i agree with you if we are assessing the writing produced by the workshop model, but the critique here is how and why mfa programs were created, not necessarily how successful these programs were (or are) at producing the work their originators believed important. and forgive me, i’m mostly cribbing from workshops of empire, which lays out a pretty convincing case (with documentation to back it up) on which styles and aesthetics universities were to encourage (by way of syllabi, readings, students, etc.) and which were sidelined.

The first comment was explicitly about “aesthetic priorities” btw, so this is taking a turn, but we are converging

Yeah workshops of empire is pretty convincing provided you don’t think about it too much. I think our main disagreement is the claims of this book.

If we overemphasise grants instead of the artworks, then we don’t really need hermeneutics and criticism, only bookkeeping and financial statements…

Overemphasising syllabi versus the actual artistic production of the teachers and the alumni is similarly misguided. Purpose of the system is what it does…did Iowa churn out vacuous “realism” promoting wide-eyed liberal humanism?

Yeah the grants themselves might have been pointed, but Iowa teachers and alumni don’t fit that simplification. The people who were leading the program like Engle and Cassil, might have been opportunistic in applying for all kinds of grants, but their aesthetic was a kind of Flaubertian Chekhovian realism, which was already dominant among highbrow literary types all around the west, even the Eastern bloc. Now you can say that’s bourgeois, but then you also think about teachers and alumni, especially the actual novels produced, say between 1960 and 1980 and then it will be obvious that it’s an oversimplification

When someone writes a book like Workshops of Empire they need to make the case as forceful and pointed as possible (for a variety of reasons), but the result is often flattens the landscape. But completely agree that institution like MFA programs need proper historical materialist evaluation.

Workshops of Empire is interesting just don’t take it too seriously, it’s one of those books that will be an interesting footnote in a literary history 30-40 years from now

Vulgar Marxism is thinking there’s a crude one way direct causal relationship between base and superstructure. i. e. in a capitalist society, workers are atomized psychologically, and artists working in this society make art promoting this kind of atomistic individualism (or whatever)

I also include this more recent wave of thinking, “Well, the CIA/NED helped XY financially, therefore their values perfectly aligned with the US State Department”

The truth is much more nuanced. This was one of the big topics of 20th century Marxism. You can choose randomly (Benjamin, Gramsci, WIlliams et al) and they will touch on this.

here’s a pdf of Raymond Williams’s Base and Superstructure

I’m gonna need a citation

Kinda funny you make a broad vibes based comment, but it sounds like you demand sources from me.

First of all, you didn’t mention any names. The NY art and intellectual millieu was heavily left leaning.
Second, yes, many of them were anarchists like Newman or Rothko, Pollock participated in the Siqueiros Workshop, unless you think that doesn’t count, only CPUSA card carrying commies count,
thirdly it’s not just them, but the influential critics too like Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Meyer Schapiro too? Or John Berger? “emptiness is the point?” Was it all psyop? I’ve seen this hot take before, but it’s just bad art history dressed up as Marxism. It isn’t serious. Actually engage with it.

I’m not saying all mentioned critics were perfect commies, but don’t flatten their contribution. They were interpreting their contemporaries.

leaves interpretation up to the alienated, atomized viewer.

(Free interpretation as opposed to what? Revolutionary message in an envelope? Wouldn’t free interpretation be the opposite of easy consumerism? The critics I mentioned argued about this a lot. But they did appreciate the art itself.)

We can argue that the anti-Stalinist leftists like Schapiro were misguided in their politics, but then we are veering to a different topic. Or the commodification of dissent, like seeing Abstract art in IKEA, is, again, I believe is a different topic.

Sorry for being polemic, but I’m seeing vulgar Marxist hot takes upbeared in this thread left and right. It’s silly.

This is what grinds my gears:

encouraging a “counterculture” that wasn’t actually counter to anything of substance.

Abstract Expressionism definitely went against capitalist Kitsch (There’s a famous essay by Clement Greenberg, originally published in the CPUSA affiliated Partisan Review) Nazis still hate Abstract art. Wonder why.

My guess is you’re confusing it with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_realism

I am not confusing anything. The commercial art of the era on the billboards and the magazines was the dominant visual code they’ve rebelled against. (Greenberg called it Kitsch.) Newman doesn’t need to say literally that “I’m rebelling against the A&P ad I’ve seen in The Atlantic”, that’s just silly.

Again sorry for being combative, nothing personal, but I truly hate the “postwar modern art is a CIA psyop” take. It’s fash adjacent vulgar Marxism.

far from it. again, no one is saying that rothko or carver or the majority of us cold war era artists were willing propagandists, but the structural support for their work was part of a larger project to “professionalize” artists – plugging them into various awards, foundations, grants, and universities – so that only acceptable “transgressions” against bourgeois norms could be maintained and fostered. it’s a system that exists even now. i really don’t see how it’s that controversial a take.

yeah sure sure, but you see this above is a much more general and nebulous claim than

the aesthetic priorities [at the Iowa Workshop] were to center individualist “unknowability” and examination, which re-affirms capitalists’ need for people to be atomized units.

