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TRANSCRIPT
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Phil Cohen
eyeglass books
Towards an ecology of
political mindfulness
WAYPOINTS TO
WARDS AN
ECOLO
GY OF
POLITICAL M
INDFULN
ESSW
AYPOIN
TS Phil Cohen
eyeglass books
Autumn 2019
‘Bringing together the joyful wit and steely wisdom of his writing over recent years, this book is
nothing less than brilliant.’ Lynne Segal. Author of ’Radical Happiness:Moments of Collective Joy’
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WAYPOINTS: Towards an ecology of political mindfulness by Phil Cohen
We are living through disturbed and disturbing times in which the maps drawn by political scientists no longer make sense of what is happening on the ground. Against this background the propagandists of neo-liberal individualism urge us to cultivate ‘resilience’ and ‘mindfulness’ as a way of seizing and surviving the present moment. Mindfulness in particular has been popularised as a way of promoting well-being by enabling people suffering from anxiety or depression to become more aware of internal mental states and their relation to external circumstances.
But what if this concept is applied not just to the adaptive strategies of an individual psyche but to the state of health of the body politic? It might then help us focus more precisely on how the stresses and strains of our everyday lives are connected to the social structures we inhabit. It might, for example, help us understand more concretely how issues, of race, gender, generation and class shape the most intimate registers of our being in the world.
From this starting point, the book charts a journey, at once intellectual and existential, across the fault lines of our conflicted society and divided selves. It brings together writings occasioned by recent political and personal events in an attempt to grasp their inter-connection in what is flashing past before it disappears into a fog of reminiscence or rhetoric. Many of the pieces collected here are this kind of auto-ethnographic reportage. Others, more essayistic in form, step back to think more strategically about some of the deeper processes at work in our increasingly uncivil society.
The first part of the book traces the seismic shifts taking place in the landscape of British politics, culminating in the Brexit vote, focussing on their cultural and ideological underpinnings. This is followed by a series of engagements with actual, mostly urban, landscapes, as they change underfoot, and suggests some possible ways of notating that encounter both at home and away. The next section explores personal memoryscapes of love and loss and their implications for understanding the dislocated times we are living through. The book concludes with a series of essays about the contemporary conditions of cultural production as these inform the poesis of singular arts practices.
Across these topics, Phil Cohen begins to map out an ecology of critical awareness as a timely antidote to the mindlessness currently being promoted through our political culture with its knee jerk responses to the multiple crises we face.
394 pages 133x203mm perfect bound RRP: £20 Publication date: October 2019978-1-9164719-5-5 (PDF) 978-1-9164719-6-2 (Paperback)
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CONTENTS
Introduction: On Being ‘Woke’
Part One – Changing Political Cultures Brexit and the Island Story – A Fatal Attraction To Vote, Perchance to Dream: Moments in the Great Moving Left
(or Is It Right?) Show Mad Dogs and Englishmen:
The EU Referendum and Its Other Scene 1968’ and the Politics of Memory On Translating Politics: The Legacy of French Situationism
Part Two – Thinking Places, Travelling Stories Crossing the Borderlands: The Dialectics of Trespass There Goes the Labourhood: An Urban Triptych A Twisted Thread: Imagining the Working-class City Glass Ceilings: In Memory of a Pioneering Urbanist Living the Dream: A Letter from Paris Pictures from a Not Quite Gone City In Search of the Antipodean
Part Three – Counter Finalities To Seek Within the Inferno That Which Is Not Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Threnody for Stuart Hall Our Dear Icarus In Place of Kaddish: A Letter for Ste Two Funerals and a Strange Conjuncture For Those Orphaned Late Santa with(out) Clause IV : Or, Socialism Is Not Just for Christmas Atishoo, Atishoo, We All Fall Down: Some Reflections on Body Politics Waiting Games People Play
Part Four – Cultural Formations Living with Painting Graphologies Are We That Name? An Essay on Pseudonyms Black Atlas: The Poetics of Counter-Mapping The Occasions of Poetry
End notes and Index
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How Many LightbulbsBehind the Scenes in The Science Museum StoresEdited by E. Haines, A. Woodhan, J. Wallett‘You come in this place and it’s like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when you turn the lights on with a clunk and gradually everything looms up out of the darkness and people go “Oh wow...!”’ Ben Russell, Curator, Science Museum Group978-1-9164719-0-0 (PDF)978-1-9164719-1-7 (Paperback)
paperback size 205x205mm, perfect bound, with illustrations Publication date: October 2019 Paperback RRP: £10.00
Postcards to GrandadA Family RomaceBy Phil Cohen‘A troubled yet exuberant vignette of imagined selfhood, inside-out to the world and history, in which old age and boyhood form a circling dance of inheritance, suffering and survival.’ Les Bell, Author of ‘Archipelagos’978-1-9164719-2-4 (Paperback)978-1-9164719-3-1 (Print on Demand)
paperback size 129x198mm, perfect bound, b/w illustrationsPublication date: April 2019 Paperback RRP: £10.00
Waypoints Towards an Ecology of Political MindfulnessBy Phil Cohen‘Thoughtful and beautifully cast treasures gathered along the journeys of an intellectually and politically engaged life.’ Caroline Knowles, Author of ‘Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Back Roads’‘Witty, stimulating, intellectual nuggets, to be savoured and returned to, which stay with you for a long time... A dialogue with an exquisite, subtle, supple mind.’ Ali Rattansi, Author of ‘Bauman and Contemporary Sociology: A Critical Analysis’978-1-9164719-5-5 Waypoints (PDF)978-1-9164719-6-2 Waypoints (Paperback)paperback size 133x203mm perfect bound Publication date: October 2019 Paperback RRP: £20.00
19 Station Road, Wivenhoe Colchester CO7 9DHAll titles available mail order Trade enquiries welcome [email protected] telephone 07757305327
Phil Cohen
eyeglass books
Towards an ecology of
political mindfulness
WAYPOINTS
TOW
ARDS AN ECO
LOGY O
FPO
LITICAL MIN
DFULNESS
WAYPO
INTS
Phil Cohen
Phil Cohen
eyeglass books
Towards an ecology of
political mindfulness
WAYPOINTS WAYPOINTS
In this prose poem Phil Cohen explore
s the ‘other scenes’
of his family history, the stories he was
not told, about
where he came from. They feature the m
ysterious,
romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a J
ewish revolutionary
from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Gla
sgow Gorbals
during the period of Red Clydeside be
fore the First
World War. Through this interleaving
of stories, in which
elements of fact and fantasy become m
erged, Cohen sets
out to examine his complicated herita
ge as a ‘mischling’.
