suffering feels religious if you do it right

main

[edwad]

marxian economics reading list

wage labor and capital - marx 1849

contribution to the critique of political economy - marx 1859

value price and profit - marx 1865

capital volume 1- marx 1867

capital volume 2 - marx 1885

capital volume 3 - marx 1894

theories of surplus value - marx 1860s 

grundrisse - marx 1857-8

karl marx and the close of his system - 1896 bohm-bawerk, 1902 hilferding (automatic download)

imperialism, a study - hobson 1902

the economic doctrines of karl marx - kautsky 1903

finance capital - hilferding 1910

the accumulation of capital - luxemburg 1913

an anti critique - luxemburg 1915

imperialism - lenin 1917

imperialism and the world economy - bukharin 1917

essays on marx’s theory of value - rubin 1924

imperialism and the accumulation of capital - bukharin 1925

abstract labour and value in marx’s system - rubin 1927

economic theory of the leisure class - bukharin 1927

the law of accumulation and breakdown of the capitalist system - grossman 1929

fundamental principles of communist production and distribution - gik 1930

the permanent crisis - mattick 1934

producers and parasites - keracher 1935

economics for beginners - keracher 1935

an essay on marxian economics - robinson 1942

theory of capitalist development - sweezy 1942

political aspects of full employment - kalecki 1943

studies in the development of capitalism - dobb 1946

economic problems of socialism in the ussr - stalin 1952

political economy - ussr 1954

theory of economic dynamics - kalecki 1954 

marx and keynes - mattick 1955

studies in the labour theory of value - meek 1956

political economy - eaton 1956 (newer edition)

the political economy of growth - baran 1957

production of commodities by means of commodities - sraffa 1960

introduction to marxist economic theory - mandel 1967

marxist economic theory volume 1 - mandel 1962 

marxist economic theory volume 2 - mandel 1962 

the dynamics of u.s. capitalism - sweezy, magdoff 1965 

monopoly capital - sweezy, baran 1966 

baran and sweezy’s “monopoly capital” - mattick 1966

the labor theory of value and monopoly capitalism - mandel 1967

the making of marx’s capital - rosdolsky 1968

a critique of soviet economics - mao 1969

marx and keynes - mattick 1969

economic calculations and forms of property - bettelheim 1970

on the transition to socialism - sweezy, bettelheim 1971

late capitalism - mandel 1972

the marxian theory of crisis, capital, and the state - yaffe 1972

marx on money - de brunhoff 1973

theories of value and distribution since adam smith - dobb 1973 

marx’s economics - morishima 1973

economic crisis and crisis theory - mattick 1974

labor and monopoly capital - braverman 1974 

value and price in marx’s capital - yaffe 1974

the political economy of marx - howard, king 1975

economics, politics, and the age of inflation - mattick 1977

fundamentals of political economy (shanghai textbook) - wang 1977

marx after sraffa - steedman 1977 (i finally found it)

the law of worldwide value - amin 1978

value - 1979

inflation, the crisis, and post-war boom - yaffe, bullock 1979

long waves of capitalist development - mandel 1980 

value and crises - itoh 1980

the limits to capital - harvey 1982

late marx and the russian road - shanin 1983

understanding marx - r p wolff 1984

the faltering economy - 1984 

ricardo, marx, sraffa - 1984

understanding capital - foley 1986

a history of marxian economics volume 1 - howard, king 1989

a history of marxian economics volume 2 - howard, king 1992

marx beyond marx - negri 1991

the marxian concept of capital and the soviet experience - chattopadhyay 1994

the long twentieth century - arrighi 1994

marx and non-equilibirum economics - 1996

the economics of global turbulence - brenner 1998

the circulation of capital - 1998

the value of marx - saad-filho 2002

the culmination of capital - 2002

marx’s capital - fine 1975, saad-filho 2004 

the constitution of capital - 2004

kalecki’s economics today - 2004

the new value controversy and the foundations of economics - 2004

marx’s theory of money - 2005

reclaiming marxs capital - kliman 2006 

the enigma of capital - harvey 2010

marx’s theory of price and its modern rivals - nicholas 2011

contending economic theories - r d wolff, resnick 2012

seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism - harvey 2014

marxism and the critique of value - 2014

capitalism: competition, conflict, crisis - shaikh 2016

money and totality - moseley 2016

[boymiffy]

