Reviews and Comments

I read this book year ago and, if you had asked me, I would have said it's a book about Kay's experience growing up black in Scotland, and then embarking on a quest to trace her birth parents. I suppose this is more or less what the official blurb suggests. On this second read, I found that these two threads are kind of secondary, and the book could instead be described as an exploration of what it means to be a daughter. Kay loves his adoptive parents to bits, and that love really shapes her memory of the past (the way they stood up for her in every way they could), her experience of the present (her conflicting emotions getting meeting her birth parents and coming to terms with how insubstantial a relation genetics is), and her outlook on the future (as she sees herself taking on more and more of a caring role in relation to her aging mum and dad). In many ways, the book is not particular complex in its plot, language or insights, but it just gives one a warm feeling, and Kay seems so fucking lovely!

Four British women, each miserable in her own way, rent an Italian castle together. They don't know each other, don't particularly like each other, and are only motivated by the desire to leave behind the rain and their husbands / suitors. Ms Wilkins is a young housewife, married to a stingy man, who often loses the thread and cannot filter her thoughts. Ms Arbuthnot is a religious woman who feels abandoned by her husband, and seeks refuge in her pious work. Lady Caroline is a young aristocrat, so beautiful that men cannot help fall in love, to her great frustration. Mrs. Fisher is an elderly woman who lives stuck in her memories, preferring the company of dead intellectuals and politicians she met in the past to that of any living person. The Italian sun transforms all of them, but the undeniable cheesiness is only kept at bay by the author's light sarcasm and humor.

As I write this review, I'm once again finding myself on the goodreads page for this book (no idea why I do this, like I want to check my own taste against that of 'the people'?) and I'm very surprised to find that The ministry of time is an extremely polarising book. One star ('I'm thankful to this book for providing some needed perspective on what a bad book is'), or five star ('the author is a genius'), kind of thing. I would have thought it would be a solid 3-4 star crowd-pleaser. To me, it reads like one of those addictive Netflix series with a quirky plot, fun dialogues, and just enough nods to social issues to make it possible to watch without feeling completely gross afterwards.

The basic plot (very minor spoiler) revolves around a young, British-Cambodian public officer, whose job is to help / monitor a British explorer that has just been kidnapped from the 19th century, and ends up falling in love with him. The story touches upon some 'serious' issues: colonialism and its effects on the present, migration and experiences of outsiderness, individual agency and responsibilities within state apparatuses, climate change. It does so in a way that is both clever and relatively superficial. Intentionally, I think, because the author's main goal is to write a fun book, that blends time-travel novels, some elements of a spy thriller, and others of horny fan-fiction.

Female Masculinity has become a classic, the kind of book that gets reprinted for its 20th anniversary, with a new preface. And yet, somehow the notion of female masculinity still remains relatively marginal and provocative, certainly in the mainstream, but even within queer circles. At least, this is how it feels to me, even as a (somewhat) masculine woman. What does it mean for women to express masculinity in ways that are original rather than derivative? How does the category of 'masculine' reshuffles division between, on the one hand, dykes and straight (masculine) women and, on the other hand, dykes and trans men? What are the politics of performing masculinity, vs rejecting any stable gender position, vs becoming male? and are these even political practices, or expressions of some inner identity, or both?

Halberstam explores these questions by analysising different cultural artefacts: artistic photos of butches and trans people, the notes of 19th century doctors and therapists, the writings of John Radclyffe Hall, and his friends and lovers, Stone Butch Blues, the (mostly academic) clashes between dykes and female-to-male trans theorists, drag king performances, and films representing masculine women.

The main weakness of the book is, in my opinion, that Halberstam loves to pick fights with other scholars. In some cases, he clearly has no respect of his adversaries and their ideas, which he represents so sweepingly as to lose the reader's trust (example: 'white lesbian feminism', never defined, and at points seemingly encompassing - or 'brainwashing' even Audrey Lorde). In other cases, he is very sensitive and self-questioning (example: the mailinglist controversies around F2M) - which obviously is a better premise for thinking. In all cases, however, the meaningfulness of his reflections risks getting lost in the squabble.

Stylistically, I understand this is an academic product, but I do find it a bit of a shame that the book isn't written in a slightly more engaging way: Halberstam never abandons his rigorous scholarly register, though he cannot help soften a bit in his scholarly exegesis of Flaming Ears.

