to me, but then I am easily sold by the promise of sex on the screen. Still, this review in Hyperallergic and the fact that its Dunham, promises humor and intelligence in addressing the subject of a young woman setting out to loose her virginity.

In the World of my daily walks:

Leaf chatter as a breeze moves through the trees. Crickets. Cicadas.

In the world of art:

I liked Lucy Johnson’s - Reality Breakdown photography series.

Lucy Johnson (b.1986) is a UK artist who works in sound and visual art. Her work explores themes of the sublime, the mundane and the absurd in the human experience. She has self published two photo zines with imprint Pearl Press and her sound work has featured in The Wire, NTS Radio, Tusk Festival, Fact Magazine and Index Festival (Yorkshire Sculpture International). Alongside soundtracking her own visual art, she collaborates with artists of different disciplines in creating audio visual projects, some of which appear on ‘Soundtracks Vol.1’, released by Opal Tapes in 2020.

• A Show Traces Philip Guston’s Impact on Contemporary Artists - I have long been a fan.

  A Thing for the Mind at commercial gallery Timothy Taylor takes an altogether more creative approach to demonstrating influence, one informed less by strict historical evidence than by the curator’s creative interpretation based on painterly themes and similarities.

  

• Two Santa Monica Artists Create a Legacy Through Potlucks

  The backyard potlucks followed a consistent formula that worked because so many people stepped up to contribute and help out. Around 6pm on a Saturday night, a long table filled up with potluck delicacies — both store bought and homemade — while a drink table was stocked with wine and beer. Jon and his tech crew would set up for the artist slideshow as Kim greeted visitors in her studio at the back of the house.

  It’s always about connecting with other people. When we connect, when we talk face to face, that makes a difference.

In the world of human rights:

• Telling the Devastating Stories of Pre-Abortion Ireland(https://lithub.com/telling-the-devastating-stories-of-pre-abortion-ireland/)

  Decades on from the writing of Irish laws that caused the death and enslavement of women, the deaths and abduction of their babies, and the decimation of their families and communities, we are seeing similar laws being rewritten in America—the land of the free and a country that was once a sanctuary for Irish women fleeing shame and judgment in their country. And it’s slowly dawning on us that history can repeat itself if we let it. It’s down to us to tell the stories that help us to move forward, not back.

** In the world of politics:**

• News of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago of course stands out. Of particular interest to me is this speculative line Heather Cox Richardson draws to Saudi Arabia in her August 11 Post.

  … what springs to mind for me is the plan pushed by Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and fundraiser and campaign advisor Tom Barrack, to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

  It seems clear that items of significant national security import were illegally removed from Washington and brought to Mar-a-Lago. We don’t know why or by whom, but the presumption is 45. We know that 45 is venal so the suspicion is that the materials were to be used for profit. Or perhaps have been. There appears to have been nuclear secrets among the materials.

  I detest the very idea of 45. That so many embrace him unquestioningly is baffling and frightening to me.

• I whole heartedly agree with this article in The Dispatch on Liz Cheney’s integrity. She is a shining example of politics with integrity. If 45 is brought down and the anti-democratic forces in this country are turned back, it will be because of her. She has changed my idea of what to look for in a politician. Integrity first, then policy. Polling makes it clear she will not be nominated by the Republican Party in Wyoming to her seat in congress. That is sad. What is it about humanity that values loyalty over integrity? I’ll take Liz Cheney any day. If she runs for president I may well vote for her because I see her as the sanest way out of the mess we are in.

• Tilting Our Politics Back Toward Democracy

  It seemed important to quote extensively from this article in The Bulwark:

  These constant struggles over eligibility and access are part of our constitutional birthright. The beauty in the story of America is not found in an uncritical adherence to the Founders’ design but, rather, in the struggle—in various groups’ demand, often resisted by others, that our democracy be more participatory and inclusive. For those who love liberal democracy, the one thing worse than letting vox-pop stars (election deniers, for example) touch our democracy is cutting off their access to it.

  Such unchecked anti-democratic actions are made possible by the toxic partisanship driving the country apart—today’s version of the factions about which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10. More than half of adults view other Americans as the biggest threat to their way of life. Approximately half of Democrats and Republicans view the other as immoral, and a recent study shows partisans view their political opponents as more unintelligent than immoral, more “stupid than evil” as it were. These views make it easier for people to excuse the illiberal undertakings of elected officials because such activities are deemed necessary to defeat the existential threat presented by the other side.