VIDEO ESSAYS film

in the moment: a 1917 video essay

fantastic mr. fox: my favorite movie

when shakespeare got cool

what even is masculinity? (according to cinema)

lord of the rings: how music elevates story

school of rock’s perfect scene

why miyazaki is a true romantic

feet in films: humanity & divinity

in the mood for love: frames within frames

what the green knight wants you to think about

rogue one: the birth of hope

colour theory in film

my neighbour totoro: what’s real?

art

the death of socrates: how to read a painting

van gogh’s ugliest masterpiece

art is not content (stop it at about 9 minutes because it just becomes a massive ad -_-)

who’s afraid of modern art: vandalism, video games, and fascism 

can you judge art objectively?

woman at her toilette

michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures

music

frank ocean - musical identity

the power of album covers

the rule-breaking music of frank ocean

the lost art of album sequencing

how fka twigs uses magdalene as a metaphor

[gaycommunist]

some of my favorite video essays:

daddy issues, misogyny and the pinnacle of male privilege

breaking the cycle of abuse - perks of being a wallflower

why do we root for destructive love?

girlhood disrupted: the pseudo-maturity of traumatized girls in film

dead doesn’t mean gone - the haunting of bly manor

the rise and fall of teen dystopias

the demonization of the working class

a monstress come of age: horror and girlhood

striping the layers of sensual dancing in film

video essays

video essays

^ all of the above and 50+ more :)

[cosettefauchelevente]

🥀🍂🍁 easy autumn recipes 🍁🍂🥀

beverages

butterbeer

caramel apple hocus latte

chai, cider and caramel fall drink

dates hot chocolate

deluxe hot chocolate with marshmallows

homemade hot chocolate

hot apple pie punch

lemon and ginger tea

moroccan style white hot chocolate

mulled apple juice

mulled tea

pumpkin juice

pumpkin nutella hot chocolate

pumpkin spice latte

desserts

apple and cinnamon loaf cake

apple crumble cake

apple hand pies

apple and honey challah

apple pancakes

apple turnovers

autumn cheesecake

butterbeer cupcakes

caramel apple bars

carrot cake balls

carrot and sultana cake with creamy orange frosting

chewy oat cookies

chocolate pistachio fudge

cinnamon roll pancakes

date and walnut cake

honey cake

maple sugar pie

mini apple and almond cakes

mushroom meringues

patterned pumpkin swiss roll

perfect apple pie

pryaniki

pumpkin spice cupcakes

pumpkin spice muffins with cream cheese filling

pumpkin spice scones

soft pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting

toffee apple muffins

vanilla and nutmeg baked rice pudding

dinners

aubergine and mozzarella bake

beef cheek and butternut squash broth in sourdough bread bowls

butternut squash curry with cauliflower rice

chicken, leek, and mushroom pies

coddle with pearl barley

irish stew

kiki's delivery service fish pie

lamb casserole with aubergine

leg of lamb m'hammar

mushroom omelette

one pot creamy mushroom pasta

pumpkin risotto

sausage and bean casserole

sicilian pasta with tomatoes, garlic, and almonds

spicy root and lentil casserole

stuffed eggplants

vegetable pizza

veggie pot pie

dips, preserves and sauces

apple and blackberry jam

apple sauce

aubergine hummus

bessara

blueberry butter

country apple sauce

date jam

jumbo chilli sauce

plum jam

soups

borlotti bean, tomato, and spinach soup

chicken and barley stew

chicken and brown rice soup

chicken soup

chicken wild rice soup

curried carrot soup

garlic broth

good vegetable soup

harira

hearty irish veg soup

hearty white bean soup

lentil, chickpea, and paprika soup

minestrone in minutes

pumpkin soup

potato leek soup

speedy seafood supper

stuffed pepper soup

sweet potato soup

starters, sides, etc

butternut squash, sage, and crème fraîche mash

champ

chinese dumplings with mushrooms and butternut squash

creole aubergines

colcannon

mhencha with spicy ground beef (you can get the kiri cheese from any middle-eastern run store).

