Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet.
This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.
Please listen to my conversation about ARCHIVING THE PAST @ucpress.bsky.social with @alixbeeston.bsky.social on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! 🥳🥰
newbooksnetwork.com/archiving-th...
All I'm going to say that: If I had never done a thing, I wouldn't be so quick to jump into discussions about whether "AI" can do the thing.
I don't know how to clip a segment (sorry), but the bit I really want you to watch starts at 29'10". It's about the deep roots of the attack on Iran and why it's just as well Starmer is "no Winston Churchill". I'm surprised this aspect isn't more widely discussed. 🧵
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
It's just so entirely grim that underlying all of this is the fact that there are really just one or two institutions that can be expected to hire at all for the foreseeable future, even on a replacement basis. Just total ecosystem collapse.
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”
James Baldwin
Reliance on the US, neglect of key industries, reluctance to raise taxes to fund public services, reluctance to re-embrace Europe, inconsistent foreign policy, commitment to reducing immigration, transphobia, illiberal positions on drugs and sex work are not serious contemporary policy approaches.
One cool thing about unequivocally hating AI is that you will be proven right over and over again every single day
"The UK pattern is one where people have the skills but jobs don’t let them use them."
extremely familiar...
This is entirely correct.
It is *also* true of Labour's earned settlement proposals -which while not as extreme/overtly racist as Reform's, would still have precisely this effect for hundreds of thousands of people
Not too late for government to change course
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
everyone loved the tech industry's free music and friendship machines of 20-30 years ago. it's unclear what could be causing people to feel the opposite about the industry's new racism and insanity machine
My general feeling is that every summary tool shortcuts the library shelf. In grad school there were few things I adored more than finding a book on the shelf bc I inevitably found six or seven other books on proximate shelves that I didn’t even know I needed! Process is the point!
It’s also not our job because “teaching students ethical use” is a largely vacuous slogan built on inevitability narratives, “just a (neutral) tool”discourse, & other misleading hype. In my humanities courses, I begin with the *ethics of non-use* when I explain the many reasons we won’t be using it.
Reading this beautiful weaving of past work and these chapters has healed the day.
“somewhere behind this wall
I have to believe in the quiet rhythm of your Sundays
the blue obstacles routed from the fire
held in your hands
this life that demands only to let down its solitude”
Oh, hell yeah! The new issue of ASAP journal has the first four chapters of an unpublished novel by Kathleen Collins! It's titled Blue Obstacles and is open access here:
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
🎉🎉🎉
Very pleased to be doing this upcoming online research seminar
for University of Reading's Film, Theatre & TV department: Wednesday 25 February, 14.00 - 15.30, "Muriel Box, 'The Truth About Women', and the truth about women directors" www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/muriel-box...
I guess I have to say this too: staff worked ourselves ill to do our best for students and we didn't make the decisions that led to their dissatisfaction *but we know that we'll bear the fallout from it.* We are already losing jobs, departments, campuses, fields of expertise to government decisions.
A few years ago in the Kathleen Collins archive in New York, I started reading a heavily edited, coffee-spilled notebook. I'm honored to share an excerpt of Collins's first novel, virtually unread before now, in dream magazine @parisreview.bsky.social:
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
Hot on the heels of the @parisreview.bsky.social piece featuring an excerpt from Kathleen Colllins's unfinished novel "Blue Obstacles," ASAP/Journal has published a longer version of the draft materials with scholarly notes and a contextualizing essay. It's open access! 🎉🎉🎉 doi.org/10.1353/asa....
Thanks Laura - hope you might be coming to Loughborough in July? Xx
Happy to have had a chance to write about Nella Larsen's author portraits and to reflect on my first book In and Out of Sight in the postscript to a special issue of the Journal of World Literature on the modernist face, edited by Anca Parvulescu and @tynedaile.bsky.social: brill.com/view/journal...
At long last our Special Issue on 'The Modernist Face in/as World Literature' is now out in Journal of World Literature, edited by Anca Parvulescu (Washington University in St. Louis) and me!
Our Introduction is open access here: brill.com/view/journal...
Just a few hours left for this, but it's plenty of time. Even just answering the "overall do you agree" question can be meaningful. Speak against this endless cruelty.
@asapartsnow.bsky.social sorry forgot to tag you!
Hot on the heels of the @parisreview.bsky.social piece featuring an excerpt from Kathleen Colllins's unfinished novel "Blue Obstacles," ASAP/Journal has published a longer version of the draft materials with scholarly notes and a contextualizing essay. It's open access! 🎉🎉🎉 doi.org/10.1353/asa....
Kathleen Collins: "Can’t a colored woman be vague and full of notions? Can’t she settle on damp, uneven ground and try to twist herself into some odd, unpredictable shape?" www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
A few years ago in the Kathleen Collins archive in New York, I started reading a heavily edited, coffee-spilled notebook. I'm honored to share an excerpt of Collins's first novel, virtually unread before now, in dream magazine @parisreview.bsky.social:
www.theparisreview.org/blog/2026/02...
this will be an extraordinary book + everyone should read Alix's methodological précis!