Rembrandt's, "Bathsheba"

This painting has some kind of intense emotional power over me. I utterly & completely adore it. It's simply a truly glorious work of art. As John Berger describes it, Rembrandt is one of the few artists able to truly depict female nudity in a natural, seemless, & non-sexist/objectifying/lascivious way. He invites you to view the painting, not through the eyes of the outside observor, but instead through the eyes of Bathsheba herself.

It's as if you were rather inside the painting looking out -- identifying with & feeling what must be the mix of thoughts & emotions going through Bathsheba's head (as revealed in her face & posture) as she dwells upon the obligatory summons of King David that she holds in her hand.

Book Review: "Essays," by Wallace Shawn

This short work is divided into two parts linked by a common pursuit of the Moral Self in a chaotic world of war, poverty, inequality, but also beauty, love, and wonder.

The first part, "Reality," is more explicitly centered around the 'political' side of Wallace Shawn. Never losing his uniquely poetic voice, Shawn describes the evolution and development of his worldview as a child of privilege who comes to feel restlessly uncomfortable with the accepted absurdities and inequalities of his world.

Self-consciously torn between feeling a duty to exalt the hierarchy that has blessed him so, yet abhorring the war, misery, and national aggression that it necessarily produces, Shawn reveals to the reader a man genuinely struggling to "live morally" in a world wrought with obstacles, traps, and incongruities.

From the Vietnam war to Israel's attack on Gaza in 2008, this section is somewhat free-wheeling and informal, but nonetheless poignant.

The second section, "Dream-World," focuses more on Shawn's 'aesthetic' side. He talks about how it was that he came to be drawn towards the theater--and writing plays in particular; what he sees as the role of art in 'softening the human soul;' and his views on the special niche that poetry fills in the world of letters.

The most interesting piece in this section I found to be the one addressing Shawn's obsession with writing about sex. Clearly sex is a topic of contradictory standing in our society: on the one hand, it's used to sell hamburgers, but on the other hand, it's deemed as something really not appropriate for 'polite conversation.'

Wondering how it is that something so pleasurable could be so alternatively shunned and fetishized, Shawn puts forth a number of theories that the reader may or may not agree with, but will definitely find entertaining.

All in all, this is one of those books that gives true meaning to the notion of an artist "bearing their soul to the world."

(If you're interested in this book, you might also like:
Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers
Notes from the Middle World
Hopes and Prospects
The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with Edward Said
The Portable John Reed)

Book Review: "Labor Wars," by Sidney Lens

Sidney Lens, author of the also-great book "Forging of the American Empire," provides an important service to all those looking to learn more about the tradition of working class struggle in America.

First written in the 1970s, Lens's goal was to reintroduce the generation of newly-radicalizing youth of the 1960s to the series of class battles that shaped the very social and economic terrain upon which they now stood. Though one would not necessarily know it at the time (the decade spanning the late-1950s to the early-1970s was one of general economic prosperity and relative "labor peace"), the history of labor-capital relations in this country has been anything but peaceful.

It wasn't until the 1930s that unions were even generally recognized as legal institutions. Therefore, since the rise of the first "union" in the 1870s (dubbed the "Molly Maguires"), through the great Lawrence textile strike of 1912, to the "class war" year of 1919 when 1 in 5 American workers was on strike, every attempt by the exploited and downtrodden working class to organize itself into a union for mutual defense and struggle was met with the full arsenal of civil and military repression meted out by the collective government and corporate barons of the day. Even the simple act of passing out a leaflet to fellow workers was considered a highly-criminal undertaking.

In this way, through sheer perseverance, solidarity, creativity, and oftentimes dogged militancy, the American working class fought tooth-and-nail to win for itself the modicum of rights and liberties it enjoys today.

In the end, though, Lens's book is left "to be continued," as the future of this ongoing "war" between capital and labor has not yet been written. From the detente of the '50s and early-'60s, to the brief uptick of radical and militant wildcat strikes of the late-'60s and early-'70s, to the one-sided re-initiation of hostilities on the part of "neo-liberal" Corporate America with the onset of the '80s, the war that Lens is describing as history has clearly not been concluded in the present.

As for the future, he leaves the question open as to whether America will come to once again see the same kinds of turbulent labor battles it saw in the past, or whether, amidst a faltering economy and new forms of production, correspondingly new forms of resistance will also emerge.

Either way, those who see themselves as lined up on the side of the exploited as against those who rule, will find in this book an amazingly fruitful history full of lessons for today.

(If you like this book, also check out: Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States)

Book Review: "Sexuality & Socialism," by Sherry Wolf

Whether you are someone learning about the history of homosexuality and gender variance for the first time, or are an erudite student in the field, this book is a 'must-have' on your bookshelf. This book is NOT an academic/abstract/unintelligible book. Rather, it is a broad attempt to offer a uniquely-materialist understanding of the development, evolution, and repression of homosexuality (or, to use a more apt phrase, "non-heteronormative lifestyles") in the modern era.

Starting with the obliquely homosexual practices of the Ancient Greeks up through the present industrial/financial times, Wolf explains how sexual preference and identity have ever been a product of the social & economic conditions upon which a given society has rested. In other words, for an individual to break free of the constricting bonds of the "normal, nuclear family (1 father, 1 mother, and 2.5 children)" and live out a variant sexual existence, that individual must have a means of providing for themselves independently and in connection with other, similarly "independent" individuals.

It is for this reason that the modern notion of a "homosexual" person as a distinct "type" set apart from "heterosexual" people, is a phenomenon that first emerges with the advent of capitalism and the industrialization of society. Capitalism tore apart the old, static family life based in the countryside with its suffocating traditions and monotony, and replaced it with the buzz, fluidity, anonymity, and diversity of myriad strangers, crammed in together at work and at home, beckoned with the promise of individual advancement via the market nexus.

However, just as capitalism offers the promise of new, more liberated lifestyles, it stymies them at every turn. Capitalism has no use for the sedentary and static life of the peasant economy, far removed from commerce and industry. It does, however, seek to retain certain structures of the former feudal society and adapt them to modern uses. The nuclear family (an individual unit of privatized reproduction versus social reproduction) is one of these structures.

Capitalism does not abolish war when it overthrows the various warring fiefdoms and monarchies of the Middle Ages. Nor does it abolish religion when it seals the fate of the "Divine Kings" of Europe. To use an analogy, the eye of the human plays a very different role than does eye of the dog (which is color-blind), yet nature saw fit to pass this organ down from species to species, making only slight adaptations to render it more useful in the employ of the given animal.

In such way does capitalism treat what should otherwise be the vestigal organs of our more barbaric, ancient brethren. Insofar as capitalism remains a rigid society premised upon class division and inequality, it retains (albeit in adapted and newfangled forms) the blemishes of oppression, war, poverty, etc.

What is refreshing about Wolf's conclusion to this analysis is her point that sexual oppression can indeed be ended -- not just limited, tempered, avoided, or ignored. Oppression, being a product not of some intrinsic human fallacy, but rather the (at first) unintended product of the particular structures of society (some) humans have crafted over time, can be eradicated by likewise creating new structures and institutions for human coexistence.

Such a new structure would have to call into question the basis of a capitalistic society that necessarily is based upon class inequality and mutual competition. For this author, a truly democratic, socialist society is clearly a form of human existence more amenable to full equality and liberation for all of our species.

However, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with this or other particular conclusions drawn by the author, you will nonetheless find this a remarkably insightful, if not life-changing, read.

(If you like this book, check out other similarly-written works such as:
Women and Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation
Black Liberation and Socialism
Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States
The Meaning of Marxism
The Case for Socialism)