moroccan potato salad

mushroom hand pies

naan bread

polish mushroom pasties

sweet potato wedges

tuna and beans

vegetable cigars

[rf-times]

I’ve said this before but there has never been a single patriarchal society in existence, including and especially the most ultra-conservative ones you can think of, that didn’t have an established prostitution culture. And this isn’t because prostitution is a counterculture reaction against conservative patriarchal values. It’s because strict morality codes governing women’s behaviour don’t just confine the women who fit within them, it keeps a class of ‘fallen women’ who cannot escape a life of sexual exploitation, by design, helping men categorise the different types of ways they can exploit women.  The “wh*re” is just as much a patriarchal invention as the “madonna”.

[rf-times]

@messy-complex thank you for bringing this up because it was something I have been wanting to elaborate on. Prostitution and porn being illegal does not mean they are not being supported and sanctioned.

Many countries in the Middle East have the highest rates of watching porn in the world, Mia Khalifa was banned from visiting Lebanon all while they watched her videos the most. This is because the way that the law is structured, it is that women are punished and criminalised for being in porn while not much is done to actually stop men watching it.

And similarly for prostitution, heavily conservative cultures enforce the laws most strongly on prostituted women. The source of the crime is regarded as women being tempting, so women are punished heavily while johns go unpunished or unmonitored or left with a slap on the wrist. These countries rarely provide any exit service or resources for trafficked women, and often keep them marked out as prostituted women. So these women are forced to remain in prostitution through criminalisation, all while the johns, who are from every level of society from the lowest to the absolute highest heads of state remain untouched. This is by design and is why it is so common for powerful men in any culture to be married and also have mistresses or be a john.

[feryonthesea]

I agree and it’s 100% true. Law student here from a middle eastern country (Iran). Here there is actually a sneaky halal way to get wh*res without the negative implication and surprise surprise is completely legal and even encouraged to do instead of having normal relationships and that is called temporarily marriages (Sighe). In Shia sharia to get married to someone and be mahram (someone you can be hijab-free( father, brother, uncle) or have sex with (husband)) you just need say 2 Arabic sentences which mostly asks for the woman’s hand in marriage and her acceptance and for it to be legally binding the woman’s father or paternal grandfather should give permission (if the woman has not been married before). At the same time the law and sharia require the husband to pay for some sort of money to the wife (which is determined by the woman as well). In normal marriages (which last for life) this monetary right( called mahrieh) is mostly forgotten and never paid since it can be over millions of dollars ( yup ) but here it gets juicy so bare with me. In temporarily marriages the johns give the prostituted woman mahrieh and just say those Arabic sentences with some (completely halal) alterations that specifies the time and duration of the marriages which can be anything from a minute to years and decades. This is completely fine legally and religiously and a lot of muslim johns use this loophole. I can even provide you with groups and chats on Telegram app that matches (pimps) these women with johns. Why I call this prostitution and not some sort of unofficial Tinder? Cause the younger, the paler, the curvier, the more inexperienced the woman is. the more money is on the table as for her mahrieh. ( btw most pimps say that the marriage should not last for more than 1 hour so yeah). Hope it helps the op to prove her/his point.

[robertcapajpg]

some more recent reads: (faves are bolded)

monsters in the attic: women’s rage and the gothic

what if you could do it all over, the new yorker

on eating alone, longreads

the photographer who set out to watch herself age, the new yorker

what vivian maier saw in color, the new yorker

how nothingness became everything we wanted, the new york times

loneliness: coping with the gap where friends used to be, olivia laing for the guardian

the queerness of bruce springsteen, the nation

herman melville’s passionate, beautiful, heartbreaking love letters to nathaniel hawthorne, brainpickings

the end times are here and i am at target, the outline

fiction detective: on literary citation and search engine sleuthing, the drift mag

on internet & technology

on online, alicia kennedy

ghosts of the future: the smart home is a haunted house, real life magazine

wandering web, somewhere good

the internet is flat, charlie warzel

the buzzfeed-ification of mental health, p.e. moskowitz

why do we pathologize normal behaviour on the internet?, vice

misery memes run the internet, bitchmedia

against being a real person online, terry nguyen

the organic myth, real life magazine

why can’t we be friends, real life magazine

[somerabbitholes]

Hi!How are you ? I wanted to ask you about something. I would appreciate any info you can provide on this or anything related to this. If you're busy i totally understand. No worries.

