171 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2026
    1. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks

      Orwell seems to be asserting here that an individual writer can have an outsize influence on the development (and decline) of a language.

  2. Jan 2026
    1. how its guiding principle is both that everyone should really be an artist, and that this is absolutely and irrevocably not the case

      The central contradiction of the art world: everyone can be an article, but not everyone can be an artist

  3. Apr 2024
  4. Dec 2023
  5. Nov 2023
    1. It early defined its main goal, and its main method, as consciousness-raising

      Consciousness raising was the early goal and method of a group, but this did not suit the later goals, when the group had decided that something must be done.

    1. Within the US, the urtext for this is Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” which has become a parody of itself by being cited over and over again with little material effect

      Perhaps the paper fell victim to the extractive process of knowledge production detailed in the previous paragraph.

    2. The extracted knowledge is transmuted into further knowledge through theory, leading to what we might tentatively call a capitalist/academic mode of knowledge production, wherein the research subjects are alienated from their own knowledges. It is fruitful to pursue the analogy further and more precisely, which I do not do here. For example, academic publications here act as the money form, in which the exchange values of the produced knowledges are congealed. Whereas publications are not fungible in an exact sense, each carries a relative symbolic value which measures the exchange value of each paper, used to communicate to other academics the worth of the produced knowledge, without being able to understand or judge the content (use-value) of the paper on their own. These papers cannot be exchanged per se, but the theories that they produce, which have relative value measured by publication prestige and citations, is then used (exchanged) to produce further knowledges

      The so-called extractive nature of knowledge production, according to Smith.

    1. What Harvey objects to – and what he posits against value – is not that money represents value and circulates commodities, but that one can hold on to it

      What Harvey objects to is that one can hold on to money.

    1. anarchy ≠ chaos

      Malabou says that it was Proudhon who gave anarchy its positive definition, that of order without power. Before Proudhon, Malabou says, the belief that anarchy = chaos and disorder predominated.

  6. Oct 2023
    1. Stéphane Dufoix’s (2008, p. 63) notion of ‘atopic space’ which he describes as ‘a space of more than a place, a geography with no other territory than the space described by the networks... a territory without terrain’.

      Atopic space

    2. it shifts attention away from compartmentalised island space and redirects our gaze towards the relational space of the sea

      The trope shifts attention away...

    3. Following Umali (2006), perhaps we can reclaim the term used to refer to the Philippines before it was constituted as a modern nation-state

      Pre-modern and pre-imperial

    1. most of these fractions are ill-informed about global politics despite having the privilege of going to the best private and public universities in Burma with their parents' sponsorship

      Agree that access to elite institutions enables the chance to be well informed about global politics, but I wouldn't say that it's inevitable.

    1. This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment

      Maybe middle managers would feel seen if they read this text

    2. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat)

      Re Utopia of Rules

    3. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear?

      Covid made this visible

    4. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people

      A more skillful response to a general strike

  7. Aug 2023
    1. some workers may not just be attracted to Costco because of the high wage, but due to the transparency

      Some workers may be attracted to Costco due to the transparency.

    2. wages are often determined, not by any market standard, but by the whims and feelings of the employer

      Why is it important for a worker to know how the wages are determined?

  8. Jul 2023
    1. those aspects that emphasize customs of deliberation and consensus-building in the indigenous public square

      The political aspects of Lahontan's debates with a semi-fictionalized Kandiaronk

  9. Jun 2023
    1. will necessarily have to exist in a world where contemporary art is seen as the purest expression of human creativity

      Those who produce the forms of artistic expression (that those with bemused contempt for contemporary art do appreciate) will necessarily have to exist in a world where contemporary art is seen as the purest expression of human creativity.

      In this way, the bemused are still affected by the art world by way of the producers.

    2. Why should changing trends in decorative objects that the owners of such yachts like to place in their sitting rooms be considered relevant, in any way, to the lives or aspirations of bus drivers, maids, bauxite miners, telemarketers, or pretty much anyone outside the charmed circle of the “art world” itself?

      Why does art matter?

  10. May 2023
    1. From a religious point of view, the community expects to divide its resources into multiple “funds”, from which it makes purchases or reserves resources for later:

      Envelope accounting

  11. Apr 2023
    1. a subtle tool of white supremacy

      The accusation of "acting white" is a versatile and subtle tool of white supremacy, which can be used by colonizer or colonized

    1. This is in particular evident in the legacy of the French Revolution

      The fact that the core ideas of German Romanticism reshaped thinking about both politics and art is evident in the legacy of the French Revolution.

  12. Feb 2023
  13. Oct 2022
    1. the most effective way we’ve found to communicate with a computer borrows so heavily from the way we communicate with each other

      I wonder if I could say that the model of programming is human-to-human communication.

    1. contests regarding the positive and negative impact of patterns of tourist behaviour on cultural diversity

      The positive impact of tourism on the development of Baikuyao funeral rites.

  14. Aug 2022
  15. Jun 2022
  16. jashm.press.uillinois.edu jashm.press.uillinois.edu
    1. who have developed methodsof research, field techniques, theory and organizational structuresbelieved necessary to get the job done

      Preservationists have developed methods to get the job done.

    2. they are overwhelmed by their jobassignments, they are theoretically and methodologically ill-equippedand ultimately misled into believing that their efforts are necessaryand sufficient to complete the task at hand

      Processors are overwhelmed, ill-equipped and misled.

    1. The irony of the situation

      Scholars have to adapt minority dances for "staged reproduction and mass consumption," but many dances are not suitable for such adaptation and their meaning is "distorted."

  17. May 2021
  18. Apr 2021
    1. Minister of administrative reform and of coronavirus vaccines Taro Kono has urged local governments to use up the vaccines without disposing of them by finding someone new to vaccinate, but local government officials are at a loss as to how to prioritize who gets the leftover vaccines.
      • What does Taro Kono think the best way to use the leftover vaccines for?
      • What did Taro Kono suggest to local governments and how do local governments do?
    2. As the administration of coronavirus vaccines has begun for older adults in Japan, there have been a series of cases in which local government bodies have disposed of leftover doses of the vaccines, due to people canceling their vaccination appointments.

      Why do local governments in Japan dispose of vaccines?

  19. Mar 2021
  20. Feb 2021
  21. Jan 2021
    1. The indenture recruitment method authorised employers to utilise enforceable, written labour contracts. Malayan planters either engaged the services of one of the labour recruitment firms in Nagapattinam or Madras, or sent their own agents to south India to recruit labourers directly. The agents advanced money to individuals wanting to migrate to Malaya, the advance being conditional on the intending migrants signing a contract on arrival in the country. The migrants were then considered to be under indenture to their employers for a fixed period, varying from three to five years (reduced to three years after 1904).

      Description of indentured recruitment method

    2. This paper compares past and present plantation labour regimes in Malaysia and frames the subject in the broader context of the plantation complex to suggest the larger, wider significance of the plantation management system and its institutional frameworks

      This is what the paper is about.

  22. Dec 2020
    1. is contingent on
      • A is contingent on B = A depends on B
      • The accord... is contingent on... the vaccine being approved by US and Malaysia...
      • The accord... depends on... the vaccine being approved by US and Malaysia

      The agreement/accord (was passed/was honored/went into effect/became valid)

  23. Nov 2020
    1. While the colonialists played golf and tucked into scones, locals and savvy British entrepreneurs grew crops that thrived in the mild climate, like tea and strawberries.

      An intro to the process of getting the ideas and translating them into a real project.

  24. Mar 2020