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Recent Posts
- Zola : a political reading. August 13, 2023
- Hotter than July? August 5, 2023
- Rethinking work July 30, 2023
- Educating for political literacy in an age of crisis. July 21, 2023
- Savoirs et valeurs : pratiquer et conjuguer July 21, 2023
- ‘Transformative Teaching and Learning in Further Education – Pedagogies of Hope and Social Justice’ July 18, 2023
- Dilemmas of Growth June 14, 2023
- A broader view of skills? June 7, 2023
- In praise of ‘low value’ subjects. February 27, 2023
- Frigga Haug and the mystery of learning December 6, 2022
- Debating Growth. November 29, 2022
- Code red for human survival November 8, 2022
- The politics of silence. September 4, 2022
- Posts on Corsican themes. August 10, 2022
- When Corsica welcomed thousands of Serb refugees (1916) August 9, 2022
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Category Archives: Fiction
Zola : a political reading.
Political writing and political reading. Politics is concerned with ideas about how we live, power, class, inequality, social and economic relations and how they change over time. Writing also deals with how we live, and we can think of all … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, History, Politics
Tagged anarchism, Bonaparte, capitalism, Charles Dickens, class, Class Struggles in France, Communism, Coup-d’état, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emile Zola, France, Frederick Engels, Germinal, Hard Times, Honoré de Balzac, Ian Birchall, Jules Vallès, Karl Marx, L'Argent, L'Assommoir, La Curée, La Fortune des Rougon, Le Ventre de Paris, Margaret Harkness, Nana, Napoleon III, North and South, Pot-Bouille, revolution, Rougon-Macquart, Second Empire, socialism, strikes, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, The Paris Commune, Travail, utopianism, William Gallois, working class
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Zola’s ‘Money’
Rougon-Macquart #18 A powerful anti-capitalist novel. Emile Zola’s wonderful 1890 novel ‘L’Argent’ (‘Money’) is set in the world of finance and share-speculation in 1860’s Paris. It is still fresh and relevant and should be on any reading list of anti-capitalist … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Politics, Reviews
Tagged capitalism, economy, Emile Zola, France, investment, money, Napoleon III, Paris, Second Empire, socialism, speculation, Yanis Varoufakis
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Learning from Utopia
What is the function of alternative political and economic systems, whether actually existing or imaginary? Is it to offer hope that change is possible, or at least to provide some perspective on our own way of life?
Draws on ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula Le Guin. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Alternatives, Anarcho-syndicalism, Anarres, dystopia, Education, Equality, Science fiction, Urras, Ursula Le Guin, utopia, utopianism
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‘Bewilderment’ by Richard Powers
Bewilderment is an entirely rational response to what we are collectively doing to our planet. Confronted by the injustices, dysfunction and unsustainability of the world we’ve created, how can we not react with bewilderment? This wonderful novel is both an … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Biodiversity, climate emergency, Planet Earth, Richard Powers, Sustainability
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“You either bend the arc or it bends you”
‘Attack Surface’ by Cory Doctorow. ‘Attack Surface‘ (2020) is a gripping action-packed story of oppression and resistance with plenty of insights into the potential of new technologies and big data. It is also a powerful manifesto for the necessity of … Continue reading
‘Light Perpetual’ by Francis Spufford
‘Light Perpetual’ is a wonderful celebration of life and love. It opens with some extraordinary time-stretching to describe the impact of a split-second destructive event in wartime. Then time is shrunk and stretched repeatedly in order to follow the ‘lost’ … Continue reading
Zola’s ‘La Curée’ and the corruption of desire.
Rougon-Macquart #2 Emile Zola’s ‘La Curée’ (1872), translated as ‘The Kill’, is an extraordinary novel of unbridled appetites, material and sexual, and of the moral decay and rottenness of unfettered capitalism. It shares a setting and many common themes with … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Brian Nelson, capitalism, corruption, desire, Emile Zola, Karl Marx, La Curée, modernity, Paris, Rougon-Macquart, speculation, The Kill
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‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
Fiction can change the world and the didactic approach or the ‘novel of ideas’ can be compatible with good storytelling. Like any work of art, a work of fiction can change us as individuals and, through us, help to make … Continue reading
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s ‘Nervous Conditions’.
The personal is political, and this wonderful book is both entirely personal and deeply political. Nervous Conditions (1988) is the story of Tambudzai, a young woman growing up in rural Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia) in the late 1960’s, told … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged Africa, colonialism, Equality, inequality, liberation, Nervous Conditions, Race equality, racism, sexism, subjugation, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zimbabwe
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‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.
Richard Powers is an extraordinary writer. If you’ve not yet discovered his novels, I strongly recommend them. He tackles big ideas which concern all of us while at the same time telling compelling stories about complex and conflicted characters who … Continue reading
‘What if?’ – dystopias in fiction.
Fictional dystopias use the power of ‘what if?’ to change something or extrapolate particular social or technological trends and imagine the impact on people’s lives. The best ones are also good stories, well told, about people; their hopes, fears, feelings … Continue reading
The last Corsican.
“I’ve decided to keep this diary because I’m going to die in the next few days…I am condemned because, having refused to be evacuated with the others, I will be annihilated by the incendiary bombs which are systematically ravaging the … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction
Tagged Corse Noire, Corsica, Jacques Mondoloni, Le Dernier Corse, The Last Corsican
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More fictional dystopias
Reading Dystopias offered an introduction to the genre of dystopian fiction through 4 classic dystopian novels. Here are four more which are also well worth reading. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953) [211 pages] Fahrenheit 451: The temperature at which … Continue reading
‘Carthage’ by Joyce Carol Oates.
Joyce Carol Oates’ brilliant novel ‘Carthage’ carries the reader along on a compelling looping, zig-zag narrative which starts and finishes in the heart of a sympathetic comfortably-off family in the small upstate New York town of Carthage. Along the way, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Fiction, Reviews
Tagged American Pastoral, books, Carthage, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth
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