I learnt about this today.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTXNm8psak1/?utm_medium=copy_link

Why was this history never taught, never spoken so much. Like it was non existent. It broke my heart to read about this. What do you think about this and the lack of knowledge about this? Don't such stories matter? Is it because they were women? The boisterous freedom speeches describing colonialism, our history textbooks so many media outlets but i hear this story today!!!??

Please suggest any books that i can read to learn more about this and stories most of the history books leave out.

Thank you.

hello! i’m sorry this took long, it’s festival season and i’ve been busy at home.

if you mean why it wasn’t taught in schools, then that’s a tricky question. because on the one hand these are obviously very important stories and school textbooks have typically had biases that need correction, but also on the other hand, school textbooks would typically be devoid of the nuance you learn in college while studying labour and everything. this history is taught in college, and has in fact been a pretty big deal for the past fifty years when you’re studying colonialism and gender or labour histories. there is also always new research being done on this in academia, and always new books being written on this. feminist and subaltern history has in fact done wonderfully well in indian academia. so, you know, we talk about it all the time in college.

not all of it always translates into popular histories — which i’m guessing is what you mean by why this is never talked about — and why that doesn’t happen is complicated. sometimes there is obvious politics, like how with the freedom movement the congress occupies most of the space (you can guess who that helps), or how tribal leaders are hardly ever mentioned; or how with medieval india the north is prioritized and the south or the northeast largely ignored. but also, more importantly, there is always new work being done, there are always new sources that someone accesses, and in that sense no work of history is complete, because something more could be discovered that changes everything. and because the time we live in changes, older sources are always being read and reread and lead to new interpretations: like recently queer histories have grown, so we’ve gone back to ancient hindu and indic writings and combed through them again with a clearer picture of what to look for.

and that’s something that has been happening lately; there have been more diverse stories written and brought into the mainstream over the last seven-ish years. these are the most recent ones that have been well-received —

the coolie's great war: indian labour in a global conflict, 1914-1921 by radhika singha: about the non-combatant indian labour that was part of the first world war; looks at how the war was fought on the backs of such labour

lady doctors: the untold stories of india's first women in medicine by kavitha rao: how women became doctors and accessed medicine in the 19th century; looks at how they navigated caste, family, gender tensions

makers of modern dalit history by sudarshan ramabadran and guru prakash paswan: short biographical collection about people who have been important to dalit history; also looks at how dalit agency worked in modern india through these stories

 ayo gorkhali by tim i. gurung: it’s about the gorkha kingdom, the people, and particularly how they were militarized during the encounter with the british

most of these build on the academic work that has existed since about the 1980s in india —

elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial india by ranajit guha: looks at how peasant consciousness developed in colonial india, it’s a pioneering book, and ranajit guha gave birth to subaltern studies so a classic, really. his other work is great too, and if you want a more theoretical work, check dominance without hegemony

labour matters: towards global histories by sabyasachi bhattacharya: an anthology about global labour and also about how history needs to be transnational, especially while studying things like mobility

castes of mind by nicholas dirks: about how caste identities and categories were created/reinforced in colonial india and its implications for modern india

an endangered history by angma dey zhala: it’s about the chittagong region and how religion, colonialism, culture, and ethnicity interacted and how european encounter changed (or not changed) the region

ayahs, lascars, and princes by rozina visram: about indians in britain during the empire days, probably the most relevant to what you asked

thuggee by kim wagner: about banditry in 19th century india and how it emerged in the specific context created by colonial socio-economic policy; how it was further criminalised

for popular histories you can keep track of publishers, that way you’ll know anything new that’s being written. aryan books does indic histories, navayana is great for all writings on dalit history; then there are the big ones who are better with popular history (penguin, harper collins, rupa etc). academic publishers (oxford and cambridge university presses, springer, brill, routledge etc) are also good if you’d like conventionally academic writing.

