The Baffler
@thebafflermag
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Political and cultural criticism, satire, and salvos. Since 1988. Online and in print.
New York, NY
Joined July 2009
The poptimists and sloptimists have won. Our new issue, “After Words,” describes our postliterate moment, when everything from serious criticism to literary fiction to children’s books seems on the verge of being replaced by content trash.
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Tara Selter has been reliving November 18 for years. Conor Truax writes on the first three books of “On the Calculation of Volume” by Solvej Balle—and the strangeness of time and memory. https://t.co/DaGQqTmx9T
thebaffler.com
“On the Calculation of Volume” is a petri dish—one in which Solvej Balle experiments without intending to arrive at an absolute solution or a unifying theory.
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When did we enter the age of literary decline? Was it with the arrival of TikTok? Television? Radio? The newspaper? In our new issue, Noah McCormack argues that such technologically determinist arguments miss the point. https://t.co/7uEhqGst30
thebaffler.com
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
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Poetry from Baffler no. 81: “Top Ten Reasons to Dislike List Poems” by Ry Cook. https://t.co/IIPaaR0iEw
thebaffler.com
Cutting out syntax from a piece is cutting off its ability to breathe in time.
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This holiday season, get your loved one something they’ll actually use: back issues of The Baffler, or a tote to carry them around in. Shop now, and use promo code COMMODIFY for 20% off. https://t.co/SxKbCIk8r1
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Everybody’s talking about the end of literacy, no doubt because of the issue we just published on the subject, which you can read here: https://t.co/atsfAIjsqc
how strange is it, how contrary to expectations, that our most literate presidents lived in the 18th century; our most recently elected 21st century president is barely literate, with the vocabulary of a three-year-old & the atrophied prefrontal cortex of a nasty person who has
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Not long ago, American elites believed that Chinese industry, for all its productive capacity, could never fully compete with the creativity of Western firms. That racist assumption turned out to be very, very wrong. https://t.co/7uEhqGst30
thebaffler.com
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
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Netflix may soon swallow Warner Bros. Back in 2020, @jhensonpogue wrote on streaming’s negative influence on the world of nonfiction. https://t.co/CyXP0Zbb08
thebaffler.com
America’s higher echelon of long-form journalists can now expect to make more money from Hollywood than they do from the publications that print their stories.
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“These were not reforms, of course, but punishment imposed on a society already battered by the collapse of the Soviet Union: privatization of health care, deregulation, public sector layoffs.” https://t.co/QHV2SQCki5
thebaffler.com
Since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has swung between two poles: the “move fast and break things” leaders, and the ones who clean up the mess.
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The West once lauded Georgia as the little nation that reformed—but since last year’s elections, the nation has been thrown into chaos. As @sopjap writes, the path forward cannot be a return to a past that no longer exists. https://t.co/QHV2SQCki5
thebaffler.com
Since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has swung between two poles: the “move fast and break things” leaders, and the ones who clean up the mess.
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“Solvej Balle is more interested in the nature of memory—that is, human perception of time, rather than the fundamental nature of time itself.” https://t.co/DaGQqTmx9T
thebaffler.com
“On the Calculation of Volume” is a petri dish—one in which Solvej Balle experiments without intending to arrive at an absolute solution or a unifying theory.
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I wrote about Chris Kraus's new novel (not very good, sorry), her lasting influence, and the aesthetic dimension of her landlordism—something played up in her recent work. Autofiction becomes autopay? Enjoy https://t.co/ACxcbh8SlL
thebaffler.com
More than ever, we live in Chris Kraus’s world, even as we feel it exhausting itself.
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Since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has swung between two poles: the “move fast and break things” leaders, and the ones who clean up the mess. What comes next for the former Soviet republic? https://t.co/QHV2SQCki5
thebaffler.com
Since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has swung between two poles: the “move fast and break things” leaders, and the ones who clean up the mess.
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Much of the writing on Solvej Balle’s “On the Calculation of Volume” has focused on the broader notion of time. Yet Balle is more interested in the nature of memory—that is, human perception of time, rather than the fundamental nature of time itself. https://t.co/DaGQqTmx9T
thebaffler.com
“On the Calculation of Volume” is a petri dish—one in which Solvej Balle experiments without intending to arrive at an absolute solution or a unifying theory.
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“The swell of patriotism that such idealized depictions produce has made them easy fodder for nationalist movements wishing to stake their claims.” https://t.co/RDKAx2sho2
thebaffler.com
The work of José María Velasco is cerebral and serene—but it’s also implicated in a campaign to romanticize the dispossession of people from their land.
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Skepticism without nihilism, criticism without compromise: that’s the Baffler way. As you make your end-of-year giving decisions, consider supporting our nonprofit operation. Donate now. https://t.co/Wn56IRjB8C
thebaffler.com
Now here’s a tale to buoy you through our time of sinking expectations. The Baffler Foundation Inc. is a tax-exempt organization incorporated “to promote art, science, and education by publishing a…
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Is the nation of Georgia a democratic paradise lost? @sopjap writes on that simplistic and misleading fable—and the future of the former Soviet republic. https://t.co/QHV2SQCki5
thebaffler.com
Since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia has swung between two poles: the “move fast and break things” leaders, and the ones who clean up the mess.
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“Even if ‘Social Text’ was taken to stand for something bigger, like postmodernism or the cultural left, it was a stretch to think of it as somehow the voice of the ruling class, the elite.” https://t.co/Yq79Pkrk0d
thebaffler.com
Thirty years after the Sokal affair, whither the little magazine?
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The arrival of José María Velasco as a national hero in Mexico didn’t just happen—he enjoyed a relationship of convenience with the dictator Porfirio Díaz, who used the landscape painter’s work to advance his agenda of internal colonization and modernity.
thebaffler.com
The work of José María Velasco is cerebral and serene—but it’s also implicated in a campaign to romanticize the dispossession of people from their land.
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“To understand why we as upright apes are so drawn to facts that aren’t facts, to events that never happened, to fictions, we have to go back to our ancestors and ask: Why did dreaming start in the first place?” https://t.co/PJYtm3itte
thebaffler.com
Just as the threat of The Entertainment looms, the idea of an aesthetic spectrum, with Art on one end and Entertainment on the other, is defunct.
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My new article on Georgia!
Protests in Georgia have continued daily since last October’s election, and the EU has refused to recognize the new government. @sopjap writes on the tenuous situation in the former Soviet republic and politics after the unipolar order. https://t.co/QHV2SQCki5
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