tirado/thrown

• From Mexico City, Intersections returns from its hiatus with an update on recent events honoring writer Aura Estrada as part of an effort to create a literary prize in her memory.  The prize will offer promising Mexican women writers an opportunity to hone their literary chops.
• Intersections follows up with a post on recent programming at Mexico City’s Center for Contemporary Culture.  Maras y la Cultura de la Violencia  focuses on La Mara Salvatrucha, among the most widely-publicized and feared street gangs in the US and  El Salvador.   The show raises a host of questions, especially about the way in which museums and cultural institutes address highly charged contemporary issues.  Is the show an instance of the ongoing ‘museumification of the world’?  Is it an attempt to deal with a matter usually placed under the sign of public safety/police/crime journalism with the resources of humanistic reflection?  Or is it just a foolish, useless, and unsympathetic expedition glorifying a way of life marked, or perhaps defined, by cruelty, aggression, and ruthlessness?
• The MIT Press is holding its Winter White Sale until January 31, which is the press’s coolest discount book buying opportunity next to their loading dock sale.  If any dear readers wish to donate books to the tirado/thrown staff (ahem…), please feel free to ask how you can send Ruben Gallo’s Mexican Modernity and/or Adam Sharr’s Heidegger’s Hut.  Generosity will be compensated with a treatment of received book on this blog and recognition from a grateful beneficiary.
• Perverse Egalitarianism reflects on Bernard Steigler’s Acting Out.  The call to philosophy and the discipline required in its practice, which, at the risk of oversimplifying, is part in parcel with getting on in this existence of ours. 
• Why has No Useless Leniency not been in my reader?  Why were three outstanding posts missed here at tirado/thrown?  In the interest of making amends, first some notes on Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy, highlighting some useful precepts.  Second, a post reflecting on the ontology of the interval, with some hints for further reflection regarding the conquest and creation of the New World.  Third and last, some notes on Walter Benjamin’s essay Capitalism as Religion, an essay that Agamben riffs heavily on in “In Praise of Profanation.”
• This Recording’s recent “Science Corner” entry, aside from being colorful, is an example downright cool science blogging for the barely initiated.  And now we are a little more familiar with the mating habits of the banana slug.
• I Cite shares with readers some notes on Foucault’s 1978-79 lectures on the genesis of modern biopolitics.  Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who has helped bring pochismo into the cultural vernacular,  is The Mexorcist.  Yes, xenophobia is a spiritual disorder.  An interview with the Tuscon Citizen elaborates.  (Note: Gómez-Peña will be giving a talk at USC on January 28.  For more context, his article in The Journal of Visual Culture from 2006 titled El Mexorcist lays out the basic idea.)
• Rhizome calls our attention to the  brick being thrown at us.  Buffalo Head: Media Practice, Media Study, Media Pioneeers 1973-1990 is the 800-plus page , 10 pound  book documenting the work of SUNY Buffalo’s Center for Media Studies. 
• tirado/thrown receives a greeting from Journal of Thieves.  Not at all safe for work, or for those who are easily offended.  We were definitely charmed by the assault on sensibility that makes easily  reproduced spectacle and images of extreme ambiguity render pornography inoperative.  tirado/thrown thanks JoT for making us think.  We welcome you to the blogroll, with open, er, you get the point.
• Please, click through the link at the end of the bullet .  You’ll find your computer to be interesting and fun again.  http://www.zigzagphilosophy.com/

Image: Screenshot of zigzagphilosophy.com, (2009).  Digital work by Angelo Plessas, found at Rhizome.