and also lastly, the instagram page that you got your story from is great! there are so many of these coming up lately who bring history and heritage into the mainstream and they’re every bit as important! here are some favourites — 

ancient indian art

itihasology (bonus points because they’re friends!)

pangsau history project

the heritage lab

india lost and found

i hope that helps clear things up for you :)

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

collected anne carson: pdf

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

finally tracked down a pdf of ‘glass, irony & god’ which you can find here

[soracities]

hey hi hello <3 i want to preface this by saying i love your blog & i take to heart everything you recommend. with that said, do you have any essay recs? essay collections, online articles, non-fiction shorts, that type of thing :) don’t have the time right now to read entire books unfortunately, but i still want to get my bitesized literary fix <3 thank you!

Most of my recs are the result of a terminal case of “Oh Shiny!” Syndrome, so I don’t know how useful these will be, but a few I’ve enjoyed:

Collections:

John Berger -- Confabulations I’d be inclined to recommend almost anything by him, but if you’re looking for bite-sized I think this is a lovely collection: it’s a very small, near-pocket-sized book and I think it is Berger at his most accessible. (You can also try Ways of Seeing if you haven’t read it already). Additional essays of his that I love (and that I absolutely do not recommend using sites like this one for):

“Why Look at an Animal?”

“The Hour of Poetry”

“Photographs of Agony”

“Seker Ahmet and the Forest”

“The Historical Function of the Museum”

“The Eaters and the Eaten”

“The White Bird”

“Field”

“Art and Property Now”

“The Storyteller”

“Modigliani’s Alphabet of Love”

“The Honesty of Goya”

Alejandro Zambra -- Not to Read The vast majority of his pieces here (like, more or less everything barring the last section) are fairly short and in my opinion you hardly ever realise you're reading when you read Zambra -- his writing is so incredibly personable that almost every piece just flows, like a conversation with a really, really good friend.

Siri Hustvedt -- Living, Thinking, Looking It’s been a while since I read this so my memory is hazy but I think, like Zambra, she has the same kind of fluidity and openness when you read her (which makes the reading go by really quickly) with the added bonus of these essays covering a slightly larger range, chiefly art and psychology so if those are things you enjoy it may be worth a look!

Cabinet Magazine’s Essay Series on Colour (various writers)

Also highly recommend checking out Aeon+Psyche and Brainpickings both of whom always have some very interesting content (the latter is wonderful for bite-sized). I’ve also recently started reading Nautil.us which is lovely if you want a scientific bend to your reading (I would follow the links through their instagram account instead of the site because it gives you access to a lot more if you’re not subscribed). Additionally, LitHub and Electric Literature are also worth checking out and were my go-to sites for a long time when I couldn’t read as much or as often as I wanted, so definitely try them, too!

Other Bits and Pieces (** means slightly longer reads):

“Ambiguity”, Adonis

“Imagined America: Walt Whitman's Nationalism in the First Edition of 'Leaves of Grass'”, Nathanael O’Reilly

“Ghost Bikes”, Geoff Dyer

“Everyone is Beautiful and No One Is Horny”, R.S. Benedict

**“Cezanne’s Doubt”, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

“A Brief History of Ultramarine”, Ravi Mangla

“Descartes Was Wrong: A Person is a Person Through Other Persons”, Abeba Birhane

“The Thousand Darknesses of Murderous Speech”, Becca Rothfeld

Zadie Smith: “On Joy” / “Meet Justin Bieber!” / “Dance Lessons for Writers”

“The Blue of Distance”, Rebecca Solnit (she has three other essays on this theme in  A Field Guide for Getting Lost which is a lovely essay collection)

“On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion

“For Henri Bergson, Laughter is What Keeps Us Elastic and Free”, Emily Herring

“Hunger is the Beginning of Every Folk Tale”, Kristiana Willsey

“To Be the One Who Doesn’t Wait”, Larissa Pham

“On Charon’s Wharf”, Andre Dubus

“Of Strangeness That Wakes Us” / “Still Danching: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky” by Ilya Kaminsky

