bft’s reading/listening/watching list (8/28)

Here’s what I’ve been listening to and reading this week. Enjoy! 

Music

Two great subversively religiously albums released this last week. 

The Chairman Dances ‘Time Without Measure’

I can’t stop raving about this album! Just look at the track titles. When Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin are in the first song, you gotta know it’s going to be good. 

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin
Augustine
Fannie Lou Hamer
Thérèse
Jimmy Carter
César Chávez
Kitty Ferguson
Catonsville 9 (Thomas and Marjorie)
Peter Gomes and Nancy Koehn
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Collection: Ars Moriendi B-Sides
The Collection has imaginative lyrics, a profound message of peace, and a joyful sound.

Article

Hypercarceration: A Neoliberal Response to “Surplus Population”
by Jan Rehmann

This was written by my mentor and thesis advisor, Dr. Rehmann. 

Abstract:

The skyrocketing increase of U.S. incarceration rates from the late 1970s onward indicates a particular neoliberal response to what Marx analyzed as the deep-structural production of “surplus population” by capital. This essay reevaluates the classic contributions of Marx and of Rusche and Kirchheimer and relates them to approaches that emphasize racial continuity, from “convict leasing” to the “New Jim Crow” of the current incarceration system. What is needed is a multifaceted approach that accounts for the overdetermination of class and race relations. Today’s U.S. prison system is a particular way of “managing” the devastating social consequences of high-tech capitalism that has lost its hegemonic ability to mobilize its subjects on a “voluntary” basis. A part of the surplus population needs to be sacrificed in a theatrical spectacle in order to keep the working class, the poor, and the threatened middle class complacent and under control.

Sad News

Detroit’s Heidelberg Project will be dismantled over the next two years

I go to the Heidelberg Project every time I visit Detroit. This imaginative folk street art will surely be missed! 

Quiz

What Garden of Earthly Delights Abomination Are You?

I got butt gardener.