All in all, the book made me think of masculinity in a whole new way, but even I find myself thinking: wow, this is a bit navel-gazing, let's stop thinking about gender and burn down a bank instead.

Nada Elia sets out to accomplish something very necessary and ambitious: chart the connections between interrelated struggles across the globe, with a focus on the connections between Palestine and US indigenous struggles. In give-or-take 150 pages, she touches upon the problems with white feminism, pink washing, policing, land appropriation, health and reproductive rights, Apartheid, environmentalism and conservation, and food sovereignty, among others.

Necessarily, the book stays on the very surface: mentioning a given issue, sometimes providing an example, and then moving on. I get that the book is for a general, not particularly-informed audience, who may never had thought about these issues before, and that simply mentioning the connection can motivate them to do their own research. But if this is the idea, then I still lack a bit more rigorousness and precision in explaining concepts and phenomena around which entire literature exists. Some examples: when Elia discusses land restitution and the quest for indigenous sovereignty, at points she claims this means independence, at points she suggests indigenous activism aims to transcend a nation-state framework. These are two completely different things. If the situation in North America is somewhat similar to Latin America, then both positions exist and are a matter of debate and division within indigenous movements; but Elia never gets to this level of nuance, and indigenous movements are always united and right. This sort of imprecision / lack of interest for all that is grey, uncertain or worth debating also surfaces in a lot of throw-away comment, as when, in a fully-justified and righteous critique of the US settler-colonial mindset, she throws under the bus apple pie, on the ground that apples are not originally from the Americas (really? then no tomatoes for Italy, no chilli peppers for India, no sugar for the Caribbeans?), and the pie is 'more calorific than nutritious' (whose apple pie? what's wrong with calories? what does that even mean?). Nada, let the apples be.

Taking the time to explain in a simple but nuanced way how Palestine connects to other struggles would be an extraordinary accomplishment, and one that requires a lot of reading, time and dedication on the part of the author, because explaining things well always does. I don't feel Nada Elia quite manages.

To be a conservative, in the literal sense of the word, is to oppose change. Often, change has already happened, and that opposition than takes the shape of nostalgia for the past, a sense that we are living in an age of decay and decadence. From this viewpoint, everyone is probably a bit conservative, at least in some respect. Didion was a full-blown conservative, and even when she abandoned the Republican party it was because it had changed, becoming tacky and populist under Nixon's lead (shortly before picking up this book, I listed to and enjoyed this Know Your Enemy podcast, which gives some helpful background).

In this book, she tackles her conservatism head-on, in a very sophisticated and intelligent way. What exactly is she nostalgic for? The book has four parts, which roughly coincide with four main themes. First, the mythology surrounding the settlement of the American West, the pioneers crossing the continent and fighting to turn the desert and swamps into fertile agricultural land (a story that completely disregard both the heavy-handed support provided by the federal government, and the extent to which lands were hoarded by speculators who enriched themselves, while most of the work was carried out by temporary laborers and migrants. Here, Didion only hints at the other elephant in the room, namely the genocide and forced displacement of native Americans. Second, the role of larger aerial companies (Douglas) in the development of California, an industry propped up by contracts with the federal government, and which collapsed after the end of the Cold War, producing resentment, unemployment, and suburban communities with no purpose. As the tech industry replaced airplane factories, a class of mostly white, white-collar Californians were pushed out by Silicon Valley types. Third, California's alarming number of prisons and asylums, the first just a new opportunity for the few to speculate, the latter a way, historically, to put away people who did not live up to the pioneer standards. Finally, Didion's own family, childhood memories and coming to question the idea that the Didions were 'real Californians', who had seen the place during its Golden age, and still possessed a set of qualities irremediably lost through so-called progress.

These themes are interwoven, explored through hundreds of anecdotes and stories, some similar to mini-reportages, other pieces of family folklore, others autobiographic fragments, others still the work of amateur historians. If Didion didn't write so well, it would certainly be boring. Instead, there is coherence, nuance and the courage to call bullshit on her own beliefs.

