Oct 11 2021
I, when you look at the, the different versions of this narrative, whether it's in say, uh, uh, the, the books of, uh, James Lindsay, um, who's antiwar warrior or all, all the films of people who were kind of involved, uh, in the Tea Party movement, you'll see that there are, there, there are some, uh, historical facts, uh, involved there about really the, the, the unraveling of, um, sort of post-war American order, the, the sort of, uh, the new deal order that was, you know, sort of hastened by, uh, uh, uh, by Reaganism and the kind of cultural norms that emerge from that.
So I think that these different, um, conservative and reactionary intellectuals are, [00:21:00] um, responding. To really a, a, a crisis of a certain, uh, um, uh, arrangement of American national life. But I think that the, um, uh, the blaming of it on, um, sort of cultural deviance like the Frankfurt School or, or on work professors, it, it, um, means that they kind of can distract people from sort of more structural or more economic factors.
intellectual historian A.J.A. Woods, author of, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books) discusses their book on the day it is published. A.J.A.’s writings on conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice, and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.
"Rotten History" from Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview.
After all that, we receive an update from Loyola University Chicago SEIU 73 Faculty Forward co-chair Paige Warren about next steps bargaining for a fair contract... read more
Deborah Goodman
Apr 15
Labor Struggle in Higher Ed: An Update from Loyola University Chicago SEIU 73 Faculty Forward Union
Follow
Weekly Mailing List
New interviews every Monday
Oct 4 2021
Posted by Matthew Boedy
Welcome to the Moment of Truth, the thirst that is the drink.
Over twenty years ago, I started a project I’m still working on, documenting the life and work of an artist, Resh Shaprudhi, who used iconography around the god from the purana literature of what is now Hinduism, the god called Ganesh, or Ganapathi, or Vinayaka, or any number of other names, to explore the nature of oppression. Part of Resh Shaprudhi’s mythos is how and why Ganesh enters the events of the European genocide of WWII, often known as the Holocaust, and how through Ganesh’s intervention, the God of the Jews and the gods of the Hindus agree to bestow moksha upon the impoverished and oppressed. Moksha is the release of the soul from the cycle of metempsychosis, or reincarnation. It’s considered a good thing, to be released from that cycle.
If you’re not familiar with Ganesh, he’s the chunky god with the head of an elephant. He’s really easy to pick out of a crowd. A big part Resh Shaprudhi’s work involved syncretically assembling images, language, and symbols from Hinduism, Judaism, and the European genocide in World War II. So a lot of the art created by Shaprudhi involves Ganesh appearing in scenes of Nazi labor and death camps.
Coincidentally, about a decade-and-a-half after I started working on the Resh Shaprudhi project, an Australian play was touring the world called, “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich,” created by Back to Back theater company. The conceit was this: a theater company is in the process of putting together a stage play about Ganesh coming to Earth to recapture the swastika from the Nazis, who’d misappropriated it. I’m not sure if I was ever in a position to see this work. 2013, the year it toured, was also the year I was in India on the set of a movie, and after the shoot traveling through India, Thailand, and Laos.
Recently I decided to go back into the project, and encountered some clippings on the Back to Back play. I was barely familiar with the company’s esthetic, which is political, experimental, and purposely provocative. The theater company to which I claim membership, Theater Oobleck, boasted a similar esthetic back then. It may still, I don’t know. I know we considered art to be less interesting if it didn’t in some way transgress the everyday.
Back to Back is a company the majority of whose membership are disabled,... read more
Sep 14 2021