The Interior without Children: Adorno and the Kindertotenlieder
Paper given at Historical Materialism Conference, November 2013, University of London
Jacob Bard-Rosenberg
The Violence of Chuka Umunna (on squatting)
Last week, Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham in South London signed a letter to Justice Secretary Chris Grayling asking that the criminalisation of squatting in residential buildings (brought in last year) be extended to commercial premises too. This afternoon Umunna,…
On Cheese and Culture
I have been living in Berlin for a few weeks now (doing some boring library work, visiting some archives etc.) The thing I don’t understand about Germany is how a place of such extraordinary high culture can so fundamentally misunderstand…
A Letter to Goldsmiths art students on capitalism, art and pseudo-critique
Dear Goldsmiths Art Students, I attended your MFA show two nights ago. I apologise to an extent: with so many artworks on display it was difficult to digest any of them. That situation was exacerbated by the fact that so…
Racism alive and well in the Metropolitan Police
Over the last couple of years more and more official Metropolitan Police twitter accounts have popped up. These are part of the Met’s wider media operation, although the individual accounts are often controlled much further down the ranks – hence…
On the Physiognomy of Judges and Militant Poetics
Paper given at Militant Poetics and Poetry Conference, May 2013, Birkbeck College, University of London
A Question for the Government on the Benefits Cap
Let us imagine two hypothetical families living in London: The first is composed of a mother, a father, and two children aged 7 and 11; the second is identical, but with four children, twins aged 3, a child aged 7,…
On the composition of lasagne: A caprice on horses, abstraction, and the division of labour
“It is impossible to remain in a large German city where hunger forces the most wretched to live on the banknotes with which passers-by seek to cover an exposure that wounds them.” – Walter Benjamin[1] “I could eat a horse.”…
Memories of origination: Survival, Prison, and the Kant-Freud Complex in Adorno’s Aesthetic of Natural Beauty
Conference paper delivered at Historical Materialism Conference, November 2012, University of London
The effects of the benefit sanctions
From today (21/10/12) new sanctions on benefits are being rolled out by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), whereby people who don’t comply with the terms of their receipt of benefits can have their benefits docked for up to…