  In contrast to this understanding of our political history as a series of deviations from a model republic—an understanding hardly convincing for the 90-plus percent of us who would not have been permitted to vote at the time the Constitution was first implemented—there is the other understanding I described earlier, which sees our political history as a never-ending struggle over eligibility and access. This alternative understanding makes it possible to look at our system of government with clear eyes to assess whether it has tilted too far toward democracy (toward becoming a tyranny of the majority) or too far away from it (toward becoming a tyranny of the minority or of minorities). Each direction carries risks.

  But pulling off a republican democracy that puts the demos in the driver’s seat will require trust and investment in the people—not an easy undertaking given the foundation of our democratic culture. But failing to do so will ensure we get more of the type of representatives Madison warned us about in Federalist No. 10: “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, who may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.”

  We seem to be squarely in that place now. And the election deniers winning Republican primaries and state election offices with the intent of undermining our democracy out of self-interest may soon put the ridiculousness of the vox pops to shame.

  I struggle to resist the thought that people on the far right are “more stupid than evil.” I don’t always succeed. My assessment of the situation is that they are afraid of the brave new world that could be. The Multiarchy. They loose some privileges in such a world. It’s existential. It’s sad. I hope we can come back from the brink of civil war and make constructive choices. I have good and bad days on this. Like Democracy itself in the present moment.

• In other 45 related news, this observation from Heather Cox Richardson:

  It is an astonishing thing to see that a former president, the person who was responsible for faithfully executing the laws of our nation, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

  Referring to his deposition in New York State this past week.

• How Trump’s top general worried the Hitler-curious president was seeking “a Reichstag moment."

  The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

  “Which generals?” Kelly asked.

  “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

  “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

  But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.

  I remember worrying at the time that 45 would succeed in corrupting the military. It seems my worries were warranted, but then i knew that.

I think this is a good place to stop.

Using Spatial Reconstruction to Investigate Russia’s War Crimes

Spatial recognition technology is being used to investigate Russian war crimes and has been able to identify the exact site of the 1941 Babyn Yar mass executions.

Winston Churchill (and others it appears) famously said,

Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

I have been studying H. Kitto’s The Greeks, a very good book about ancient Greek civilization. This civilization reached a glorious pinnacle, had a brief 100 years of production worthy of the gods which profoundly impacted the direction of Western civilization, and then quickly came unravelled.

In my ‘Cliff Notes’ version, it boils down to a tale of two city-states, Athens and Sparta. In very broad outline, ancient Greece was a contest between oligarchs and democracies to become the dominant form of government. Sparta was an oligarchic city-state, Athens was a democracy much of the time, at least for men, especially so at the height of its achievements, though it had fits of oligarchy here and there.

Sparta and the oligarchic way won in time, but not before the democratic polis of Athens scaled dizzying civilizational heights, the result of good fortune and its liberal democratic environment. It was, apparently, incessant war that unravelled them, or perhaps, a civilization blazing so bright can last at their pinnacle only so long.

This history is interesting to me because it echos the moment we are at, in the United States and around the Globe. There is an intense struggle between oligarchic/authoritarian actors and democratic actors and the o/a side of the struggle seems to be positioned to seize control of the world order. I can easily imagine them running the table with the United States turning oligarchic or authoritarian in the near future. In the liberal community of the United States there is a five alarm fire going on. The threat to democratic institutions is so clear and present to us.

I am beginning to wonder if there ever could be a learning-from-history sufficient for a civilization to avoid repeating it. It seems to me that there has long been a struggle between oligarchs/authoritarians and the democratic/egalitarian instincts of the people. There is something about the human civilizational psyche that makes this a continuous back and forth struggle. Is it the masculine/feminine thing? Is it the yin/yang thing? Is it the pendulum thing?

We can read about it in histories of past civilizations and recognize the signs of the pendulum swing in our own, but there seems little that humans consciously manage that predictively determines an outcome. Circumstances are favorable or not. Leadership is great or not. A citizenry has a strong and cohesive ethos or not. Luck is on your side or not.

A friend of mine recently told me they were reading about Sparta and that they admired their conservative ideology which also made room for homosexuality, abortion, and education for women (not at all common at the time). An oligarchic society that worked in its own way. I, of course, prefer the Athenian democracy. It will come as no surprise that this friend is a life long conservative and that i am a life long liberal.

From my point of view, the present oligarchic/authoritarian side of things in this country is populated by fanatics who are barely shy of mentally disturbed if shy at all, but, I am coming to realize that this is their revolutionary moment and they are pursuing it with all the determination that one expects revolutionaries to posses. Because they are seeking to undo the world order I believe in, they look crazy and evil to me. The liberal news media keeps trying to assess them as shockingly aberrant in the context of ‘this great democracy,’ but they don’t believe in democracy and will only be aberrant until they are the dominating ideology, which is when those of us who believe in government by, for and of the people will become shockingly aberrant.