This is just vulgar Marxism

Remember that Marx admired Balzac…

Funnily enough between my first comment and this one, I was reading a book, and this page specifically, funny coincidence:

We have seen that in proper structuralist procedure, the economic determinism professed by Marxism is unacceptable, since it affirms a direct causal link between the content of the discourse and the reality of its enunciation, neglecting the specific role of the code. Take any novel; for orthodox Marxism it will reproduce either the ideology of the ruling class or that of the oppressed class. For structuralism such a view is premature, to say the least, for the novel originates primarily in the code of novelistic discourse, and not in the author’s social awareness. It is only secondarily as the analysis progresses, a structural correspondence may perhaps be established between the novelistic code as a whole (but not this or that particular novel) and the relation of subordination which, of all the relations possible in one group’s power over another, defines the rule of the bourgeoisie. Should this hypothesis of a relation between novelistic code and bourgeois domination be verified, then the ‘progressive’ novels would not be those whose content refers to the experiences of the workers (‘popular literature’, ‘socialist realism’), but those which in one way or another transgress the code of the ruling class. The exemplary modern writer will then be Joyce or Mallarmé, not Zola or Aragon.

• Descombes - Modern French Philosophy

I like Raymond Williams more than the structuralists, but he’s no vulgar Marxist either.

This one is also a favourite myth of the new new vulgar Marxist left:

the aesthetic priorities [at the Iowa Workshop] were to center individualist “unknowability” and examination, which re-affirms capitalists’ need for people to be atomized units.

You are talking about people like Vonnegut and Carver here. May not fit Zhdanovite criteria of good fiction, but come on. Ridiculously philistine take.

NY artists at that time was pretty anti-communist

Literally opposite of the truth. Mid-20th century NY artists and intellectuals were communists. Not necessarily pro-USSR, many Trots and anarchists, but certainly not anti-communist liberals. Many of them were harassed during the McCarthyist era.

a “counterculture” that wasn’t actually counter to anything of substance.

Abstract Expressionism is partly, and very deliberately went against the capitalist realism of the 40s and 50s. Think about how the current alt-right slobbers over the nuclear family 50s style coca cola ads? Well, Abstract Expressionism is purposely against that kind of representative art. Simply countering it with the same style but with strong steelworkers instead of happy housewives would have been a weak response. They wanted a radical change.

Then the so-called counterculture definitely went against US conservative lifestyle in many ways, but they also actively organized against the Vietnam War and so on.

Now we can talk about how that strand of leftism was “misguided”, infantile disorder etc., but thinking that Modern art and later the counterculture was some kind of CIA plot to divert the masses is just a ludicrous oversimplification.

Yeah they failed to bring revolution to the US. But what the hell are current Amerikkkans doing?

Politicos coverage:

LONDON — Jeffrey Epstein had access to highly-sensitive British government policy discussions at the height of the global financial crisis, emails disclosed in the Epstein files show.

Epstein, already a convicted sex offender at the time, was forwarded on a June 2009 email written by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s senior policy adviser Nick Butler about the government’s response to the banking crunch — addressed to “Gordon.”

It appears the note was sent on by-then Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is facing a fresh round of scrutiny over his links to Epstein. The note — disclosed in the latest U.S. Department of Justice releases on Epstein — highlighted the U.K.’s “very substantial asset base,” and said Britain had “saleable assets in hand which are not strategic.”

The correspondence covers Whitehall thinking at the time of a major economic crisis, and it is highly unusual for such top-level discussions to be circulated outside of the British government. The exchange took place a year after Epstein, the late financier, pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.

In the chain, Mandelson wrote: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”

Epstein replied: “What salable assets?”

The message by Butler was also sent to Brown’s key civil service aide Jeremy Heywood, his Private Secretary Christina Scott and Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office Shriti Vadera. There is no suggestion any of them were aware the exchange would be forwarded on to Epstein.

surely this is treason of some kind? probably not by the strict legal definition, as Israel is not an enemy of the UK

Sir Keir Starmer believes Lord Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords, or use his title, Downing Street has said.

The prime minister has ordered an “urgent” investigation into Lord Mandelson’s contact with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while the peer was a government minister.

The review comes after another tranche of documents were released, showing the former Labour minister’s close relationship with Epstein.

Among those documents, email exchanges appear to show Lord Mandelson, when business secretary in 2009, forwarded internal government information sent to then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown on to Epstein.

of course, they’ve known about this for years, they have MI6 after all. They are sorry they have been caught. link

<ctrl+F Mossad> Phrase not found

Of course the question remains if Mandelson was just a sex offender + trafficker who got blackmailed to help Mossad, or was he a willing israeli spy, nevertheless, fuck them all, rot in prison

It’s probably closer to 10k

What do you base this on?

