Marxist Literary Critics Are Following Me!

How Philip K. Dick Betrayed His Academic Admirers To The FBI

Jeet Heer, Lingua Franca

[From Volume 11, No. 4—May/June 2001]

WHEN THE NOVELIST PHILIP K. DICK DIED IN 1982, THE INFLUENTIAL literary theorist Fredric Jameson eulogized him as "the Shakespeare of science fiction." At the time of this encomium, Dick was hardly famous. The author of more than fifty books, he had an enthusiastic following among science fiction fans. But he was rarely read by anyone else.

These days, Dick is far better known. Vintage publishes his fiction in a uniform paperback edition. Hollywood filmmakers transform his stories of imaginary worlds and conspiratorial cartels into movies like Screamers and Total Recall. Meanwhile, academic critics laud him as a postmodernist visionary, a canny prophet of virtual reality, corporate espionage, and the schizoid nature of identity in a digitized world. Indeed, beginning in the last years of his life and continuing to the present, these critics have played a key role in the canonization of Philip K. Dick.

But did Dick return the favor? Not exactly. To their considerable anguish, Dick's academic champions have had to contend with the revelation that their hero wrote letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation denouncing them. In these letters, Dick claimed that Jameson and other literary theorists were agents of a KGB conspiracy to take over American science fiction.

OPPOSING ANTISEMITISM IN THE MOVEMENT:
A WORKSHOP FOR ACTIVISTS

When: Sunday, July 23, 6:30 p.m.

Where: Bluestockings, 172 Allen Street, between
Stanton and Rivington Streets, Manhattan (directions
below).

Antiauthoritarians and social justice activists often
think they're immune from racism and prejudice. But
many Jewish activists' experience shows that forms of
antisemitism are alive and well in the social justice
movement. This not only drives away many Jewish
activists, but profoundly affects our work as a
movement. This workshop brings together two longtime
activists who have studied how the left responds to
antisemitism for an evening of instruction and
experience-sharing that will help us understand and
combat its effects in the activist community.

Antisemitism is more than a "prejudice." It's a
political worldview that can creep into the work of
even dedicated fighters against oppression and
injustice. This workshop will begin with the
essentials: What is antisemitism? How is it different
from what we've been taught it is? We will then
explore the ways that antisemitism manifests itself
today within movements against capitalism, the state,
corporate globalization, and other forms of
oppression, and what problems have kept the left from
tackling antisemitism historically. We will look at
how antisemitism damages the struggle for justice.
Finally, we will discuss how we as activists can get
better at seeing and fighting antisemitism where it
arises.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Male Bodies / Global Cinema"

Call For Papers

Contributions are sought for a new volume on the representation of the male body in global cinema.

Essays on any nationalities or ethnicities are welcome, but the following will take priority:


Australian cinema;
Chinese cinema;
Cinemas of Western and Southern European countries (especially France, Germany and Italy);
Post 1989 Eastern European cinemas;
Cinemas of the states of the former Soviet Union;
Cinema from the Indian subcontinent;
Latin American cinemas (especially Argentinean, Brazilian, Cuban and Mexican);
Middle Eastern cinema.


Contributions can focus on specific countries or ethnicities and can analyse key actors, directors or films or offer a more diverse overview, but the emphasis will be on cinema produced in the last twenty years.


Please send proposals including title, 500-word abstract, provisional bibliography and short bio by 1 December 2006. Accepted contributions (of around 7,000 words) will be expected by July 2007 for publication with a well-established publishers in the field in late 2008/early 2009.

santiago.fouz@durham.ac.uk

The Filmmaker and the Protest Singer

Joan Anderman,
Boston Globe

Peter Frumkin's PBS documentary blows the dust off Woody Guthrie's legend to find the man and his legacy

"A lot of people know Woody Guthrie as the guy in dungarees with a guitar on his back who played three-chord songs," says Peter Frumkin. "But there's a lot more to him than that."

