Ten Interesting Reads During 2014

Due to a lack of blogging energy to engage with anything significant, I've decided to spend a post talking about some of my favourite books of 2014 (not necessarily published in 2014, but definitely read in 2014)––mainly so that January does not pass with only a single (though notable) post.  I want to write something on the recent SYRIZA victory, and how we should assess it as communists, but that will take more energy and time.  Until then here is a list of my most favourite reads of 2014…


1. On the Reproduction of Capitalism (Louis Althusser)

Finally published in english in 2014, this was the book from which Althusser's famous "ISA" essay was culled.  In many ways it is brilliant, and fills in a lot of holes of Althusser's thought, but in other ways is rather disappointing: it is a conflicted text.  On the one hand Althusser critiques economism, on the other hand he embraces it; on the one hand he attacks revisionism, on the other hand there are entire passages (which sometimes feel tangental to the overall work) that are a defense of his refusal to break from his revisionist party; on the one hand he justifies rebellion, on the other hand he makes snide comments about his former students' activities in May 1968; on the one hand he defends the necessity for a revolutionary party, on the other hand it often reads as if the party he is defending as necessary is something that resembles the PCF.  There was a moment when, reading this book around a year ago, I had a eureka moment: "so this is why his former students, such as Ranciere, broke from his project!"  Not that, for all that, they were necessarily successful in establishing something philosophically significant.


2. The Philosophy of Marx (Etienne Balibar)

An older book, of course, but one that I never managed to get around to until this past year since: a) it was sitting on a shelf at my job's bookstore when I had some money to spend on professional development; b) the fact that I've been working on a book about marxism and philosophy meant that I would have to get around to this small volume eventually.  I already wrote something about this book when I first read it, so I won't repeat myself here.  Only thing I will say is that, whether or not the reader disagrees with Balibar's thesis regarding Marx and philosophy (and I wasn't in full agreement) won't undermine the value of this book––it is also a good overview of marxist philosophers in the 20th Century, summarizing the key concepts of their thought.


3.  The Southern Reach Trilogy (Jeff Vandermeer)

A trilogy released in a single year: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance.  Good literary fantastic fiction: beautifully written, strong concepts, and a thoughtful utilization of the trilogy structure. Think a paranoid update of the Strugatsky brothers' A Roadside Picnic (the Soviet sci-fi novel that was the basis for Tarkovsky's Stalker) with all the weirdness that entails.  Lovecraftian without being Lovecraftian.  Frightening, haunting, sad, moving, obscurist, and compelling.  Loved the way in which the second novel broke from the style of the first and how the third embraced both the first and the second.  Adam Roberts wrote a great review at Strange Horizons and anything I would say here would probably be redundant.


4.  The Worker Elite (Bromma)

I already wrote a review of this book.  Also a meta-review about what I took to be Stephen D'Arcy's poor engagement with the way in which Bromma was attempting to explain the problematic of the labour aristocracy.  Apparently D'Arcy has written a reply to my review, but I haven't bothered to read it since, from what I've been told, he ignores my main criticisms and clings to his own shitty economistic reading.  Oh well.


5.  Philosophy and Non-Philosophy (Francois Laruelle)

Actually this is one of the more annoying books I read this year, but figured I'd put it here because it annoyed me in that "epic" face-palming kind of way that reinforced all of the biases of my analytic philosophy training: here was another great example of continentals that, in an effort to be so fucking obscurantist that they'll gain a whole bunch of followers, might possibly be frauds.  Like the Balibar, I decided to get around to read this because of that book of philosophy I was working on and, after winding my way through it and wondering why anyone thinks it is worthwhile, was forced to concluded that, once you cut through all of Laruelle's pet jargon and clever ways to snitch-jacket the history of philosophy, he's not doing anything new.  In fact, he's saying the same kind of thing Feuerbach was saying (and this was brought home when I began to prepare to teach Feuerbach, which coincided with me finishing Laruelle's book), only in a more obscurantist manner.  Hell, Feuerbach also called his philosophy a "non-philosophy"!  And since Feuerbach's project makes no sense in the shadow of Marx's eleventh thesis, neither does Laruelle's… except that Feuerbach had the excuse of writing before Marx and Engels.  What's Laruelle's excuse?


