Ryot

I was reading the "man on the street" column in the onion last week:

the french police have taken 22 young people into custody for questioning after more than a week of riots in a northwestern suburb of paris. what do you think?

to which a Sylvere Gravonsky, a Psychologist, responds:

Well, I rioted in Paris in May 1968, and I can tell you, the reasons for our riots were far more sophisticated.

Which reminds me, inevitably, of Joshua Clover's pretentious, anti-Shakespearean, kid-gloved intellectualism. Whose fault is this?

I quote:

Meetings in the cold warehouse on the outskirts of the Year Zero.
In the red suburbs of the Year Zero.
In the other night on the other side of permission you could have her or a police car on fire if you preferred the second you wore a black square on your jacket or in your hair.
The machine flower the machine music blotted out all other sounds still you could not get it loud enough.


It's so easy. i once read a review of the jesus and mary chain that called their music "music for fast-paced, multiphasic times" which is not in fact what the jamc sounds like (more like intimate perversion with a fast-pace going on outside and lots of leather) but is, i think what clover is going for. speed. and i find it, utterly soulless. this "machine flower the machine music" is just warmed over futurism, with no decadence that could have redeemed (or at least fulfilled) the lou reed reference.

and red suburbs? please. this is grade a academic marxist polemic, and is just about as valuable and relevant.