That's why Frumkin, a Cambridge-based filmmaker, devoted the last seven years to making the PBS "American Masters" documentary "Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home." The film, which premieres tomorrow on WGBH-TV (Channel 2), is a painstakingly crafted portrait of the folk icon's life, the roots of his music, and Guthrie's political and artistic legacy.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Launch Art Groups Networking Project

Temporary Services

The widely known Chicago-based artists' group Temporary Services has launched a new historical networking project. Here is the pitch:

Dear enthusiasts of group work and collaboration:

Please help us build a database of people working in arts and
arts-related groups, collectives and movements.

Temporary Services has worked as a group since late in 1998. We are
interested in the cultures of collaboration and collectivity within group
practice.

While much recent attention has been given to these ways of working,
few substantial documents have been produced that reflect the amount of
work that has been accomplished. There is also a need for more writing
on the inner dynamics of the group process: how collaborations are
formed, how decisions are made, how conflict is resolved, and so on.

We are compiling the names, locations, and dates (when available) of
art and arts-related groups, which can include those who work as
curatorial collectives. We would like your help!

The list will be published in a book we are working on titled Group
Work. The book will include interviews, quotes about working together,
lists of words used to describe the numerous ways in which we group
ourselves, and a list of historic and currently active groups.

The list will also be a part of a larger initiative called Groups and
Spaces that several people have contributed to. Groups and Spaces
includes groups of one person (who still chooses to work under a group name),
couples who work as a group, groups of three or more people, and open
networks that are named, but aren't necessarily a collective or more
circumscribed group.

We would like your help to develop this list and make it as
comprehensive as possible. Please visit http://www.groupsandspaces.net to see the
list of groups and to submit names of groups not listed, corrections to
information already posted, or any suggestions you have to make the
list better.

The list is still under construction, but is public and accessible to
all. A more sophisticated, searchable database and sets of research
tools are planned for the site after this preliminary list making is over.

Thank you,

Temporary Services

(Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, Marc Fischer)

http://www.temporaryservices.org

http://www.groupsandspaces.net

ABC No Rio Acquires the Property at 156 Rivington Street

On June 29 ABC No Rio took ownership of the property at 156 Rivington Street from the City of New York, following several years of planning and negotiations.

While the purchase price was $1, ABC No Rio must raise the funds necessary to renovate the building. To date we've raised over $290,000, enough to begin and complete the first phase of construction.

Envisioned for the site is a multi-use community arts center with darkroom, silk-screen printing facility, small press resource center, computer center, expanded space for art, music, performance, educational and community activities, and meeting and office space.

We achieved this great milestone through the efforts, participation and support of many, many hundreds of artists, activists, musicians, performers, patrons and supporters, yet our future fundraising challenges remain.

ABC No Rio's 'culture of opposition' goes back over twenty-six years to our founding. We'll need your help to continue this tradition.

Thank you for your support.

Redwood Mary writes:

"A New Anthem for America?"
Redwood Mary

I was pondering this week how to celebrate the 4th of July, the birth of our country. It was a grand experiment — an act that shook the world when a group of men, all immigrants, convened to draft a declaration of independence for freedom and liberty — a declaration that sparked the War for Independence from British rule. War and freedom so interlinked. How can that be I asked myself?

Recently, within the last six months I was able to talk to a dear friend of my father as he was struggling in his last days with cancer. He and my dad were both immigrant refugees. They were like brothers to each other. Coming from war torn Europe and liberated by the British Army they later found themselves in a DP (Displaced Persons) Camp and grateful to be under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. They landed on these shores in the 1950's — in NY Harbor — greeted by the Statue of Liberty. They were on fire with dreams of a future in a land of the free. My Dad's best friend said to me before he died, “You know that your father and I went through war and it was horrible and war solves nothing and war has to stop. We have to stop all war. and Mr. Bush was wrong for starting this war. This war was not right.”

Subcommandante Ricardo Flores writes:

We're Looking for a Few Good Clowns

Rebel Clown Army

CALLING ALL THOSE WHOSE INNER CLOWN IS DANCING AND WIGGLING AND TRYING TO GET OUT

Are YOU tired of humdrum protests and bored of capitalism?
Do YOU enjoy working in a team and ridiculing authority?
Do YOU long for extremely silly adventures?

