A rare interview with German sociologist Jürgen Habermas makes it way onto YouTube (via SozLog). Like many, he makes the case for deliberative democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBl6ALNh18Q

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From Žižek’s “Against the Double Blackmail”
So the lesson is that the alternative between the New World Order and the neoracist nationalists opposing it is a false one: these are the two sides of the same coin — the New World Order itself breeds monstrosities that it fights. Which is why the protests against bombing from [...]

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A new category of my blog entitled “Totalitarianism and Ecology”
Anthony Paul Smith explains:
According to Neocleous “the concept ‘nature’ is, of course, deeply problematical” and “an empty vessel to be filled with whatever meaning is politically expedient”. The context for this is not nature “within fascism” but necessarily in itself. That is to say, Neocleous doesn’t [...]

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Over at MarginalRevolution, Tyler talks up Seth Roberts and the importance of self-experimentation.
When Oh When will people appreciate how deep Seth Roberts’s self-experimentation concept runs? Descartes started with the idea that we know only ourselves, Seth realizes that the self is often the last thing we know and discovering the self is the highest [...]

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On Wednesday, I had the great privilege of getting a few moments of time to speak with the great man himself. I want to leave what we talked about for later though. On Monday, I saw Saba Mahmood give her Milliband lecture on Secularism, Hermeneutics, Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation. Her thesis is that [...]

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There is a long running discussion between K-Punk, Foucault is Dead and Amish Lovelock over the media’s response to Jade Goody’s outbursts during Big Brother. Whilst I generally agree with the conclusions reached by all parties, I do take issue with Foucault is Dead’s opinion that saying ‘I’m not a racist, but I think the [...]

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My house has no power, and the electricity company can’t be bothered to fix it.

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Ulrich Beck is lecturing at LSE next month on “A Cosmopolitan Perspective on the Sociology of Generations” (iCal available at link).

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Adam Kotsko rightly takes me to task for misusing Lacanian terminology on my earlier Saddam posting. However, I think I was making sense in my mind. In that to everyone outside, the US appears as this paternal figure who we’re always trying to impress. I’ll shut up now.
In related news, Slavoj writes in the Guardian [...]

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Last week I visited the ICA in order to catch Academy Award-nominated documentary,Favela Rising. Having witnessed the murder of his brother, one time low level drug pusher, Anderson Sa, formed a new cultural movement in his home Favela, Vigario Giral – AfroReggae. Starting off a newspaper, it grew into a youth programme teaching kids music [...]

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