I don’t know which way this struggle is going to go. I intend to pull for the democratic side, but history has taught me that the pendulum swings and that I should prepare myself for the possibility of a new civic order.

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February 2, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson

And so we are back to where we were in 2019, when Vindman first reminded us that in America, right matters. At long last, will most of us decide that it does?

… it would be a good sign if it happens… not clear that it will… apparently the January 6 Committee will begin public hearings in April…

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The first sentences of the first paragraph of Chapter VIII, the Greeks at War, of Kitto’s The Greeks…

The Greek world was now divided. On the one side was the Athenian Empire, which men openly called a ‘tyranny’; on the other, Sparta, the Peloponnesian League, and a number of states (notably in Boeotia) that sympathized with Sparta: the first group strong at sea, the second strong on land; the first in the main Ionian, the second Dorian – not that this division in itself counted for much; Athens favouring, even insisting on, democratic constitutions among her allies, the other group favouring oligarchies, or, at the most, limited democracies. It is a familiar situation.¹

… have i mentioned what a good book this is?…

Photograph by Eikoh Hose

… Guts and Ghosts: The Radical Legacy of Japanese Photographer Eikoh Hose…

… there are so many Japanese photographers I love… Eikoh Hosoe is another one… this book from MACK is on my list if i get a windfall…

The North Light of Block Island, RI. Photograph by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh

… i have been taking note of dates in the landscape, mostly on buildings, but sometimes carved into concrete or other hard surfaces…

… when i encounter one, i like to look up the year in Wikipedia… it provides a list of the events of that year… here i stand in 2021 in front of a building finished in 1867… momentous things have happened in the United States this year… many of them are certain to make a similar list in another 145 years… will the list tell the story of the beginning of the end of democracy in the United States?…

… as the finishing touches were being put on the light house, these events were unfolding around the world¹:

• January 01: The Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge, renamed the John A. Roebling Bridge in 1983 is opened.
• January 08: African-American men are given the right to vote in the District of Columbia.
• February 03: The Late Tokugawa shogunate comes to an end when Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu abdicates and Prince Mutsuhito becomes Emperor Meiji of Japan.
• February 15: The first performance of Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube is given by the Vienna Men’s Choral Association.
• February 19: The Qing Dynasty defeats the Nien rebels in Hubei China at the Battle of Inlon River.
• March 01: Nebraska is admitted as the 37th State of the United States.
• March 30: Alaska is purchased from Alexander II of Russia for $7.2 million. This becomes known as Seward’s Folly.
• May 01: The first political May Day march in Chicago.
• May 07: Alfred Nobel patents dynamite in the UK.
• May 29: The Austro-Hungarian Compromise is born through Act 12, establishing the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• June 19: Emperor Maximillian of Mexico is executed by a firing squad.
• July 01: The Constitution of the North German Confederation comes into effect. It establishes a confederation of states under the leadership of Prussia and Otto von Bismarck.
• September 14: The first volume of Das Kapital (Karl Marx) is published.
• October 21: The Medicine Lodge Treaty is signed by southern Great Plains Indian leaders. It requires Native American Plains tribes to relocate to a reservation in Oklahoma.
• November 02: The first issue of Harper’s Bazaar is published.
• December 18: Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States at a theater in New York City.

… the Earth pirouettes around the sun in a universe of unimaginable size, while the affairs of men unfold on it’s surface…

… hopeful signs?…

… the appearance, at least, that nooses are tightening… Bannon being held in contempt of congress… 45 wanting to challenge January 6 select committee authority but struggling to lawyer up… bad reputation on several fronts appears to be dogging him… courts siding with opponents of 45 and 45 administration…

… this morning’s post allows me to hope that the whole gang can be brought down before the 2022 election cycle which might minimize ability of Republicans to make gains…

… oddly, conservatives battering Biden/Harris with supply chain paranoia, claiming Christmas will see package delays of epic proportions… i remember last year… packages did not arrive on time… arrived weeks late…

… things aren’t all bad…

… some things the Biden/Harris admin has accomplished that have flown under the radar:

• 130 nations have agreed to a minimum global tax rate of 15% for companies with an annual income of $866 million… this will move a good deal of money into the coffers of governments around the world…
• The Biden/Harris admin has also struck a deal with various players in private industry to relive the supply chain slowdowns…
• Vaccine mandates appear to be working… more people are getting vaccinated, rate of infection is down, COVID19 deaths are down…
• Border restrictions have been lifted for the vaccinated at the Mexican and Canadian borders…