JOIN THE CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY
To join, email circa-sd@riseup.net
For more info, see http://clownarmy.org

Join our anti-citizens brigade to help repel the invasion of the fascist Minutemen and similar anti-immigrant groups from our country! Our country of Laztlaugh, of course. We have seceded from both the US because of its genocidal colonial adventures all over the globe and from Mexico for its complicity in the plans of the US through free trade treaties such as NAFTA. We have created our own autonomous rebel clown territory, Laztlaugh here in the borderlands, but is is now being invaded by the endlessly dreary seriousness of the Minutemen. Join us and help us repel this invading menace from our precious country!

Of course, we are an anti-citizens brigade, and not a citizen's brigade, because until everyone can be a citizen, we don't want to be citizens. In fact, we want no one to be a citizen so that everyone can be a citizen and then we'll all be able to be treated humanely, with hugs and ice cream.

We will repel the invasion of the Minutemen with our powerful laughter, dangerous weapons such as feather dusters and with lots and lots of silliness.

Although, we really may just end up joining them. Clearly, what better example of a clown army has the world ever seen than the Minutemen and their tiny battalions? The Minutemen are truly an army of clowns and we could never hope to outdo them at what they do best, stupidity and idiocy.

Join us! If we want to defeat the Minutemen, or if we want to join the Minutemen, clearly we're going to have to do a lot of training! We have to do some serious training in being completely un-serious.

Of course, there are many battles for a good clown army to fight, so once our brigade is well trained, we can move on to fighting valiantly against the many other facets of capitalism that are oh so boring.

For a world where many worlds fit into a single clown car...

Justice! Dignity! Bubbles! Giggles!
From the anti-citizens brigade of CIRCA — Border Faction

To join, email circa-sd@riseup.net
For more info, see http://clownarmy.org

Kristina Hallez writes:

"Her Voice, Her View" Film Festival
New York City, July 15–29, 2006

"Her Voice, Her View" Film Festival, a part of the Pioneer Theater’s Female Film celebration, makes us happy to say, "It’s that time of the month!"

Featuring over 40 films by and about women, "Her Voice, Her View" includes a variety of styles and subjects. "The Shape of Water" reveals an intimate encounter with five very different women in Brazil, India, Jerusalem and Senegal, narrated by Susan Sarandon. Black women and men unveil the reality of sexual violence and healing in African-American communities in the feature-length documentary "NO!" directed by Aishah Shahidah Simmons. In "Left Lane" folk-poet Alix Olsen's life on the road is chronicled as she searches for independent thought, grassroots defiance, and passionate connection in between spoken-word performances.

Abortion, hip-hop, religion and spirituality, motherhood, peace, death, responsibility, national politics, gender identity, representation, and resistance are just a handful of what is to come in this amazing film festival. Every person who attends will receive a goody bag filled with items generously supplied by our sponsors. For more information and screening schedule, go to http://www.altarmagazine.com and click on "Her Voice, Her View" film festival.

Pioneer Theater, 155 East 3rd Street at Avenue A, NYC
tickets: $9 general, $6.50 student, seniors

Finding the Real Punk

By Richa Jha and Sandhya Gurung

From Kantipur

“Anarchy”, “Punks not dead”, “Burn in hell” and other more hostile graffiti spray painted on the walls of buildings and even temples grab your eye while walking around Kathmandu. The typical reaction is, "Must be the work of a punk”.

And when you think of "punk" you visualize young people with torn clothes, unkempt hair, spiked or dyed and usually carrying a bad attitude with a loitering intent. But is punk all about vandalizing public property and being a nuisance to society? Is it only that?

"Punk was an activist movement in the late 70s in the UK and spread across Europe. It was a synthesis of music and action that opposed fascist and imperialist foreign policies formulated by governments there that usually ignored problems at home (e.g. the US today), which rendered qualified youth unemployed”, says Sareena Rai who has been involved in punk since 1990, and is in the punk band Rai Ko Ris in Nepal. "It was initially to stand against suppression especially of a ‘classist’ nature, but with time, it certainly has got lost in translation."