Thursday, September 19, 2013

A post of links

There are two recent books out by friends of this blog that make us work through how ecologies, thinking, and affect intertwine.

Adrian Ivakhiv's Ecologies of Moving Image is the the first one.
Anthony Paul Smith's A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature is the second one.
Read them, buy them, get your libraries to buy them, grapple with them.

There are a couple of important reading groups going on that I forgot to link to last time.

First, over at AUFS, there is a discussion of Esposito's Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy. Go check it out.

Second, there is a reading group going on over Bruno Latour's recent An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence, organized by the always interesting Adam Robbert. Go check out the reading group.

Jason Read had an interesting and useful post on Chamayou's Manhunts, a book which I am finishing a post on as well.

There is an interview with pattrice jones here. I read jones' book Aftershock after it was suggested by Greta Gaard at a conference a couple of years ago, and I enjoy the book a lot. The interview itself is filled with explosive topics like transphobia and trans* issues in ecofeminism, and the academicification of queer theory and animal studies. I am not necessarily affirming full agreement with the interview, but is certainly interesting. Feedback welcomed as I think through it.

In other interview news, 3AM magazine interviewed Todd May, mostly on poststructuralist anarchism (h/t Foucault News).

This came out a while ago when I wasn't really blogging much, but here is a very detailed polemic by Richard Iveson of Elisabeth de Fontenay's Without Offending Humans.

The CDC released a report, explaining:
The agency’s overall — and, it stressed, conservative — assessment of the problem:
Each year, in the U.S., 2,049,442 illnesses caused by bacteria and fungi that are resistant to at least some classes of antibiotics;
Each year, out of those illnesses, 23,000 deaths;
Because of those illnesses and deaths, $20 billion each year in additional healthcare spending;
And beyond the direct healthcare costs, an additional $35 billion lost to society in foregone productivity.
“If we are not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era,”
And yes, you are right, antibiotics being fed to animals in agricultural production is a major reason why.

Chipotle released a beautifully animated ad that is unsurprisingly messed up. In way, here, there is nothing new. There is a trend of using people's guilt over eating animal flesh as a way of selling them, well, different animal flesh. Think of chic-fil-a's ads to eat more chicken.

What's that you say, Janelle MonĂ¡e has a new album out, even better than her last one? Speculative fiction hip-hop rock 'n roll to the rescue!