"The Horse in Motion" a series of cabinet cards by Eadweard Muybridge from 1878 Okay, confession time. I've been wasting too much time on social media again, getting lost in the flow, the soporific and anhedonic thrill of swiping. Happily, there are still moments in which you can come across something that jolts you back … Continue reading it is always too late to talk about time
Happy Christmas friends and comrades. Taking some inspiration from xenogothic, whose blog and wider intellectual work I’ve deeply admired for years now, I thought it would be interesting to try and wrap up the year and collate all of the writing I’ve managed to publish this year. Much of the year I spent wracked with … Continue reading 2025 Retrospective
The apparent delight with which we dwell upon objects of pure terror, where our moral feelings are not in the least concerned and no passion seems to be excited but the depressing one of fear, is a paradox of the heart… difficult of solution. John and Anna Laetitia Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects … Continue reading Hungry For Something
The connections and similarities between Bloch and Benjamin are still, I think, under-appreciated -- reflecting the wider lack of interest in Bloch’s work. The two were contemporaries, knew one another and had a deep appreciation for one another’s work and methods. Just on the surface there are some interesting polarities -- Bloch, the exegete; loquacious, … Continue reading Now Time and the Not Yet
From a situation in which nothing is possible, suddenly anything is possible againMark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative Today marks the publication of my new book, A Primer on Utopian Philosophy: An Introduction to the Work of Ernst Bloch, out with Zer0 Books. The book -- more of a pamphlet really -- is … Continue reading Feeling Bloched
“Denken heißt überschreiten” -- to think is to transgress,-- Ernst Bloch Prompted by this post about the intersections of Goethe and Marx, I can think of no better thinker than Ernst Bloch who fits the bill. Like many German intellectuals of his day, Bloch was enormously influenced by Goethe, particularly Faust but was also a … Continue reading Provisional & Early Thoughts On Go(e)thic Marxism
Over on twitter the other day Nate Holdren asked that one of “the smart literary marxists should write as simple of a book as they can for the rest of us about what we should think of when we watch cop shows or read crime books.” Happily there are quite a lot of smart literary … Continue reading Case Notes on Blochian Detection
