Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, Ashwani Sharma (eds.): Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music (1996)
Filed under book | Tags: · asia, dance music, dub, jungle, music, music history, reggae, remix
Blurring the boundaries between academic and cultural production, this book produces a new understanding of the world significance of South Asian culture in multi-racist societies. One of the first sustained attempts to situate such production within the study of race and identity, it uncovers the crucial role that contemporary South Asian dance music has played in the formation of a new urban cultural politics.
The book opens by positing new theoretical understandings of South Asian cultural representation that move beyond essentialist ethnicity in the cultural studies literature. Contributors narrate the formation of South Asian expressive culture coming emerging from the highly charged context of UK Black politics. Part three assumes the task of historical recovery, looking at the antecedents of political South Asian musical performance, autonomous anti-racist organising and problems of alliance with the white Left. Part four engages with the movements and translations of cultural productions across the world – not just in Britain or South Asia, but also Canada, North America, Fiji, Malaysia, Australia, West Africa, Europe, but particularly in the fractured spaces of a postcolonial Britain in decline.
Publisher Zed Books, 1996
ISBN 1856494705, 9781856494700
248 pages
Michel Houellebecq: The Map and the Territory (2010–) [EN, FR, DE, NL]
Filed under fiction | Tags: · art
The Map and the Territory is the story of an artist, Jed Martin, and his family and lovers and friends, the arc of his entire history rendered with sharp humor and powerful compassion. His earliest photographs, of countless industrial objects, were followed by a surprisingly successful series featuring Michelin road maps, which also happened to bring him the love of his life, Olga, a beautiful Russian working—for a time—in Paris. But global fame and fortune arrive when he turns to painting and produces a host of portraits that capture a wide range of professions, from the commonplace (the owner of a local bar) to the autobiographical (his father, an accomplished architect) and from the celebrated (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Discussing the Future of Information Technology) to the literary (a writer named Houellebecq, with whom he develops an unusually close relationship).
Then, while his aging father (his only living relative) flirts with oblivion, a police inspector seeks Martin’s help in solving an unspeakably gruesome crime—events that prove profoundly unsettling. Even so, now growing old himself, Jed Martin somehow discovers serenity and manages to add another startling chapter to his artistic legacy, a deeply moving conclusion to this saga of hopes and losses and dreams.
La carte et le territoire
Publisher Flammarion, Paris, 2010
English edition
Translated by Gavin Bowd
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012
ISBN 0307701557, 9780307701558
288 pages
Review (Alex Clark, The Guardian)
Review (Benjamin Kunkel, London Review of Books)
EPUB (French, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (English, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (Dutch, updated on 2014-9-14)
EPUB (German, updated on 2014-9-14)
Frances Stonor Saunders: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, art, cia, cold war, intelligence agency, politics
In addition to being short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award upon publication last year, Frances Stonor Saunders’s The Cultural Cold War was met with the kind of attention reserved for books that directly hit a cultural nerve. Impassioned reviews and features in major publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have consistently praised Saunders’s detailed knowledge of the CIA’s covert operations.
The Cultural Cold War presents for the first time shocking evidence of cultural manipulation during the Cold War. This “impressively detailed” (Kirkus Reviews) book draws together newly declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA’s astonishing campaign wherein some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom became instruments of the American government. Those involved included George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Gloria Steinem.
Originally published in UK as Who Paid the Piper? by Granta Publications, 1999
Publisher The New Press, New York, 2000
ISBN 156584596X
509 pages
PDF (18 MB, updated on 2014-9-14)
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