“How to Write About Africa”, Binyavanga Wainaina

“Body for Sale, Slightly Worn”, Will Riley

“The Neurology of Flow States”, Heather Berlin

**”In That Great River: A Notebook”, Anna Kamienska

**“On Pandering”, Claire Vaye Watkins

**“For Pleasure--A Letter”, Benjamin Hale

**”To Speak is to Blunder”, YiYun Li

**”Ivan Karamazov’s Mistake”, Ralph C. Wood

**”The Strange Persistence of First Languages”, Julie Sedivy

**”A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read”, Ocean Vuong

[oldrfb]

Anti sex “work” because—

Consent can’t be bought

The majority of prostituted women want to exit

Poor women and girls of color are disproportionately funneled into the sex industry

The industry relies on there being a vulnerable and uncared for class of women and girls to sexually exploit

Racism, classism, imperialism, slavery, and colonialism are all embedded in or connected to prostitution

Prostitution is a cause and result of inequality between the sexes

The sex industry is proven to rely heavily on trafficking and exploitation

It promotes violence against women

It is violence against women

Prostitution is inherently violent

The sex industry encourages, promotes, and caters to male sexual entitlement

Under full decriminalization and legalization, prostituted women are still murdered, raped, assaulted, and stolen from by pimps and johns

Women who have escaped from prostitution have high rates of PTSD and other disorders

The industry promotes fetishization, stereotypes, and sexualized racism and racialized sexism against women of color

“Consensual sex work” and human trafficking are inescapably linked (Oof)

The liberation of women and an industry dedicated to the objectification of women cannot coexist

It reduces women to sexual objects and masturbatory aids

The sex industry preys on the most marginalized women and girls

Porn culture harms women and girls (yes, even “feminist” porn)

The normalization of sex as “work” degrades the status of women as a class

These are a few reasons for the abolitionist stance I came up with at the top of my head. The only reason to be pro-porn and pro-prostitution is if one believes that the orgasms of johns, profits of pimps, and pleasure of a few “happy hookers” is worth more than the safety, freedom, and humanity of every other woman and girl.

TL;DR

The sex industry is incompatible with feminism.

[anti-porn-unicorn]

I just saw a ted talk called “why sex work is central to feminism” I-

Oh yeah bc objectifying ourselves and selling our bodily autonomy and giving perverted men exactly what they want is totally feminism hahaha wtf

[yekkes]

My other post died and I really need help paying this off.

In using money I was allocating for other bills, I was able to pay half of it to avoid accruing a late fee.

But to make up for that I still need about $1600

Please reblog and help me out!

Buy Solo a Coffee. ko-fi.com/sc972

Support Solo On Ko-fi. Ko-fi lets you support the people and causes you love with small donations

[yekkes]

This hasn't gotten any traction and I really need help, please keep reblogging!

[yekkes]

Almost 1,000 notes in and I'm at like $5/1600. I really need to pay back that $300 I took to pay the first half of the bill soon by the end of the month and I am completely out of food and need to go grocery shopping.

Please keep reblogging and help me out! This is becoming an increasingly stressful situation for me

[yekkes]

Please ignore how many notes this has. I'm at $18/1600 and still really have a long way to go.

I need help to raise the first $300 I used to pay my other bill by the end of the month, please keep reblogging!

[yekkes]

I have about a week until I need to pay the first $300. Please keep reblogging and help me out!

[inqilabi]

question for radblr: how is the end goal of radical feminism accomplished? End patriarchy & abolish gender, but how? May be someone who is more well read can drop reading suggestions. Radical feminist texts ofc offer biting critique of patriarchy that all leftists should at least consider. But the part about how the end goal is accomplished is lost to me.

