Kirjahaku

The Totality for Kids is the second collection of poems by Joshua Clover, whose debut, Madonna anno domini, won the Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets. This volume takes as its subject the troubled sleep of late modernity, from the grandeur and failure of megacities to the retreats and displacements of the suburbs. The power of crowds and architecture commingles with the alienation and idleness of the observer, caught between "the brutal red dream/Of the collective" and "the parade/Of the ideal citizen." The book's action takes place in these gaps, "dead spaces beside the endlessly grieving stream." The frozen tableau of the spectacle meets its double in the sense that something is always about to happen. Political furies and erotic imaginings coalesce and escape within a welter of unmoored allusions, encounters, citations, and histories, the dreams possible within the modern's excess of signification--as if to return revolutionary possibility to the regime of information by singing it its own song.

In a tour de force of lyrical theory, Joshua Clover boldly reimagines how we understand both pop music and its social context in a vibrant exploration of a year famously described as 'the end of history'. Amid the historic overturnings of 1989, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, pop music also experienced striking changes. Vividly conjuring cultural sensations and events, Clover tracks the emergence of seemingly disconnected phenomena - from grunge to acid house to gangsta rap - asking if 'perhaps pop had been biding its time until 1989 came along to make sense of its sensibility'. His analysis deftly moves among varied artists and genres including Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, De La Soul, The KLF, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, U2, Jesus Jones, the Scorpions, George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and others. This elegantly written work, deliberately mirroring history as dialectical and ongoing, summons forth a new understanding of how 'history had come out to meet pop as something more than a fairytale, or something less. A truth, a way of being'.

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers' 1972 song “Roadrunner” captures the freedom and wonder of cruising down the highway late at night with the radio on. Although the song circles Boston's beltway, its significance reaches far beyond Richman's deceptively simple declarations of love for modern moonlight, the made world, and rock & roll. In Roadrunner, cultural theorist and poet Joshua Clover charts both the song's emotional power and its elaborate history, tracing its place in popular music from Chuck Berry to M.I.A. He also locates “Roadrunner” at the intersection of car culture, industrialization, consumption, mobility, and politics. Like the song itself, Clover tells a story about a particular time and place-the American era that rock & roll signifies-that becomes a story about love and the modern world.

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers' 1972 song “Roadrunner” captures the freedom and wonder of cruising down the highway late at night with the radio on. Although the song circles Boston's beltway, its significance reaches far beyond Richman's deceptively simple declarations of love for modern moonlight, the made world, and rock & roll. In Roadrunner, cultural theorist and poet Joshua Clover charts both the song's emotional power and its elaborate history, tracing its place in popular music from Chuck Berry to M.I.A. He also locates “Roadrunner” at the intersection of car culture, industrialization, consumption, mobility, and politics. Like the song itself, Clover tells a story about a particular time and place-the American era that rock & roll signifies-that becomes a story about love and the modern world.

Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an "age of riots" as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history. Rioting was the central form of protest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was supplanted by the strike in the early nineteenth century. It returned to prominence in the 1970s, profoundly changed along with the coordinates of race and class. From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse. Historical events such as the global economic crisis of 1973 and the decline of organized labor, viewed from the perspective of vast social transformations, are the proper context for understanding these eruptions of discontent. As social unrest against an unsustainable order continues to grow, this valuable history will help guide future antagonists in their struggles toward a revolutionary horizon.

Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an "age of riots" as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history. Rioting was the central form of protest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet it was supplanted by age of the glorious strike and labour protests of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From, from the seventies on, we're seen a return of the strike - now changed along with the coordinates of race and class.From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse. Riot.Strike.Riot is a tour de force of political and theoretical analysis.

The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowski sisters and produced by Joel Silver, was a true end-of-the-millennium movie, a statement of the American zeitgeist, and, as the original film in a blockbusting franchise, a prognosis for the future of big-budget Hollywood film-making. Starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, a computer programmer transformed into a messianic freedom fighter, The Matrix blends science fiction with conspiracy thriller conventions and outlandish martial arts created with groundbreaking digital techniques. A box-office triumph, the film was no populist confection: its blatant allusions to highbrow contemporary philosophy added to its appeal as a mystery to be decoded. In this compelling study, Joshua Clover undertakes the task of decoding the film. Examining The Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, he shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games (the greatest commercial threat to have faced Hollywood since the advent of television) and achieves a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s.

Red Epic invents a volatile poetry for a world on fire, written to illuminate the wreckage of the most recent gilded age. Leaping levels from global systems to street fights and back again, accompanied by a Top 40 soundtrack full of Robyn and M.I.A., it remixes utopian hope and revolutionary antagonism.Lauded by sources from Judith Butler to Entertainment Weekly, Joshua Clover's poetry has received multiple honors including a Village Voice book of the year. He has written four books and contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and GQ; his column "Pop and Circumstance" appears in the Nation. He teaches at the University of California Davis.

