Spex #331, März/April 2011: Ab Freitag am Kiosk

Ganz ohne Dornenkrone – trotz des nahenden Osterfests und passenden Titelthemas — kommt am Freitag die März/April-Ausgabe der Spex in den Zeitschriftenhandel. Und schon jetzt gibt’s das Inhaltsverzeichnis hier zu lesen.

Die eitlen Anmerkungen: Für einen Bericht zum Status des Albums als Kunstform habe ich mit Patrick Wolf, Andy Bell (ex-Ride/ex-Oasis/Beady Eye) und Fiete Klatt (Universal Music) gesprochen. Und den Remix von Gil Scott-Herons Platte »I’m New Here« gehört, der mir trotz Jamie XXs fragloser Remix-Könnerschaft weniger gefällt, als das Original. Nörgelei und Begründung in den neuen alten Kritiken ab Seite 112.

Also: Hallo Jenseits! Oder, wie es die interessante Band 206 formuliert, dabei aber laut Spex-Kollege Ralf Krämer keine metaphysische Welt meint, sondern bloß Sachsen-Anhalt: »Hallo Hölle!«

»NY ’77: The Coolest Year in Hell« A VH1 documentary about Disco, HipHop, Punk, crime and decay in New York City

This is fun:

[via merelythinking/nerdcore]

Isaiah Berlin vs. Chilean gold miners: What we talk about when we talk about liberty

In his excellent, timeless and eminently readable 1958 essay „Two Concepts of Liberty“ (find it online here), the late political theorist Isaiah Berlin offered striking definitions of „liberty“ and discussed how this often-abused term gets applied to all kinds of things, many of which have nothing to do with (political) liberty. Among them is a form of social withdrawal or asceticism Berlin called „the retreat to the inner citadel“. Berlin explains:

I wish to be master of my kingdom, but my frontiers are long and vulnerable, therefore I contract them in order to reduce or eliminate the vulnerable area. (…) I have withdrawn into myself; there, and there alone, I am secure. It is as if I were to say: ‘I have a wound in my leg. There are two methods of freeing myself from pain. One is to heal the wound. But if the cure is too difficult or uncertain, there is another method. I can get rid of the wound by cutting off my leg. If I train myself to want nothing to which the possession of my leg is indispensable, I shall not feel the lack of it.’ This is the traditional self-emancipation of ascetics and quietists, of stoics or Buddhist sages, men of various religions or of none, who have fled the world, and escaped the yoke of society or public opinion

More that 50 years after Berlin’s eloquent definitions, (and with a new timeliness of these kinds of discussions thanks to  freedom movements in the Greater Middle East) you still see the misguided usage of „liberty“ or „freedom“ pop up once in a while. The other day, I found a particularly interesting example while browsing the current issue of Time magazine (till Feb. 21) on the subway.

In this magazine, Aaron Nelsen contributes an arresting feature on pirquineros, solo miners who dig for gold under the Chilean desert. Nelsen follows one of them, called Aladino Olivares, around, describing how his protagonist reacts rather unimpressed when he learns yet another solo miner has been burried alive in his improvised mine:

„It’s a sacrifice,“ he says of the dangers he faces every day. „But nobody tells me what to do in my mine.“ That freedom is part of the allure of being a Chilean pirquinero,

…or is it rather a rationalization we shouldn’t neccessarily buy into? Of course, Nelsen is clear about the riches the miners are seeking. Only to finish his piece with the words:

pirquineros like Olivares make it clear what they think is more important. „After everything,“ he says, „I’m my own boss.“

I’m afraid this will sound terribly patronizing, but still — this suggestion is just ripe with irony: Men are digging holes into the dirt, crawling into tunnels with a height that sometimes doesn’t exceed one meter, literally enduring physical oppression because that’s how they find freedom? I’m willing to accept that people will do almost anything for money. I’ll also accept that there are potentionally many things to find in improvised mines, gold and death among them. But freedom?

Self-victimization as hegemonic defense? Marco Roth on the tea party movement:

The robust case for dominating other people sounds awful to most American ears today. So the contemporary idea of ethnocracy relies instead on an opposite rhetoric of victimization. The simple-minded mantra we’re taught in grade school goes like this: blacks good because oppressed, whites bad because oppressors. So if whites suddenly became oppressed, even while remaining the majority, they would magically become good again. Many Americans are now being taught to think this way.

This quote’s been taken from Marco Roth’s essay on identity politics in the age of the tea party. His provocative piece has been published in n+1 magazine back in October 2010 — follow this link. It’s somewhat tempting to read the tea party movement as a white culturalist reflex to what Hua Hsu called »the end of White America« though I wonder whether this analysis might suffer from Beck/Palin-bias?

The scheme of self-victimization as hegemonic defense is not all new: Felix Krämer’s thoughts on 1970s’ narratives of a »crises of (white) masculinity« come to mind (the link target is in German).