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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3201 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Kendi's How to be an Antiracist. So far, mixed feelings. I have found his attempt to dissolve assumptions of racial difference very humanizing, and of practical merit. On the other hand, while he sounds perfectly innocent when discussing race with other minorities, when prodded far enough it always seems to come back to "whiteness" in the end. In fairness, Kendi's take on white individuals is fairly nuanced.

Paper I'm reading: Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

A book about Art Deco written for the 2003 V&A exhibition. I am a big fan of the more modernist and streamlined 1930's American Art Deco and own several artbooks, but this is a quite dense tome that tries to cover the style from its pre-WWI roots to the titular 1925 exhibition to the death in the fires of WWII and across the continents, from Europe to the US to Latin America and Asia.

Could I get a title? I'm reading too much of Pol/Phyl/Hist right now, I need some arts and sciences to balance it out.

Art Deco 1910-1939

Thanks, my dude. Gotta get some culture in me if I'm gonna war about it.

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