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possm

possm@bookwyrm.tilde.zone

Joined 2 months, 3 weeks ago

silly little guy

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2023 Reading Goal

43% complete! possm has read 13 of 30 books.

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Normalisierung von rechts (German language, 1995, Verlag Libertäre Assoziation) 5 stars

Excellent book about fascist ideology

5 stars

I did not expect this tiny book from the 1990s to be as good as it is. The book is about the continuity of fascist ideology in German scientific discourse and general society. It shows extremely well how biologizing societal issues lies at the core of far right ideology. The book's central argument is about ableism (which the author calls "social racism" because it was the 90s). This is ableism understood not only as othering and violence against the disabled, but as a general ethics of ability/usefulness as a virtue: the ableist violence of the Nazi state was directed at the disabled but also the homeless, the unemployed, drug addicts, queers, etc. Ableism, the author argues, is as essential to fascism as racism and antisemitism, but most people including antifascists don't recognize it as such because they would have to confront the ableism baked into their own worldview. I think …

Ihr Kampf (Paperback, German language, 2020, Die Werkstatt GmbH) 5 stars

Europas Neonaziszene trainiert für den Tag X, an dem den Ultrarechten der politische Umsturz gelingen …

Nazis and combat sports in Germany and beyond

5 stars

This is a journalistic work: it's very thoroughly researched, contains little generalizations and even less analysis, focuses on specific organizations and people. This means that it will be outdated in a few years (the book is from 2020). But for now, this is a well made deep dive into the connections between fascist organizations and combat sports in Germany and internationally. The book is well written, the structure makes sense and no time is wasted. I found the guest-authored chapters on other countries (Italy, Poland, Russia, France and Greece) especially interesting. The only aspect I didn't like is where the author tries to draw some extremely thin connection between neoliberalism and fascist ideology. I think this is an analysis that can make sense in some very specific contexts, but here it's not well made. The observation (made by the author) that both ideologies value individualistic self-improvement doesn't justify the claim …

Females (Paperback, 2019, Verso) 4 stars

Short little personal essay

4 stars

I started this book expecting a "serious" work of feminist theory. At some point I realized I had started on the wrong footing, so I reread it as a personal essay. That works way better. The book kiiinda presents itself as laying out a theory of gender (in short, the theory that everyone is female), but it doesn't really commit to that and the theory doesn't really work if you take it seriously - which I don't think the author wants us to. The book is actually an autobiographical reflection on the author's transition, told through her personal relation to Valerie Solanas' (tiny) body of work. I enjoyed it a lot!

Weibliche Unsichtbarkeit (Hardcover, German language, 2021, Hanser Verlag) 3 stars

Wie Frauen die Geschichte prägten – und warum wir nichts davon wissen. Ein feministischer Blick …

Fascinating topic; weirdly structured and bloated book.

3 stars

This book is about female erasure in prehistory research, a very interesting topic. The author is a researcher in prehistory with a focus on women, so this is her wheelhouse. The part of the book that is actually about that I found very interesting and informative. However, that's only 80 pages out of 200! Allow me to explain. The book is in four parts. Part I is a short chapter on media depictions of prehistoric women and the question of primitive violence. Although these two topics are interesting, it's not clear what connects them. At this point the book already seems weirdly structured.

Part II is a long history of misogynistic sexism through the ages. This is just gender studies 101 with no connection to prehistory at all. It feels like the author is trying to up her page count by repeating a point that a hundred feminist books have …