I just finish a great book, and now I’m reading one that is blowing my mind.
The book that I recently finished is Kojin Karatani’s Transcritique: on Kant and Marx. There is just too much to go into here. In fact I will probably spend much of the next month posting about it. His understand of the interrelation between the trinity of Capital, Nation, and State true open up helpful ways of understand globalization and individual states, as well as possible resistance to exploitative capitalism. Very philosophical. A tough read.
The one I’m currently reading is Wendell Berry’s Art of the Common Place: The Agrarian Essays. It is honestly the most refreshing commentary on American life I have ever read. It is very accessible, written in a journalistic style rather than a academic one. He just pulls all these threads together. If you are at all concerned about ecological issues, the local economy, body and the earth, or if you read (or want to read Crunchy Cons, which is quite good also).
Thankfully, most of Berry’s essays you can find online (I love the internet). Here are some that I found and that I strongly recommend:
The Idea of a Local Economy (written a couple of years ago… great critique of our economy)
Feminism, the Body, and the Machine (a response to a hostile reaction created by his essay in Harpers, the response is better than the initial essay)
The Body and The Earth (p. 29 of the pdf…long but interesting.
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