A bright pink, pocket-sized tract (a collection of short essays, actually) - no doubt intended to recall both Mao's Little Red Book and pocket Bibles, and also all the better for 'street' use, as the instructions in the front helpfully suggest...which is indeed in part how I've ingested it, in various moments between other moments around Melbourne, and even on one occasion while walking home along Lygon St (East Brunswick to Carlton) after dinner.
The essays are a series of broadly Marxist (certainly class-based and anti-capitalist) readings and counter-histories of a whole range of historical and cultural phenomena, with a particular focus on rock n roll - took me back a bit to uni (Das Kapital, Walter Benjamin, cultural studies). Deliberately provocative in both theses and presentation, so much so that it appears at least partly parody, nonetheless there's also a strong sense that Svevonius is a true believer in terms of what's argued here.
A representative couple of paragraphs:
The drinks at this juncture in American history are indisputably coffee from Starbucks and the vodka of Absolut. The popularity of these drinks stems from their value as symbolic war booty from recent conquests. A culture's adopted beverage represents the blood of their vanquished foe.
Drink is transubstantiation a la the Catholic cannibalism of Christ's blood and body. The smell of coffee is the odor of the Sandinista hospital, maimed by Contra bombs. Ice-cold vodka is the blood of the Russians, raped and murdered by capitalism.
In any case, regardless of the extent to which you might buy into this particular brand of agitprop, enjoyable and interesting. (It was a gift from Julian.)
The essays are a series of broadly Marxist (certainly class-based and anti-capitalist) readings and counter-histories of a whole range of historical and cultural phenomena, with a particular focus on rock n roll - took me back a bit to uni (Das Kapital, Walter Benjamin, cultural studies). Deliberately provocative in both theses and presentation, so much so that it appears at least partly parody, nonetheless there's also a strong sense that Svevonius is a true believer in terms of what's argued here.
A representative couple of paragraphs:
The drinks at this juncture in American history are indisputably coffee from Starbucks and the vodka of Absolut. The popularity of these drinks stems from their value as symbolic war booty from recent conquests. A culture's adopted beverage represents the blood of their vanquished foe.
Drink is transubstantiation a la the Catholic cannibalism of Christ's blood and body. The smell of coffee is the odor of the Sandinista hospital, maimed by Contra bombs. Ice-cold vodka is the blood of the Russians, raped and murdered by capitalism.
In any case, regardless of the extent to which you might buy into this particular brand of agitprop, enjoyable and interesting. (It was a gift from Julian.)
