jackie ess

another newsletter, this time with an annoying emphasis on psychoanalysis buttondown.com/jackie_ess/a...

National suicide us what Jenrick is proposing.

I think this at leasts shows that UK hard right propagandists are having a difficult time hiring right now. how many people have to say no before you get down to Liz Truss? Clearly, no one wanted this. It's a bit like when Tony Hinchcliffe did that Trump rally.

PMC Posturing One of the most self-defeating forms of identity thinking on the contemporary left is the one that revolves around the idea of the “professional-managerial class” — even though it’s usually connected ...

RIP to Asad Haider. highlighting this excellent piece remapping the "PMC" debates asadhaider.substack.com/p/pmc-postur...

this shit is just beyond parody, man

a few more:

Max Tundra - Parallax Error Beheads You
Ruth Garbus - Kleinmeister
Blue Gene Tyranny - Degrees of Freedom Found
Ryan Power - ‘Identity Picks’
Eli Winter - Eli Winter
Celer - You and I Can’t Ever Change
Will Long - Seeds to Circumvent Finity
Starla Online - I Saw You In My Shadow

some albums on Bandcamp that you could pick up today:

Ben Reed - Station Masters
Sri Hanuraga - To the Universe
Chris Weisman - ‘The Holy Life That’s Coming ‘
Brad Mehldau - Ride Into the Sun
Zach Phillips - True Music
Glenn Jones - The Wanting
Dragging an Ox Through Water - Panic Sentry

nessnessness against thisnessness

he gave a few talks on this which are on youtube, but also his 2025 article for Thesis Eleven and his chapter on Rule of Law in BernsteinOphirStoler2018PoliticalConceptsCriticalLexicon give a lot of the picture. he also shared a few chapters of the new book when I emailed him

I’d rather not RT

asking acquaintances: a dear friend of mine in NY is learning Spanish (a2/b1). looking for cheap IRL resources, including language schools, to improve speaking and listening, or perhaps local speaking partners around this level?

sad to think about the conditions of teaching in the states, I liked doing that more than any job I ever had, including writing, even as it paid less than any job I ever had, including writing. but I think it would now be too stressful: institutions falling apart, trans issue so intensely dramatized

I hope that none of this gets in the way of Jay Bernstein's Ecocide book, which I think will be a rare genuinely contemporary contribution of philosophy to politics.

clipping intentionally (keep volume moderate to low)

the crude move iron, the refined, steel.

I was recently asked at a public event to speak to the Crisis of Men. I didn't understand at all. they're literally perfect? I mostly just feel bad for the people who are stuck in between, because they can't bench 225

I still think the best form of podcast is to read yourself an article and then listen to it in your own voice at 2x speed on the train. I don't think text-to-speech will ever replace the experience of recording it, and that is called to mind in listening.

A Certain Mistake: Jackie Ess on Tolstoy’s Resurrection Podcast Episode · Reading Writers · 12/03/2025 · 49m

Come and get it: @essj.bsky.social + @jolivingstone.bsky.social + me, Tolstoy, the Bible, horny Frenchmen, I could go on!
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

I think it's nice but definitely less practical

imagine Rasputin trying to keep a straight face when he had to hear about this

Fabergé glob

no offence but this winter egg looks gross to me. much prefer the rose trellis

A Certain Mistake: Jackie Ess on Tolstoy’s Resurrection Charlotte delves into Ecclesiastes through the work of liberation theologist Elsa Támez (When the Horizons Close) before Jo shares some of Pierre Guyotat’s horny, rapturous literary memoir, Idiocy. Icon of many RW conversations past, the thoughtful Jackie Ess then joins to discuss Tolstoy’s crank-inflected final novel, Resurrection.

spoke about a tough old favourite for something like 90 minutes which was cut down to 30 after removing everything inaudible, incoherent, or inadvisable

YouTube video by TheFoxBen Guided by Voices - Cyclops

did a podcast recently and fucked up the audio so badly on my side that it kind of sounds like one of those voice distorters that they used to use when they'd interview people on the news who were in witness protection. lo fi lives www.youtube.com/watch?v=woL-...

YouTube video by BeyoncéVEVO Beyoncé - Blow (Video)

I had no idea that Beyoncé wrote this song about the first time she did a "ginger shot." I kind of get it youtu.be/CIELYkfoKy8

by the way I don't think you're at all wrong to start the discussion now or then, this was only a thought about why people might have hesitated to say anything.

that is fair but a bit tougher than I'd rather be about it. I have seen a number of people find the mirror of their own cracked thinking in this and other intellectual dead ends, and mostly they come back. the line to be drawn is between being clear, which we ought to be, and kicking while down.

it felt difficult at the time to see the stakes of ap, since in many cases pessimism is asserted contingently or ironically, posed as an interruption to a self-satisfied position which refuses to address hard problems. and perhaps my views *are* too cozy, even if pessimism is finally incorrect

I think it's delicate because people address real concerns with bad theory all the time, and it's possible that through aggressive critique I might deprive myself of the chance of having a friend who I believe to be deeply in error—this happens all the time, by dismissing him in advance

the surprising thing to me is how much afropessimism resembles social theories on the extreme right (Girard, no? Schmitt, no?). I'm happy to say it belongs there, and that that is who it serves, and I'm happy not to hear about it much anymore