The Down-Deep Delight of Democracy

The Rolling Blackout

This is an older post, I forgot to publish…

I received my copy of Mark Purcell’s newest book today and I immediately read it cover to cover. What follows is some first thoughts and a synopsis, and I imagine that as time passes I will be able to understand more fully the profundity of this work.

The book is decidedly about cultivating the “virtual object” of democracy, such that we are always on a path to it, never fully reaching it, but always becoming. Democracy is not some ideal utopia or endpoint, it is a process of continual realization of the power and potential of people to not only govern themselves, but to assure the fullest possibility of their potential, of their creativity, and of there productive ability. Democracy is something which has been continually assaulted and co-opted, but something that still lurks in places, in people, who practice governance of themselves…

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Roberto Bolaño died ten years ago today

For Another Critique of the Pyramid

The Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño died ten years ago today, and I’m in the midst of re-reading The Savage Detectives (1998) on the heels of completing my third reading of Amulet (1999). The latter is an elaboration of one short story from the long middle section of The Savage Detectives — a meditation on 1968, youth, and Mexico City. (See a related post from when I was recently reading Amulethere.)

Several months ago, Teo Ballvé posted Roberto Bolaño & Geopolitics on his Territorial Masquerades. More recently, the Los Angeles Review of Books published this essay by Lisa Locascio, inspired by the currently running exhibition “Bolaño Archive. 1977–2003” at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

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