Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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Lenin the mechanic to Zizek’s oily rag
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through
by VI Lenin, edited and introduced by Slavoj Zizek
(Verso, £12.99)
LIKE a football match, this is a book of two halves. In the first, Slavoj Zizek dribbles around ponderously and aimlessly, with trademark labyrinthine arguments and cross-reference overload — “[To] put it in Deleuzian terms,” “in the Kantian sense,” the “Lacanian ‘master-signifier,’” yadda, yadda, yadda.
In the second half, mercifully, there's a game-changing substitution. Zizek takes himself off and brings on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who instantly assumes leadership.
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