For reference: in 1956 Budapest 2500 rebels were killed in action, and it was the Red Army coming with tanks. It was almost 2 weeks of fighting.

Are people just uncritically accepting these figures?

Yes, they just read the headlines.

They don’t realize these are WW2 battle KIA figures

A week after Zelensky said Orbán should be slapped, the very neutral Associated Press reports:

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused Ukraine on Monday of seeking to meddle in his country’s upcoming elections and ordered Kyiv’s ambassador to be summoned to the foreign ministry.

The step was the latest in Orbán’s long-running anti-Ukraine campaign as he seeks to convince voters that the neighboring country, embroiled in a war with Russia since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, poses an existential threat to Hungary’s security and sovereignty.

Orbán, who has maintained close ties with Russia, faces what is expected to be the biggest challenge of his 16 years in power during elections scheduled for April 12.

With his right-wing nationalist Fidesz party trailing by double digits in most polls, Orbán has campaigned on the unsubstantiated premise that Hungarians would be forcibly conscripted to fight and die on the front lines in Ukraine if his party loses the election.

In a video posted to social media on Monday, Orbán said Ukraine’s political leaders, and “even the president himself, made grossly offensive and threatening statements against Hungary and the Hungarian government.”

And Orban’s challenger? Disgruntled fourth-tier members of his own party with Western corporate ties, including a Shell exec. The main dude, Peter Magyar, is Orban’s ex-Justice minister’s ex-husband. He used to be a senior manager at government companies. He literally used to sit in the front row when Orban spoke at conferences. Like he asked for a front row seat. He became opposition leader a week after Orban fired his wife.

This new party is a rainbow coalition of unknown centrists, but the core is Fidesz defectors.

The fact is Russia has shown restraint on bombing targets up to this point,

This is the brutal and uncomfortable truth the foolish Western leaders ignored. Russia always had the capability to turn off the lights in Ukraine from Day 1 of the SMO. This what escalation looks like after failed negotiations.

Kallas and the other morons believed their own propaganda about Russia fighting with shovels.

“It is important to note that the officer, who regretfully had to shoot the suspect, was trained in less-lethal methods.”

xcancel

Does anyone have a good analysis on the EU-Mercosur deal?

US, Ukraine and Russia delegations head to Abu Dhabi for their first trilateral talks of the war

Ukraine, Russia and the US are set to hold three-way talks in Abu Dhabi on Friday, marking the first time that the three countries have sat down together since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The meeting was confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning after talks at the Kremlin between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the US envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kremlin diplomatic adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters those talks were “useful in every respect”, adding that it was “agreed that the first meeting of a trilateral working group on security issues will take place today in Abu Dhabi”.

The full details of the talks in the United Arab Emirates were not released at time of writing, and it was not clear whether Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet face to face. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the talks would last two days

link

I love that after 4 years they are still always writing full-scale invasion, or unprovoked war. Very consistent of them. Let’s me not to bother with interpreting the events.

I should say that my friend is neither stupid nor a bad person. He is just in the liberal academic mind-prison

Yeah most of my friends are left-leaning liberals, but still very much liberals, so I understand. Not many principled Marxists walking around.

The author essentially want people to sort of “leave Iran to the Iranians”

So how does that square up with the devastating sanctions and the excess deaths it has caused? Surely their first demand should be to stop the sanctions. Western politicians readily admit that the role of sanctions is to make people so unhappy that they rise up against the government. It is a kind of “mind control”, just not the comic book kind.

Second demand would be to not bomb Iran ever (as they did it last year), and don’t assassinate scientists.

In my experience they might admit the contradiction, but still uphold the superiority of “Western values” or whatever, then forget about the convo a week later.

Did he answer?

I’m curious if he gave anything other than the usual stock answers

• “It’s a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to think CIA/Mossad have superpowers to mind control the protesters”
• “We simply shouldn’t defend evil theocracies, and help the regular people topple the regime. People just want to be free and live well”
• "Actually it’s good if the CIA helps topple the regime "

1. good chunk of the hardships caused to Iran are due to the devastating sanctions by the US

2. link from Haaretz: The Israeli Influence Operation in Iran Pushing to Reinstate the Shah Monarchy

3. FT: "Testimonies from the scenes of the unrest — some spoken directly to the FT, in addition to those smuggled out through intermediaries — reveal a muddied account of the turmoil itself, in which agitators mingled with genuine protesters. Clashes claimed the lives not just of unarmed citizens who formed part of the leaderless crowds, but of well-equipped security personnel. “There were groups of men in black clothes, agile and quick,” said one demonstrator in Tehran. “They would set one dustbin on fire and then quickly move to the next target.” Another witness in western Tehran told the FT he saw about a dozen fit men, “looking like commandos”, dressed in similar black clothing, running through the area and calling on people to leave their homes and join the protests. “They were definitely organised, but I don’t know who was behind them,” he said."

Make of this what you will

I love that shitlibs think

1. EU vassals will stand defiant
2. Dems won’t just uphold it anyway