Arena udgiver et udvalg af Joshua Clovers politiske poesi samlet i en lille, tosproget og absolut rød bog. Den lille røde er poesi til tiden, poesi, der får blodet til at rulle og idéerne til at vågne.Joshua Clover er amerikansk digter og professor ved U.C. Davis. Sammen med digterne Juliana Spahr og Jasper Bernes har han søsat det uafhængige forlag Commune Editions. Sidste år udgav han digtsamlingen Red Epic, hvorfra de fleste af digtene i Den lille røde stammer. I foråret udkom Riot. Strike. Riot på Verso.Her er en smagsprøve:Der bliver revolution eller der bliver ikke revolution. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet har disse digte ikke været andet end underholdning. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer den til at sejre eller slå fejl. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet har disse digte været bedre end ingenting. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer det til at medføre optøjer ild og plyndring og alt det vil komme til at sprede sig eller ej. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet har disse digte været kuriositeter. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer det til at medføre yderligere optøjer manifester barrikader og slagord og de kommer til at glide over i folkelige sange eller ej. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet så var det dét. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer de folkelige sange til at blive et overstået kapitel eller ej. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet har disse digte ikke været anderledes end sangene. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer selve det folkelige til at blive afskaffet gennem optøjer barrikader manifester besættelser og ild eller ej. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet kommer vi til at bruge adskillige årtier til på at tale om kultur. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer revolutionen da til at blive ødelagt indefra eller udefra. Hvis det sidste bliver tilfældet har disse digte ikke givet sig uden kamp. Hvis det første bliver tilfældet kommer det til at medføre forfærdelige sammenstød med tidligere venner og der kommer yderligere manifester nye slagord løbende besættelser og kommuner og elskende kommer til at blive fjender. Vi ved ikke hvad der derefter kommer til at ske men dette er helt sikkert nok til at man kan drage nogle foreløbige slutninger. Digtet må stille sig på optøjernes plyndringernes barrikadernes besættelsernes manifesternes kommunernes slagordenes ildens og fjendernes side.Udvalget er foretaget af Lone Nikolajsen, Kizaja Ulrikke Routhe-Mogensen og Elisabeth Friis. Sidstnævnte har også oversat digtene sammen med Peter Borum. Den amerikanske digter Juliana Spahr har skrevet forord.

Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Paris. Under de senaste åren har vi sett hur upploppen breder ut sig i takt med att kamperna mot stat och kapital har börjat föras på gator och torg. I Upplopp. Strejk. Upplopp erbjuder den prisbelönta poeten och litteraturvetaren Joshua Clover ett nytt perspektiv på de kollektiva aktionsformernas utveckling och historia. Medan upploppet var den dominerande typen av protest i det tidigmoderna Europa, innebar industrialiseringen och arbetarrörelsens framväxt att kollektiva aktioner i allt högre grad kom att organiseras i form av strejker. Sedan 1970-talet genomlever vi en utdragen kris för kapitalismen där antalet strejker minskar drastiskt och upploppen återkommer med förnyad styrka i former där ras- och klassdimensionerna flätas in i varandra. Genom att följa de långa cyklerna i kapitalismens utveckling spårar Clover ett mönster där olika kapitalistiska faser motsvaras av specifika kollektiva aktionsformer. Om kapitalet fram till år 1973 hade sin tyngdpunkt inom produktionen, vilket skapade förutsättningar för organiserade arbetaraktioner i form av strejker och lönekamper, ser vi idag en ”cirkulationsorienterad” finanskapitalism som överallt konfronterar upplopp från det globala proletariatet av exkluderade och överflödiga. Joshua Clover är kommunist. Han är också poet, essäist och professor i litteratur och kritisk teori vid University of California.

Hör upp jag har någonting att berätta för dig I Rödepik kastar Joshua Clover fram ett uppfordrande personligt och politiskt imperativ, i en tradition av stor, expansiv amerikansk dikt, men med erfarenheterna från language-poesin aktuella. Han hämtar kraft i antikens poesi och aktiverar en stor del av poesihistorien för att lika enkelt som komplext formulera en appell om språket och det gemensamma: en dikt som gör enad front med upploppen, plundringen, barrikaderna, ockupationerna, manifesten, kommunerna, slagorden och elden. Om Walt Whitman en gång skrev amerikanska visioner om hur allt hör samman i en panteistisk värld handlar Clovers bok på ett betydligt mer handfast sätt om att vara förbunden med alla och envar. Joshua Clover, född 1962, är poet och aktivist och en av företrädarna för den riktning som kallas Post-Crisis Poetics. Han undervisar vid University of California, Davis, och skriver även film- och musikkritik. Röd epik är hans första bok i svensk översättning."Att läsa den amerikanska poeten Joshua Clover känns som att flyga på en drakrygg över kontinenter, genom den egna hjärnan (...) Texten brinner av energi, intensitet, ibland gloriös hysteri och världsomfattande hybris; politisk förtvivlan varvas med hopp. Det är genomgående action och drama." Aase Berg, Dagens Nyheter "Allt åt alla, och allt på ett kort, med kravaller, upplopp, en renande eld. Vad ska en revolutionär i ett chanserat imperium annars hoppas på? (...) Ja, det är rätt nattsvart hos denne våldsbejakande extremist, som han väl skulle kallas i dagens politiska klimat. Men man har också roligt när Clover punkterar sitt allvar med humor och vardagsspråk..." Petter Larsson, Aftonbladet