User Profile

Fionnáin

fionnain@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

I arrange things into artworks, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.

I use words other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.

Also on Mastodon.

This link opens in a pop-up window

User Activity

Ladivine 2 stars

A difficult experiment

2 stars

NDiaye's prose is like no other author that I have read. Their previous book, Three Strong Women tangled three stories together, each with its owb uncanny mood and setting. In Ladivne there are again three stories, those of three generations of women dealing with trauma and issues of (un)belonging in France.

The writing is intricate and unique, and builds a world from the inner perspectives of the characters, who are richly developed. However, the story never really got going for me, and was mostly told in the early chapters before being trundled along for the rest of the book. The depth of character motivation, understanding each person's complex motivations for making the choices that they make, is an amazing experiment in writing, but for me the experiment that doesn't quite pay off for the whole book.

Care and Capitalism (Paperback, 2021, Polity Press) 3 stars

The logics and ethics of neoliberal capitalism dominate public discourses and politics in the early …

An anthology of western care in academia

3 stars

Care and Capitalism is a particular type of academic book, filled to bursting point with references to other academic sources like an encyclopedia of other people's research. The topic is as the title suggests, encompassing many theories from social, political and philosophical theory.

The sheer volume of reference material is the result of a lifetime career reading about care, capitalism, feminism and love, and for that this is impressive. However, as someone who has read a good deal of the source material, I found the lack of argument or perspective a bit flat. It's more like an introductory text for sociologists who have no framework for where the structural problems exist in care (or white patriarchal power).

OK, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea (2021, Penguin Books, Limited) 4 stars

A sock and buskin memoir

4 stars

There are few writers like Patrick Freyne that can make me laugh until tears roll from my eyes and I drop the book on the floor. Even fewer can force me to expel a whimper a few sentences later with a punch-in-the-gut moment of care or grief. And as a journalist, he does this every week with The Irish Times.

This is a book of memoir essays, not my favourite writing form but one that fits Freyne's style. He meanders between comedy and tragedy easily, including hilarious anecdotes of his childhood, his pirate radio misadventures and his band tours (I loved the NPB before he was ever a writer and really enjoyed reading those stories) interspersed with deep, thoughtful essays of his work in a care home or as a journalist. While I loved the laughs, the more touching chapters were the ones that will stay with me. I am …

This Plague of Souls (Paperback, 2023, Tramp Press) 3 stars

Released from jail, Nealon returns to the family home but finds himself alone in an …

Falling apart around us

3 stars

I love Mike McCormack's prose and imagination. This Plague of Souls is of his more sinister canon, trailing out a mystery of a protagonist who has arrived home from prison to an empty house, void of his wife and child, and where he receives continuous phone-calls from an unnamed caller who seems obsessed with how he got out of a prison sentence. In the final section, this mystery unspools into another, broader mystery.

While some of the imaginative ideas are rich, such as the backstory of the protagonist and his wife's first living together in rural Ireland, the book failed to form any sense of intrigue. It felt a little like a short story that had been stretched out like an elastic band, that lacked any more content to become whole as a novel. The prose is good throughout, and the book has merit in its involved portrayal of a …

All Incomplete (Paperback, 2021, Minor Compositions) 5 stars

Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the …

Decolonising me

5 stars

Moten & Harney are well known for their brilliant 2013 book The Undercommons that mostly explores colonial practices in university systems. In All Incomplete they extend these ideas beyond the university, and into a broad discourse on embedded colonialism and philosophy of logistics. They also extend the collaboration to include the photographer Zun Lee, who completes this book with extraordinary street photography and a thoughtful concluding chapter.

Moten & Harney write poetic-academic, and it is not initially easy reading. The content is heavy enough, but as part of their practice of decolonising they also refuse to waste or misuse the English language, and this is a strength. Once I found a rhythm, I loved every paragraph (and reread most of them). So deep is their research, and so rich is the perspective that they present, that no word is wasted in a deceptively short book. The focus is on showing …

To Our Friends (Paperback, 2015, Semiotext(e)) 3 stars

A reflection on, and an extension of, the ideas laid out seven years ago in …

Wry, far-reaching, loud

3 stars

This book is a response to the Invisible Committee's previous work, The Coming Insurrection. It revisits some of that book, which I have not read and don't fully understand the links. However, as a standalone work, this is interesting if often overly dogmatic. Laying out the entanglements between political, technological and social power with a pantagruelist humour throughout. Not really eye-opening but it draws some interesting connections, the most interesting being the presentation of crisis as a political tool, something that feels increasingly relevant.

To Our Friends (Paperback, 2015, Semiotext(e)) 3 stars

A reflection on, and an extension of, the ideas laid out seven years ago in …

On the one hand, the iPhone concentrates all the possible accesses to the world and to others in a single object. It is the lamp and the camera, the mason’s level and the musician’s recording device, the TV and the compass, the tourist guide and the means of communication; on the other, it is the prosthesis that bars any openness to what is there and places me in a regime of constant, convenient semi-presence, retaining a part of my being-there in its grip.

To Our Friends by