If I ever was to compile a reading list for people to learn about the Netherlands, this book would certainly be a good place to start with. In cultural analysis style of argument, Wekker uses a series of cultural products, public and personal situations and cultural products to discuss the distinct forms that racism takes in the Netherlands. According to Wekker, what is distinctive about the Netherlands is people's self-understanding as a small country, historically a victim rather than an oppressor, shaped by an ethos of equality that makes people colour-blind (in contrast to other former colonial power, e.g. the UK, and the US). Wekker considers how this self understanding manifests itself in different domains, e.g. Dutch women studies, policies about minorities/emancipation, discourses around homosexuality, especially among white gay men, as well as personal encounters, e.g. with police officers or fellow academics. The final chapter, which I found especially well-constructed, is about Zwarte Piet, or perhaps more accurately about predominant (white) reactions to critique of this tradition.

The book was published in 2016, and likely written 1-2 years prior. Wekker suggests that there is a trend towards greater acceptability of over racism, fueled by the discourses of far-right politicians, including Geert Wilders (who just led the PvV in the past election, leading to the formation of a far-right government just this week). I imagine Wekker would agree that the success of these discourses is a symptom more than it is a cause, so I would love to hear more about her analysis of the 'structural forces' that drive this trend, so to speak (put simply, a reflection on any relation between postcolonial melancholia, and changing socio-economic relations within and beyond Dutch society?).

I loved this book, but I do think it falls a bit into the trap of relentless deconstruction. Wekker is pointing out a gap between Dutch self-representation one the one hand, and material and symbolic power relations in Dutch society, on the other. But I stand by the idea that deconstructing other people's myths is a bit too easy (although probably politically necessary at this point in the Netherlands). Besides, it seems a flawed project to assess self-representations (just) in relation to their truth-value, rather than as potentially orienting visions. While I do understand that the way the ideal of equality is mobilised in the Netherlands is full of hypocrisy and maybe even violence, I also think there is something worth 'saving' in it, something that can be leveraged, also against racism.

King Kong Theory straddles across genres, mixing autobiographic sketches, essay-like reflections, and what one could describe as 'lyrical tirades'. I found it a compelling and fast read, that exudes anger and frustration, but also, at some level, a love for life and pleasure. Sexual pleasure, but also writing pleasure, as it is hard not to visualise her banging away on her keyboard, to the sound of 1990s punk classics.

Despentes main themes are the patriarchal system in which we all live, and the ways this shapes and is shaped by rape, prostitution and the porn industry.

Her argument about rape comes from personal experience with the arguably most shocking and less common form of rape, at the hands of complete strangers while hitchhiking. Despentes is interested in pushing back against the shared sentiment that this is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a woman, and that it is or should be life-defining. She goes as far as to refer, approvingly, to Camille Paglia, the bête noire of progressive third-wave feminism, and Paglia's understanding of rape, and the constant risk thereof, as an integral part of womanhood. She also argues (persuasively) that victims of rape are supposed to be eternally devastated by the event, but in a passive kind of way, as the idea that they could band up and take revenge violently (or even just make a film where this is what happens) is scandalous.

The second part of the book turns to prostitution and the porn industry. Somewhat similarly, she argues that, as a society, we should focus less on the tragedy that befalls on the women who undergo these experiences (itself a way to discipline what women are allowed to do), and more on the structural conditions that make these industry so dangerous for workers.

Perhaps one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of the book is how Despentes apportions responsibility and guilt on different groups. On the whole, she is rather sympathetic to men, who she also sees as victims of the patriarchy, and rather harsh on middle-class 'respectable' women, who she sees as the main culprits for the politics of respectability that stigmatizes prostitution and porn:

'It's hard not to feel that what respectable women aren't saying, when they're concerning themselves with what happens to whores, is that ultimately they fear the competition. If the prostitute practised her trade in decent conditions, like a beautician or a psychiatrist – if her activities were released from all the legal pressures they're currently under – then the position of the married woman would become suddenly less attractive. Because if the prostitute's contract becomes normalised, the marital contract can be seen more clearly for what it is: a transaction where women commit to carrying out a number of duties guaranteeing a man's comfort at unbeatable rates. Notably sexual tasks'.

One the one hand, I'm drawn to a feminism that looks for alliances across gender and places class at the centre of its politics, but on the other, I also think this is a very reductive view of conventional family structures, and is possibly itself a little sexist. But yes, I do get it, this is a feminist punk manifesto, and needs to punch. And punch it does!