Welcome to Flood Media’s link roundup! Each week, we bring you fresh Flood-approved content from around the web, covering current events, debates, and hot takes.
For Salvage, Jordy Rosenberg interviews Kay Gabriel about poetry, pleasure, and Marxism. Says Gabriel, “I’m transsexual, gay, a hedonist: I believe that poetry secretes a kind of pleasure that theory can’t, and I believe that pleasure always carries a political charge. That’s a different way of adumbrating the relationship between poetry and Marxism: poetry can leap extravagantly into those zones Marxism tends towards—totality, solidarity, utopia.”
David Graeber’s new book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is out now, which is an excellent excuse to re-read the ‘work rant’ which originally inspired it. “It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working,” writes Graeber. “How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment?” This one is to be read exclusively on your employer’s time, for maximum praxis.
If you’re looking to learn more about Palestine following the horrific massacres of the last few weeks, Lana Tatour’s ‘A History of Palestinian Dispossession’ is a good primer. “It should be apparent that a state that removes Palestinians from their homes in order to build settlements for Jews is a settler-colonial state. A state that denies political and civil rights to Arabs because they are Arabs is a racial state. A state that shoots unarmed civilian protesters who are under illegal and inhumane siege is a criminal state.”
Clare Land’s book, Decolonizing Solidarity, asks how non-indigenous people can best support indigenous struggles. It’s based on the decades Land has spent as an active supporter of Aboriginal struggles, as well as interviews with Aboriginal community members and non-Aboriginal activists. If you’re in Brisbane, Clare will be in conversation with indigenous activist Bogaine Spearim at the Institute of Modern Art on Thursday, May 24. Get tickets here.
Here at Flood Media we believe that time is a capitalist construct, which is one way of saying that links from 2015 are still good, y’all. This Jacobin article is a fascinating deep-dive into the origins of consensus decision-making and how it became so widespread on the Left. L.A. Kauffman offers a thoughtful and convincing critique of a process that, while intended as radically democratic, often ends up bogging down movements and centralising decision-making in the hands of a few. Twinkle up.
If you’re looking for something to listen to, Viewpoint recently posted a recording of a roundtable discussion on Steve Wright’s seminal history of Italian workerism, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism. This is an amazing discussion of one of the most important tendencies in anticapitalist thought. If it puts you in the mood for more quality audio, Flood Media’s Soundcloud is an excellent source of locally-produced lefty content.
And now for something completely different: A member of Flood Media’s vocal ‘But What About Gaming’ (BWAG) faction recommended this piece on life, labour, and love in the virtual world of Stardew Valley. This is the best writing we’ve ever seen in a video game review: the piece covers drudgery and alienation, but also the satisfaction of work.
Until next week!