Postcards to Grandad is a bold experimen
t in what happens
when a writer and an artist from diff er
ent backgrounds
combine creative forces to tell the story
of a diasporic
journey across generations and culture
s, in which
recurrent elements of tragedy and far
ce interact with the
contingencies of shifting places and tim
es.
“A troubled yet exuberant vignett
e of imagined
selfhood, inside-out to the world
and history,
in which old age and boyhood for
m a circling
dance of inheritance, suff ering and
survival.”
Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')
“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic j
ourney into
some of the complexities of Jewis
h diasporic
identity, past and present. On the
way he
explores the intersections, both p
ersonal and
political of class, gender and ethn
icity which
continue to shape the way we live
now.”
Nira Yuval Davis
(Emeritus Professor of
Migration, Refugees and Belonging,
University of East London.)
eyeglass books
www.eyeglassbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4
Cover design: John Wallett
Postcards to Grandad
A Family Romance
Phil Cohen
graphics: John Wallett
eyeglass books
In this prose poem Phil Cohen explores the ‘other scenes’
of his family history, the stories he was not told, about
where he came from. They feature the mysterious,
romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a Jewish revolutionary
from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Glasgow Gorbals
during the period of Red Clydeside before the First
World War. Through this interleaving of stories, in which
elements of fact and fantasy become merged, Cohen sets
out to examine his complicated heritage as a ‘mischling’.
Postcards to Grandad is a bold experiment in what happens
when a writer and an artist from diff erent backgrounds
combine creative forces to tell the story of a diasporic
journey across generations and cultures, in which
recurrent elements of tragedy and farce interact with the
contingencies of shifting places and times.
“A troubled yet exuberant vignette of imagined
selfhood, inside-out to the world and history,
in which old age and boyhood form a circling
dance of inheritance, suff ering and survival.”
Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')
“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic journey into
some of the complexities of Jewish diasporic
identity, past and present. On the way he
explores the intersections, both personal and
political of class, gender and ethnicity which
continue to shape the way we live now.”Nira Yuval Davis
(Emeritus Professor of
Migration, Refugees and Belonging,
University of East London.)
eyeglass books
www.eyeglassbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4
Cover design: John Wallett
Postcards to Grandad
A Family RomancePhil Cohengraphics: John Wallett
eyeglass books
Phil Cohen
Phil Cohen
eyeglass books
Towards an ecology of
political mindfulness
WAYPOINTS WAYPOINTS
In this prose poem Phil Cohen explore
s the ‘other scenes’
of his family history, the stories he was
not told, about
where he came from. They feature the m
ysterious,
romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a J
ewish revolutionary
from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Gla
sgow Gorbals
during the period of Red Clydeside be
fore the First
World War. Through this interleaving
of stories, in which
elements of fact and fantasy become m
erged, Cohen sets
out to examine his complicated herita
ge as a ‘mischling’.
Postcards to Grandad is a bold experimen
t in what happens
when a writer and an artist from diff er
ent backgrounds
combine creative forces to tell the story
of a diasporic
journey across generations and culture
s, in which
recurrent elements of tragedy and far
ce interact with the
contingencies of shifting places and tim
es.
“A troubled yet exuberant vignett
e of imagined
selfhood, inside-out to the world
and history,
in which old age and boyhood for
m a circling
dance of inheritance, suff ering and
survival.”
Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')
“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic j
ourney into
some of the complexities of Jewis
h diasporic
identity, past and present. On the
way he
explores the intersections, both p
ersonal and
political of class, gender and ethn
icity which
continue to shape the way we live
now.”
Nira Yuval Davis
(Emeritus Professor of
Migration, Refugees and Belonging,
University of East London.)
eyeglass books
www.eyeglassbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4
Cover design: John Wallett
Postcards to Grandad
A Family Romance
Phil Cohen
graphics: John Wallett
eyeglass books
How
Many Lightbuklbs
eyeglass books
How Many LightbulbsBehind The Sce
nes
in the Science
Museum Stores
Edited and with
introductions by
Elizabeth Haines
John Wallett and
Anna Woodham
eyeglass books
Autumn 2019