I awoke in the early hours of Saturday morning to find the bedroom bathed in pulsating blue light. Cat leaped from the sack to peer out the window - it was a fire engine! How exciting! We both hurried to the back bedroom and was greeted by a crappy old van happily blazing away. How we oooed as the front tyres exploded, and aaahed as the flames yielded to the smothering embrace of foam. After a short scuffle with the firefighters the fire flickered and died and the good people of my block of terraces could retire to their mushrooms to resume their nocturnal forays into dream land. But eager to record the aftermath for posterity (and to prove I have a real existence outside the internet), atop this post you will find one of my photos.
Frequent visitors will notice a few subtle changes to AVPS in the links department. First up are various sociology blogs I've managed to turn up in my internet wanderings. This list of links will I hope bolster AVPS's tenuous claim to be a sociology blog.
I've also taken time out to compile a list of establishment blogs, comprising sundry Blairites, Tories, LibDems and other fellow travellers of the bourgeoisie. Here you'll find people like Iain Dale, apparently the left's pet Tory; the increasingly unhinged Guido; David Miliband - one of the few Blairites I actually like; the freaks of Harry's Place and much else besides.
Counter-hegemonies have had some attention lavished upon them too. I welcome John Angliss, Labour of Love, Leanne Wood, Leftwing Criminologist, Mike Marqusee, Never Trust a Hippy, Red Squirrel's Lair, Renegade Eye, The Pleasures of the Popular, and The Soul of Man Under Capitalism to the AVPS blog roll. Also, applying the Norman Geras rule of bumping off blogs that have remained quiet for a couple of months, it's goodbye to Bolshevichka and JJB Fightback (the latter having ceased trading completely). I hereby serve warning to Air Pollution and The Revolution Decides - you're for the chop if you don't post soon!
Lastly on the links front, I've added the new site of the CWI Scotland to the socialist websites section.
And that's your lot! This week you can expect posts on Michel Foucault, the Third Way, and Paul Virilio along with the usual supply of incisive commentary, reportage and polemic ;)
PS Forgot to add the Obsolete blog to the above roll call. Sorry comrade!
Frequent visitors will notice a few subtle changes to AVPS in the links department. First up are various sociology blogs I've managed to turn up in my internet wanderings. This list of links will I hope bolster AVPS's tenuous claim to be a sociology blog.
I've also taken time out to compile a list of establishment blogs, comprising sundry Blairites, Tories, LibDems and other fellow travellers of the bourgeoisie. Here you'll find people like Iain Dale, apparently the left's pet Tory; the increasingly unhinged Guido; David Miliband - one of the few Blairites I actually like; the freaks of Harry's Place and much else besides.
Counter-hegemonies have had some attention lavished upon them too. I welcome John Angliss, Labour of Love, Leanne Wood, Leftwing Criminologist, Mike Marqusee, Never Trust a Hippy, Red Squirrel's Lair, Renegade Eye, The Pleasures of the Popular, and The Soul of Man Under Capitalism to the AVPS blog roll. Also, applying the Norman Geras rule of bumping off blogs that have remained quiet for a couple of months, it's goodbye to Bolshevichka and JJB Fightback (the latter having ceased trading completely). I hereby serve warning to Air Pollution and The Revolution Decides - you're for the chop if you don't post soon!
Lastly on the links front, I've added the new site of the CWI Scotland to the socialist websites section.
And that's your lot! This week you can expect posts on Michel Foucault, the Third Way, and Paul Virilio along with the usual supply of incisive commentary, reportage and polemic ;)
PS Forgot to add the Obsolete blog to the above roll call. Sorry comrade!
11 comments:
Ooh Foucault and Virilio. I've been meaning to crawl out of my Marxist lair to study this lot a bit but I haven't. I guess I'll wait for your posts first.
Thanks for the add by the way. I'll add a link to this place on my blog until I figure out how to set up a roll.
Thanks for the link, too. I really enjoy this blog.
I'm quite interested to what you think about foucault, he seems to come up a lot in my criminology texts but i haven't had time to look into him in more depth.
Well, sadly, I didn't witness a van on fire. It was a motorbike going up in flames in the middle of the bleedin' night outside my flat the other week.
Yep, watching the crackle of the fire while dialing 999 and hoping the damn motorbike didn't explode shattering the window I was looking out from!
Honestly, middle of the night. Damn inconsiderate firestarter....
Oh yeah, Foucault, my favourites are "Madness and Civilisation" and "Discipline and Punish".
I read a lot of Foucault for a course I did on Criminology and Social Policy on Crime esp. around functioning of prisons.
Ah, inspired me to dig out my copy of History of Sexuality.
Thanks for the link to the International Socialists (www.cwiscotland).
Eeek, Foucault! Looks like the pressure's on!
Just to let you know, I'm posting about his 2nd volume in the History of Sexuality (The Use of Pleasure), which is a very different text from volume one and Discipline and Punish (another of his I sadly haven't read). Whereas these two books describe a social world where power is inscribed on the body and there appears to be no room for subjectivity or agency, both make a dramatic return in Use of Pleasure.
Also on Virilio, the two seminars I attended last night were just mind blowing. I felt like a young 'un again when I was learning the pleasures of Marx, feminism and pomoland for the first time. Wow.
PS Just realised Foucault's going to be a bit of a monster - forewarned is forearmed so they say!
I returned the favor, and linked to your blog.
The van incident, is too much excitement for one AM.
Phil, you want to live where me and Sara live.
Above a taxi office on a road of pub's.
We get that kind of entertainment every night, thro it's mostly pissed-up kids fighting, but...
That's okay Scott, I think I'll keep my quiet but occasionally interesting road.
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