[shes-unforgettable]

Just a few of the larger scale actions that can be done:

achieving women's political equality by reaching as close to a balance as possible in representation among lawmakers

advancing medical research for female-specific conditions and providing adequate education on the female body, both health and pleasure wise

eliminating domestic violence and femicide by taking serious actions first of all towards separatism and safe male-free spaces and combatting the misogynistic culture that promotes violence against women, including legislation against pornography production and distribution

ending all female-specific harmful practices including child marriage and FGM by introducing more widely enforced and serious punishment for the acts committed, and by ceasing religious protection of such practices

making family planning, contraception and abortion available, accessible and affordable to all

lower the price of menstrual products as much as possible, and ensure variety and safety of products available

[sickofeverythingmale2]

• Change the law so self defense laws are more in the woman’s favor. I want women who kill abusers and rapists and so on to get off scotch free.

• Pass laws that make it infinitely harder for males the obtain firearms. This would also somewhat extend to women who are living with males to reduce the opportunity to steal said firearms.

• Make it so impregnating a woman even accidentally when the woman doesn’t want to be pregnant is a crime. Require the male to provide the money if said woman wants an abortion.

• Reduce the amount of difficulty when acquiring a divorce. Marriage should be much harder to get done than divorce. Hopefully this will discourage women from partnering with males and also make it easier for women to get away from abusive and terrible males.

• Remove benefits that religious organizations are awarded such as not paying taxes. Also makes it so that all religious practices cannot refuse to make women certain positions just because of religion. For example, allowing women to be priests.

[queen-mayhem]

In my experience, radical feminism struggles to present long-term, actionable plans to liberate women. The good news is that radical feminism and marxist feminism broadly overlap, and marxist feminism does have long-term, actionable plans to liberate women. I think a synthesis of the two branches of theory provides a solid road map.

First - capitalism must be ended. We have gone about as far as we're going to go with women's liberation under capitalism. Trying to reform a capitalist system to be more equitable for women is liberalism, and there's only so far liberalism can go.

The primary barriers to women's liberation are largely economic. They are cultural as well, but culture is not separate from economics. This is true both on the macro scale and the micro scale. Women perform well over half of the world's labor, yet hold only a small fraction of the world's wealth. This is both a cause and an effect of our oppression. On the micro scale, financial barriers are what keep women in abusive relationships, limit their access to education and healthcare, limit reproductive choice, etc.

Where marxism fails is that it treats socialism like a panacea to women's oppression, without realizing that cultural factors - and the impact they have on laws and cultural practices - are important. This is where you synthesize with radical feminism.

The example I always give here is abortion in the soviet union. Under Lenin, it was legal. Stalin made it illegal again, and it was legalized again after Stalin's death. And yes, there were economic factors at play here (population impacts from WWII), but there were also cultural factors. Stalin was, personally, a raging misogynist. Had someone else been in charge, the response to the population impacts would likely have been different and perhaps would have respected women's autonomy more.

This is where the cultural focus of radical feminism comes in. Consciousness-raising, building separatism and promoting it as a viable option for women who choose it, and denouncing misogynistic cultural expectations is important to create a culture where women's oppression is unthinkable.

But you need both.

You can't liberate women under capitalism, because women's oppression is profitable. Under capitalism, that which is profitable justifies its own existence, regardless of any harm it may do. Short of global sex strikes, there isn't anything to be done to make women's oppression less profitable under capitalism. So remove the profit motive entirely. When there is no longer an economic incentive for women's oppression, then we can tackle the cultural issues and actually expect to get somewhere with them.

Book Recommendations:

* Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State - foundational text on how the inequality of women evolved from class issues, to poorly sum up a really complex text

* Clara Zetkin in general, but especially Lenin on The Women's Question, which illustrates an attempt to synthesize feminism and Marxism in practice, not just theory, and the tensions and overlaps thereof

* Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement - hard-hitting and largely accurate criticism of all branches of western feminist theory from a Marxist perspective, worth a read

* Dialectic of Sex - An example of an attempt to synthesize both marxist and radical feminist theory - more accurately, to approach radical feminism from a marxist, dialectical, historical materialist perspective. Firestone concludes that the end goal of feminism and how it is accomplished are to free women from the tyranny of reproduction, which she believed was possible through technological innovation.

* Toward a Feminist Theory of the State - another attempt at synthesis, I haven't read all of this one yet though

[cryptobotanical]

“We raise our little boys to see their bodies as tools to master their environment, we raise our little girls to see their bodies as projects that constantly need improvement" 

This is such a good Ted Talk on sexual objectification and sexist double standards on appearance / beauty. If you have 12 minutes (which you know is on the shorter end of Ted Talks) please watch this, she makes some amazing points.

