invent_the_future

Reading Jacques Ellul's Propagandas and not enjoying it... Little in the way of examples to showcase what he's talking about and honestly I don't think propaganda is that much of a dense topic that it needs such a structural analysis (it's not that deep bro), but that's on me

Anyone familiar with the book or Ellul in general?

Yeah it completely draws you in, apparently it originally came out by chapters or something in a french periodical, so the OG readers we're invested in it like a modern soap opera

First I'm hearing about this book, really interesting. It doesn't really fit my style but I've got a friend in mind to gift it to, excited to eventually hear their opinion about it

All the 'A brief history of' books are stupid, starting with their concept

do you have any idea what happened to redsails? I don't really use twitter so I'm probably missing out on information but I did notice they stopped publishing texts on the website around this time last year

also I'm right there with you, one of my favorite dense philosophy essays is this one: https://redsails.org/maoist-and-daoist-dialectics/, it's not necessarily hard to follow but it introduced whole new notions foreign to me and I'm so grateful for it

thanks a lot for the further reading reccomendations, I believe I've read the Nia Froome text but I'll be sure to revisit it

also thought about gifting Blackshirts and Reds before, probably will do it eventually but just as a more personal gift anytime but xmas

I've read that and Black Skin, White Masks and really loved Fanon's quite incendiary thought, a real radical but with so much human compassion. Hopefully you'll like him as well, ComradeSharkfucker...

from the scene where we got the "and in this house X is a hero, end of story", very funny, particularly because Tony says Columbus was a brave Italian men and there's some likelihood he wasn't even Italian

Honestly I don't know if I liked it or not, I liked the experience of reading it, it's fun particularly out loud as it is very melodic, but I wouldn't read it again, it's densely written. It does present the more Eastern notion of cycles and circles of life and history which I found interesting, but I also found some underlining bigotry in certain passages which was weird.

I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to have a totally new experience reading a book, although I myself didn't approach it like that as I stumbled upon the book by chance and wasn't all that familiar with what awaited me.

I just finished Joyce's Finnegan's Wake this week, hardest book I've ever read but the most singular experience I've ever had reading a book