I’m a professor of American history. This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.¹

… a friend wrote on FB that his day gets off to a good or bad start depending on what Heather Cox Richardson has to say… the above is from her about page… you can subscribe to her six, sometimes seven days a week posts here… she says, in her one paragraph personal statement, that she believes in Democracy “despite its frequent failures”²… at the present time, this makes her liberal… in fact, i would argue that believing in democracy is becoming a radical act… would be authoritarian rulers are gaming the democratic system at home in an effort to overturn it, all the while claiming they are protecting the “American way of life”… authoritarian regimes around the planet are betting that it isn’t facile enough to keep up with the rapid pace of technological and social change…

… following my FB friend’s lead, reading HCR has become a daily habit… i started including daily HCR meter statements with some commentary a while back… i have decide to separate them out into their own daily post…

… this morning HCR discusses the noose that is trying to close around 45 and high level figures in his administration… is accountability coming?… i don’t know… i would like to think so, but the inability of congress to impeach 45 and the failure of the Muller report to lead to any repercussions for 45 and his cronies has made me skeptical that our systems of accountability is up to the challenge of wealthy and well connected individuals… at this point i see the main purpose of our justice system as keeping the “little people” in line while the rich and powerful do whatever they want… this is not a particularly new observation, it’s just that it has only recently become apparent to me… my blindness results from my white middle class maleness… i want to be proven wrong… i hope i am proven wrong…

03 For The People

… this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson post suggests there is movement on the voting rights front… Senator Joe Manchin has made some proposals on voting rights, which were backed by Stacey Abrams… he has also indicated a willingness to modify the rules of the filibuster, only 55 senators would be needed to pass legislation and 60 senators would be required to keep a filibuster going… meanwhile, a Republican running for office in Florida appears to have threatened to hire a Russian hit squad to eliminate his opponent in the primary… hmmm…

… my vacation reading material…

… have been reading most things i can get my hands on about women and photography… all aspects… women as subjects(objects), photographers, critics, historians… this book is an anthology of writings on photography by women… the last few essays have been interesting looks at the role of photography in conflict, politics and empire building… one in particular written by Gen Doy on the Paris Communeat the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war seems to channel some aspects of current political and economic forces at play…

Many French artisans were forced to join thenranks of the proletariat which, in the early days of industrialization, meant a life of misery and complete political insignificance. The petite bourgeoisie, or lower middle classes, also became more numerous, but with the expansion of industry and commerce they prospered along with the rest of the bourgeoisie, whose members were fast becoming the pillars of the social order.¹_  … i am reading about the industrial revolution in France, the social shifts resulting from it, and wonder, are we experiencing something similar, now, the advance of information technology, robotics, the demise of many forms of work, the new ways of organizing the flow of goods and services… could it be that unfettered exchange on social media and the damage it easily leads to is a weakness of democracies?… is the new social order the rise of a techno elite and a large quantity of irrelevant (except to themselves) humans?…

… an article on why every statue should be taken down…

This statue obsession mistakes adulation for history, history for heritage and heritage for memory. It attempts to detach the past from the present, the present from morality, and morality from responsibility. In short, it attempts to set our understanding of what has happened in stone, beyond interpretation, investigation or critique.¹

… i like monuments and, as the article suggests, i don’t so much like them for the history they may or may not teach me, i like having landmarks in the landscape to navigate by… every monument is one group of individuals idea of what or who is important to remember and given that there are all kinds of groups of individuals that have different ideas about what is memorable, there seems actually to be a lack of monuments in the landscape…

… given that we are entering an era where we can virtually place monuments in the landscape, perhaps we could have a program that corrects the deficiency… one could personalize their monument landscape, just as one makes a play list for a trip, one would make a monument list for their journeys, daily or otherwise… there could be a monument top 100, identifying the relevant monument the most people preferred for a given site… we could then take down all the old analog monuments and do something else with the space…

… Sontag sums up the chapter by reminding us the presentation of history is selective… we have reached a moment in which a large number of our citizens are ready to look at the horrors of slavery and its aftermath, but what about the many other atrocities committed in our name by our government?…

A museum devoted to the history of America’s wars that included the vicious war the United States fought against guerrillas in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 (expertly excoriated by Mark Twain), and that fairly presented the arguments for and against using the atomic bomb in 1945 on the Japanese cities, with photographic evidence that showed what those weapons did, would be regarded—now more than ever—as a most unpatriotic endeavor.¹