Manuel DeLanda’s Art of Assembly
Aron PeaseAaron Pease reviews Manual DeLanda's philosophy of the virtual.
9/11 Emerging
Joseph McElroy
A personal account by novelist Joseph McElroy of the WTC crash (that is: a structure of some outside and inside project encompassing one individual).
Capitalist Construction
William Smith WilsonAgainst the conflation of Islamic and economic fundamentalisms (William S. Wilson responds to Nick Spenser).
Readability, Web Publishing, and ebr: A Riposte to Eye Magazine
Mark AmerikaIn a letter to Eye magazine, ebr's editor, publisher, and designer respond to criticism of the website's appearance
The Politics of Postmodern Architecture
Nick SpencerTo understand differences between Islamic and Western aesthetics, Nick Spencer argues, is not the way to understand the WTC attacks.
Attacked from Within
Nick SpencerIn the triad of Verso pamphlets on 9/11, Nick Spencer sees a convergence of postmodern critique (against the capitalist culture of postmodernity).
The End of Exemptions for Beauty
William Smith WilsonThe WTC attack considered as a conflict between open and closed systems, a one-system people and a many-system people.
The Godfather Seen Through The Lens of Elite Criticism (and Vice Versa)
Joseph UrgoChris Messenger achieves a rare convergence of elite and popular cultural criticism by doing for The Godfather (and its spinoffs) what previous critics have done for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Fecal Profundity
GeniwateHuman waste takes center stage in Dominique Laporte's unusual microhistory, a book as valuable for the anecdotes as for its argument.
The World is Flat
Amy EliasAccording to Amy Elias, Paul Maltby's negation of the mystical Other forecloses 'the most interesting conversation': between a critic who does not believe in visionary moments and those writers and critics who do believe in them.
Metahistorical Romance
Christopher DouglasOn Amy Elias's view of fabulation in the moment of American corporate power, a postmodern novelistic aesthetic that is consistent with Sir Walter Scott's early nineteenth-century mix of romance and Enlightenment-inspired historiography.
The Language of Music and Sound
Olivia Block
Against the notion that music is the most abstract of art forms, Olivia Block thinks of music as a language with its own vocabulary of sounds, patterns, rhythms, notes. On the day of a performance in Kyoto, Japan, these reflections alter Block's sense of her own language, English, deconstructed by Japanese advertisements, tee-shirts, "American" candy-bar wrappers, and text-cell phones.
The Code is not the Text (Unless It Is the Text)
John Cayley
An argument against the collapse of categories by an author who has, yes, himself perpetrated a few codeworks.