#sarah jaffe

[antivillain]

Top 3 non-fiction books you've recently (or semi-recently) read? 👀 - @blitzwhore

ooohh ok thanks for the ask @blitzwhore !! let's see gotta look and see what I've actually read (recent is DEFINITELY relative for some of these) OKAY with the usual caveat that "top" tends to change at a moment's notice:

Becoming Baba Yaga by Kris Spisak - This is a little questionably nonfiction since it's about folklore and half of it is the stories themselves and half of it is the story of how the myth spread and analyzing Baba Yaga as a character and looking into her evolution but damn I fucking love a fairytale analysis book 10/10 highly recommend

Stories are Weapons by Annalee Newitz - Everything you wish you didn't know about propaganda and how fucking effective it is. But like, not as depressing as you might think somehow!! A really good and important read for understanding /gestures at everything

Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe - The cover alone literally changed my life and the contents are pretty damn good too--all about organizing and the jobs that expect that doing them is its own compensation and thus they shouldn't have to pay you as much. Like look, I realize I didn't go into bookselling to get rich.... but wow did it hurt seeing all the effort I put in go unrewarded and unrecognized because bookselling did not love me back.

[gregorygalloway]

Sarah Jaffe (born 29 January 1986)

[protoslacker]

However, in European history, as the classical languages of Greek and Latin gave way to the vernacular languages of Europe it was the active voice that was given more and more priority in how the world was talked about and thought about. The active voice is the grammatical voice that speaks as if an actor can act without being affected by the action, and can, if they wish, reverse the action. It is the voice that says that the drift is the end product of the driving wind, the cast the end product of the casting, the throw. This is the voice that laid the ground for the seemingly detached observer of modern science, the distanced actor of technology – and its passive twin our sense of the environment as mere resource or instrument (Romanyshyn 1989). Owen Barfield describes this as a process of ‘internalization’,‘the shifting of the centre of gravity of consciousness from the cosmos around him into the personal human being himself’ (Barfield 1954: 166-7).

Bronislaw Szerszynski in (PDF) Postprint version – to appear in Performance Research. Drift as a planetary phenomenon

I keep pointing to a Podcast discussion between author Sarah Jaffe and Kelly Hayes about how grief shapes our struggles because it really touched a nerve. We neglect grief at our peril. In their discussion Jaffe told about interviewing Namwali Serpell about Serpell's novel The Furrows in Bookforum, Mourning Routine. Serpell pointed to this essay by Bronislaw Szerszynski.

When I first opened the essay I didn't quite know what to do with it. I wondered what are Performanc Studies? I could tell there was a bunch of academic stuff that was going to take me some time to sort through, so I put it aside. When I finally got around to reading the essay I found it such an enjoyable and enlightening read. Of course, I did have to go look up stuff. Two links gleened from the effort to enjoy: I was pleased to discover a beautiful new translation of Johan Huizinga’s most well known book Autumntide of the Middle Ages. The edition is illustrated with 300 illustrations of works Huizinga references in the book. If you like books it's worthwile clicking on the link. The Wikipedia article on Owen Barfield was helpful to me as I hardly knew his work at all. The book referenced by Szerszynski was first publised in 1926.

[shrinkrants]

. . . figure out what parts of your media consumption are necessary and what parts are simply turning a fire hose on your own face. I listen to a lot of advice podcasts – and now host one – and I have heard so many varieties of the question: my partner is on Twitter 24-7, and when I ask them to take a break, they say no, they are doing activism. And look, most of the time, when we are on social media, we are not doing activism at all. It can be a tool, but most of the time, we are just making ourselves bleed while Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg profit. Ellen Bravo, one of my movement aunties, who comes out of 9to5 (the women’s office workers union that the Dolly Parton movie was based on), once told me that one of her mottos was “We’re all special and none of us are indispensable.” That meant, to her, building a movement where people’s needs were valued: their responsibilities and their own needs to be cared for. Where they could step back when they needed to, and there would be space for them to return once again when they could. Take breaks! Please! Eat real food and rest! Spend time with the people who love you! Make new friends! We have to be in this for the long haul, and we need to be able to have livable lives while we are in the struggle.  -- Sarah Jaffe, in an interview with Kelly Hayes, here.

[heavensickness]

All that time, wasted I wish I was a little more delicate

[randomnotebookthoughts]

For a second I forgot that I could have my way.

[planetofthe-dead]

I wish my name was Clementine

[unrelatedwaffle]

"The crises are not going anywhere, and we need to be able to live and yes sometimes sing and dance and kiss and love and find joy where we can, because this is our life. The grief will live side by side with some of the best moments we will ever have." Sarah Jaffe - So much grief