Computer/environmental scientist who doesn't like computers and who's lost faith in the scientific method. Some topics & genres I like: critical theory, epistemology, science fiction, postmodernism
An old friend told me to read Natural Novel many years ago. They told me they had found it on their e-reader one day and weren't really sure where it came from. Natural Novel is a very strange book, and so that felt like a fitting way to go into it.
It feels pretty short compared to some postmodernist fiction I've read. It's hard to explain, particularly without giving away the whole thing. That might be one of its limitations: Natural Novel has one conceit, but I think it does it well.
'Groundbreaking ... [provides] a deep history of the invention of the 'normal' mind as one …
A strong albeit broad exposition of capitalism as it relates to neuronormativity
4 stars
I'll third other reviewers in saying that this book is great, though the end falls off a little.
Broadly, the book covers the history of the eugenics movement (particularly, the history of psychology, how it evolved into eugenics, and then into what we know today as psychology). This part Chapman does really well; there's a lot of very thought provoking connections he draws, and I feel I've learned a lot from it.
In the more brief, latter half, Chapman draws on a lot of work in the development of the neurodivergent movement to make a case for what he calls neurodivergent Marxism, which (very generally) proposes a more revolutionary approach to neurodiverse liberation—namely, one he believes and I agree won't come under the liberal rights framework we've traditionally sought to improve our material conditions under. If you've been exposed to Marxist thought and are neurodivergent, this probably won't feel new …
I'll third other reviewers in saying that this book is great, though the end falls off a little.
Broadly, the book covers the history of the eugenics movement (particularly, the history of psychology, how it evolved into eugenics, and then into what we know today as psychology). This part Chapman does really well; there's a lot of very thought provoking connections he draws, and I feel I've learned a lot from it.
In the more brief, latter half, Chapman draws on a lot of work in the development of the neurodivergent movement to make a case for what he calls neurodivergent Marxism, which (very generally) proposes a more revolutionary approach to neurodiverse liberation—namely, one he believes and I agree won't come under the liberal rights framework we've traditionally sought to improve our material conditions under. If you've been exposed to Marxist thought and are neurodivergent, this probably won't feel new to you, but it is at the very least compelling.
I get the feeling a lot of the value many would get out of this book would be the way it puts language to things you might have once had a hard time talking about, or even really conceptualizing. I know I felt heard reading Empire of Normality, and that in and of itself is really valuable
I've become so accustomed to not reading that I don't even read what appears before my eyes. It's not easy: they teach us to read as children, and for the rest of our lives we remain the slaves of all the written stuff they fling in front of us. I may have had to make some effort myself, at first, to learn not to read, but now it comes quite naturally to me. The secret is not refusing to look at written words. On the contrary, you must look at them, intensely, until they disappear.
Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx's ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance …
‘Metabolic shift’ is a typical reaction of capital to the economic and ecological crisis it causes: ‘For only the reactive and retroactive manipulation of symptoms and effects is compatible with the continuing rule of capital’s
causa sui’ (Mészáros 2012: 87). Metabolic shift, however, cannot solve the problem as long as it cannot stop its insatiable process of accumulation.
It seems obvious in hindsight but I think this clarifies what a lot of people are actually talking about when they equate capitalism with progress. Sure, capitalism does provoke progress, but it's progress in as much as it solves the immediate, short-term problems that capital causes.
The example Saito gives shortly after is the industrial production of ammonia to compensate for soil exhaustion. Putting chemicals into the soil doesn't solve the core problem of industrial agriculture exhausting the soil, it just deflects it onto other peopl
Facing global climate crisis, Karl Marx's ecological critique of capitalism more clearly demonstrates its importance …
Today, at least the existence of Marx’s ecology – its usefulness and scientific validity put aside for now – retrospectively appears so obvious that one may wonder why it was neglected for such a long time. Here one can point to one reason. [..]. It did not occur to [researchers] that Marx, especially in his later years, quite intensively studied the natural sciences and left behind a large number of notebooks consisting of various excerpts and comments related to environmental issues
Having been born after the collapse of the USSR, I've never seen any of this in my lifetime. Basically since I've been interested in both Marxism and degrowth, I've seen the two ideas intertwined. It's fascinating to think that this, as a development, is at most 30 years old, and if I had grown up at any other point in history it's likely that I would have understood "Red" and "Green" to be ideologically opposed.
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful …
This felt like it was published last year
4 stars
Which feels like a cheesy thing to say in a review about dystopian fiction, but I genuinely didn't realize this book was published in the year 1993 until I read Butler's biography at the back and realized she passed away in 2006. It feels... pertinent
Others have said this is a pretty grim novel. I agree. It hurt to read, quite often. I feel like I've mostly moved out of my dystopian fiction era but this one hooked me a lot harder than most I've read. I haven't finished a book this quickly in quite a while.
I think Parable of the Sower has a lot to say about eco-fatalism, as well as the many "fatalisms" of neoliberalism in general, which it delivers on very well. I also felt like it would have a lot to say about the value of religion, divorced from the way people in my life …
Which feels like a cheesy thing to say in a review about dystopian fiction, but I genuinely didn't realize this book was published in the year 1993 until I read Butler's biography at the back and realized she passed away in 2006. It feels... pertinent
Others have said this is a pretty grim novel. I agree. It hurt to read, quite often. I feel like I've mostly moved out of my dystopian fiction era but this one hooked me a lot harder than most I've read. I haven't finished a book this quickly in quite a while.
I think Parable of the Sower has a lot to say about eco-fatalism, as well as the many "fatalisms" of neoliberalism in general, which it delivers on very well. I also felt like it would have a lot to say about the value of religion, divorced from the way people in my life and I suspect many others in the west tend to equate religion with Christianity. It delivered on the former part, but not so much the latter in my opinion. Still very compelling, and very well written nonetheless.
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with …
A strong argument for other ways of knowing
4 stars
Kimmerer spends a lot of time in this book comparing and contrasting Western science to indigenous ways of knowing, specifically from the Potawatomi tradition. As she's someone formally trained in western science, I understood her thesis being that indigenous ways of knowing can coexist with western science, but more than anything, I felt that this book did a really good job justifying why we shouldn't treat science as the end all be all of knowledge.
On one hand, I think this book reintroduced my very secular mind to the ways in which having a spiritual connection to nature can be extremely enriching and can add to our collective understanding of the natural world
On the other hand, it provides a basis for understanding where exactly science falls short in its attempt to catalogue the universe, as well as exposing its "objectivity" for the many ways in which it is actually …
Kimmerer spends a lot of time in this book comparing and contrasting Western science to indigenous ways of knowing, specifically from the Potawatomi tradition. As she's someone formally trained in western science, I understood her thesis being that indigenous ways of knowing can coexist with western science, but more than anything, I felt that this book did a really good job justifying why we shouldn't treat science as the end all be all of knowledge.
On one hand, I think this book reintroduced my very secular mind to the ways in which having a spiritual connection to nature can be extremely enriching and can add to our collective understanding of the natural world
On the other hand, it provides a basis for understanding where exactly science falls short in its attempt to catalogue the universe, as well as exposing its "objectivity" for the many ways in which it is actually ideologically motivated.
All in all, this book is definitely going to be a cornerstone of my worldview with respect to knowledge for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the fact that Kimmerer is just a really awesome writer in general