[puttingherinhistory]

“Turning yourself into the perfect sex object will not gain you any access to any real power”

[cithaerons]

A Google doc with resources for Afghanistan 

[cithaerons]

GoFundMe Emergency Funds for Afghan Artists

Afghan Child Education And Care Organization (AFCECO) (orphanage)

Visions for Children e.V. (assisting Afghanistan and other countries lacking educational infrastructure)  

[cithaerons]

Form for U.S.-based attorneys willing to help with Afghans with their SIV, P-2, and humanitarian parole cases (via Afghan Diaspora for Equality & Progress)

[olreid]

hey ej, i've been devouring all of your literary posts, they really make me super excited about books and storytelling and they make me want to read more lit analysis.

however, i never had any kind of """serious""" lit education; the college i went to was really pretty awful in that department. i've taught myself a little over the last few years, but not having that foundation makes things a struggle sometimes (for reference, i had to look up "ontological" and "diatectic" yesterday).

do you have any recommendations for articles to read? any foundational lit analysis texts you like(d)?

hello sweet friend ! i will tell you a secret: i have never had a ~serious lit education either ! my academic background is in sociology and social theory, not english, and whatever skill i have at lit analysis comes from reading i've done on my own, people i've learned from online, and the influence of irl friends who study english and are willing to discuss different texts with me. i think you're doing it right - looking up things when they interest or confuse you ! but if you want i can rec a couple basics, a couple theory texts more specific to my areas of interest, and finally some works whose methods of close reading helped me get a better grasp on what it means to analyze text. let's dive in:

some lit theory basics:

narratology: introduction to the theory of narrative by mieke bal

the cambridge introduction to narrative, ed. h. porter abbott

marxism and form by fredric jameson

some lit theory that's less basic:

the madwoman in the attic: the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination by sanda m. gilbert and susan gubar

reading the romance: women, patriarchy, and popular literature by janice radway

some of my fave examples of books & essays that do close readings well:

ghostly matters by avery f. gordon - close reading of novels including beloved by toni morrison in order to develop a theory of haunting as social and historical phenomenon

cruel optimism by lauren berlant - close reading of poems and novels in order to elaborate a theory of 'cruel optimism,' or the attachment that we have to things which actively harm or hinder us. this one is definitely a trickier read but very good imo!!

the imperial archive by thomas richards - close reading of nineteenth century english novels (verne, wells, etc.) in order to excavate the ideologies animating nineteenth century british imperialism

mocked with death by emily wilson - close reading of some classic texts - oedipus, king lear, macbeth, paradise lost - in order to think about the function of death and/or the inability to die in tragedy

the world of wrestling by roland barthes - what it says on the tin ! super short read about wrestling that might help you think about what it looks like to apply close reading to events rather than texts

lana and lilly wachowski by cáel m. keegan - reading the wachowskis' films as trans films.. jupiter ascending my beloved

misc:

something else that i think helped me a lot especially when i was younger is podcasts that do close readings. two of my faves are harry potter and the sacred text and the tolkien professor, but i bet you could find one focused on any classic text you like and go from there !

i also often just search google scholar or other pdf websites for analysis of topics or texts i'm interested in at any given moment. my philosophy is def more 'read about what interests you' than it is 'read about the basics if they don't interest you' lol.

finally this is a call for any friends, foes, or mutuals who actually have a literature background to add your recs in replies or reblogs as this is def not my area of expertise <3

[somerabbitholes]

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

[givemearmstopraywith]

online library so far:

margaret atwood

the brontës (the complete works is a MASSIVE file fyi)

anne carson

hélène cixous

bell hooks

clarice lispector

audre lorde

virginia woolf

compilations

feminist theory

academic writing (both books and articles)

everything here is in pdf format so you should be able to download and read it on any device. it’s slow going because i have a lot of epubs that i have to convert before uploading and the folders i’ve listed here are neither complete nor comprehensive, but it’s a start!