6.  A Stranger In Olondria (Sofia Samatar)

I cannot rave enough about this novel.  A fantasy that is in some sense "traditional" because of its "world building" geekery (and she really demonstrates that she knows how to build a world first before writing a story to inhabit this world, it's so bloody organic), but is not some "boys own" tale of adventuring, swords and sorcery, and what-not.  A story about someone from the margins of a literate civilization who finds himself drawn into the intrigues of the civilization centre only to encounter all the ugliness of factional disputes.  Where books are seen as "magic" because they can permanently record stories by those who still possessed mystified views of the world, and this muddies up the fantastic terrain: just what is fantastical when entire civilizations within the narrative view the printing press as "magic"?  Answer: a lot of weird fucking shit.

And a poignant ending that made me very, very sad that the book ended.  Made even worse by the fact that Samatar decided to mention the problem of a good novel's ending in the book itself, as if she was aware that her book was just that good: "Earlier, frightened, you began to have some intimation of it: so many pages had been turned, the book was so heavy in one hand, so light in the other, thinning toward the end. Still, you consoled yourself. You were not quite at the end of the story, at that terrible flyleaf, blank like a shuttered window: there were still a few pages under your thumb, still to be sought and treasured. Oh, was it possible to read more slowly?––No. The end approached, inexorable, at the same measured pace. The last page, the last of the shining words! And there––the end of the book. The hard cover which, when you turn it, gives you only this leather stamped with roses and shields."  The reason I bothered to quote that passage was just to demonstrate how well Samatar writes: the prose was beautiful, I lost myself in it.  Glad that she won the World Fantasy award of 2014 and that, following Nnedi Okorafor, we might be witnessing a movement of award-winning fantasy from the imperialist centre to the margins.


7. Amazon Nation or Aryan Nation (Bottomfish Blues, Butch Lee)

Again, I wrote a review of this book so I won't repeat myself here.  Loved encountering Butch Lee's earlier work, the DNA of Night-Vision so to speak, particularly the essay about black genocide that pulled no punches with the title "Kill the Kids First."  Fast read: angry and strident in a good way.


8.  The Femicide Machine (Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez)

Yet another book previously reviewed––this shouldn't be surprising since I tend to review the things I like.  Great analysis of Ciudad Juarez by the radical journalist of Juarez who still needs to have his main book on the Juarez femicides published in english.  Very upsetting to read, and the ending was upsetting in the right kind of way.


9. Turning Money Into Rebellion (edited by Gabriel Kuhn)

I reviewed this collection of essays by the so-called Blekingegade Group at Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.  Reads like a thriller of the previous anti-imperialist error in parts, a good setting-the-record-straight on the part of those who predated what is now known as "Maoism Third Worldism" but followed this politics to its logical conclusion in practice: robbing the first world state and sending the money to third world revolutionary movements.  Kuhn did a great job putting this together, he's a delightful fellow to exchange emails with (though I think I failed to write him back for over a month––sorry!), and I look forward to his upcoming book on sports and politics.


10.  Scale-Bright (Benjanun Sriduangkaew)

Nobody is supposed to like this novella now that Sriduangkaew––a queer woman in Thailand––has been outed as one of the big-bad trolls of the sci-fi/fantasy community.  Once she was doxxed as the person responsible for causing R. Scott Bakker to have a break-down, and then blamed for also targeting people of colour in the "community" (for not being political enough), there has been a veritable storm of self-righteous SFF liberals complaining about her "abusive" behaviour and complaining about the fact that her novella and short stories were award-winning.  Indeed, some GoodReads reviews of Scale-Bright amount to little more than: "I hate this woman for attacking people because of the politics of their literature so I'm going to give her book a poor review while admitting I haven't and won't read it."  Lovely stuff.  Considering that the same people probably read Lovecraft despite the fact that he was a racist piece of shit, the self-righteousness in the case of Sriduangkaew is somewhat amusing.

But forget the current context and focus on her actual writing: it's fucking good.  Beautiful prose, lovely story construction, and everything that made me wish––long before she was outed as acrackedmoon and all her other aliases––that she would write a longer novel soon.  Also, her science-fiction stories are absurdly good.


There were a lot of other books I read (and reread) in 2014, but the above list are composed of the ten that stood out.  Hopefully some reader somewhere finds one or more of these reads interesting enough to follow up on––happy reading!