Ken Jacobs (1933-2025)

A great artist, a wonderful teacher, & speaking personally, a close friend for over 50 years. Linking to a piece I wrote to mark his 80th birthday.

www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/m...

fredric jameson died one year ago today. i wrote this about him earlier this year:
www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

Prof @nicobaumbach.bsky.social at Columbia:

CU "needs to support its graduate students. It should not be eliminating an important source of funding to undermine the union. This is very disturbing, unfair to our students, and sure to undermine the quality of the university in the long run.” 3/5

(inspired by seeing Weapons)

has anyone written about the simultaneous post-cold war fantasy (and anxiety) about humans becoming computers (programmable) and computers becoming human (sentient)?

need a revised version of chomsky/herman on how consent gets manufactured on social media around generalized suspicion of the manufacturing of consent of legacy media and then again in response to the suspicion of that suspicion

as a professor at columbia, i feel the need to keep repeating that this claim (in a brand new statement from columbia's acting president claire shipman) is not true.
this simple fact is not a fact. don't believe it

you can order it directly from
@mitpress.bsky.social, or at bookshop: bit.ly/3EMU2zZ; you can request it at your library; it would make a good mother's day present for yourself or your friend or your mom.

Packed screening w emotional intro by School of the Arts dean, got prolonged standing o. Film is strong stuff--unbearable footage of Gaza carnage--but a testament to the students' resourceful idealism. They honored Columbia, the administration did not and still seeks to curry favor w Trump regime.

as columbia still refuses to say the names of its abducted students and accepts Trump's narrative about antisemitism on campus, i'm happy to bring this counter-narrative to campus. tomorrow night if no one shuts it down:

“Pedagogy,” [Fredric Jameson] said in an interview, “is not inflicting discipline but awakening interest.”

Excellent account of Jameson’s relation to the reified binaries of contemporary politics, of the place of slogans in his writing, and much else.

www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

Great essay on “the desire called ‘Fredric Jameson’,” — @nicobaumbach.bsky.social on the pages of @parapraxismag.bsky.social 📖🖊️⚡️✨

www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

“Let’s add some more slogans or lessons. Wrest the collective from the individual. Wrest the political from moralism.”—
@nicobaumbach.bsky.social's memoriam on Fredric Jameson’s pedagogy:

www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

"Marxism, for Jameson, never provided some orthodox solution or ready-to-hand explanation for understanding our world but provided interpretive problems that always needed to be reinvented and reimagined."

www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the...

is this it - the strokes (2001)

this is new and now open access.
an analysis of the politics and psychology of social media. i would be grateful for people to read and engage with this essay:
online.ucpress.edu/representati...

this is new and now open access.
an analysis of the politics and psychology of social media. i would be grateful for people to read and engage with this essay:
online.ucpress.edu/representati...

On Thursday, two dozen Jewish faculty at Columbia delivered this letter to our presidents in response to the latest report of our Task Force on Antisemitism. It’s a long read (we’re academics!) but we’ve had a lot of interest from colleagues. You can read it here: tinyurl.com/CUJfacLetter

some thoughts on social media, conspiracy and projection by way of naomi klein