Here Are Some Resources I Used For My Homer & Virgil Module For Classical Studies This Semester

girlcoded

how do i start to read marxist leninist/leftist stuff ? i searched on the internet but it’s super confusing lol

the most important value for me as an ML is anti-imperialism, so i guess i'll always recommend that people start with works centred on that

some suggestions below (all books should be available either on marxist.org or as pdf/epub files on libgen)

American Holocaust by David E. Stannard

about the colonization of america. not explicitly marxist, but it's probably done more to radicalize me than any other piece of writing. this is the pile of corpses capitalism is built on:

Within no more than a handful of generations following their first en counters with Europeans, the vast majority of the Western Hemisphere's native peoples had been exterminated. The pace and magnitude of their obliteration varied from place to place and from time to time, but for years now historical demographers have been uncovering, in region upon region, post-Columbian depopulation rates of between 90 and 98 percent with such regularity that an overall decline of 95 percent has become a working rule of thumb. What this means is that, on average, for every twenty natives alive at the moment of European contact-when the lands of the Americas teemed with numerous tens of millions of people-only one stood in their place when the bloodbath was over. To put this in a contemporary context, the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship ratio would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died. The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. That is why, as one historian aptly has said, far from the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls. - David E. Stannard

2. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. - Vladimir Lenin

3. The Wretched of The Earth by Franz Fanon

Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First, we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it’s not a pretty sight. It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affectation of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. Very well then; if you’re not victims when the government which you’ve voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving without hesitation or remorse have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of doubt, executioners. And if you chose to be victims and to risk being put in prison for a day or two, you are simply choosing to pull your irons out of the fire. But you will not be able to pull them out; they’ll have to stay there till the end. Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors. - prefrace by Jean-Paul Sartre

4. Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa I have talked a good deal about Hitler. Because he deserves it: he makes it possible to see things on a large scale and to grasp the fact that capitalist society, at its present stage, is incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of establishing a system of individual ethics. Whether one likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophicrenunciation, there is Hitler - Aimé Césaire

5. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti

probably the most accessible introduction to communism that doesn't demonize countries that have undergone—or attempted to undergo—a transitation into socalism (like the ussr, cuba, etc.)

The very concept of "revolutionary violence" is somewhat falsely cast, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform, not from those struggling for reform. By focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden, we overlook the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, including armed attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squad assassinations, the extermination of whole villages, and the like. - Michael Parenti

latin phrases worth knowing:

(in case you wanted to know because i fucking love this language) 

ad astra per aspera - to the stars through difficulties 

alis volat propriis - he flies by his own wings 

amantium irae amoris integratio est - the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love 

ars longa, vita brevis - art is long, life is short 

aut insanity homo, aut versus facit - the fellow is either mad or he is composing verses 

dum spiro spero - while I breathe, I hope 

ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem - with the sword, she seeks peace under liberty 

exigo a me non ut optimus par sim sed ut malis melior - I require myself not to be equal to the best, but to be better than the bad

experiential docet - experience teaches 

helluo librorum - a glutton for books (bookworm) 

in libras libertas - in books, freedom 

littera scripta manet - the written letter lasts 

mens regnum bona possidet - an honest heart is a kingdom in itself 

mirabile dictu - wonderful to say 

nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - there is no book so bad that it is not profitable in some part 

omnia iam fient quae posse negabam - everything which I used to say could not happen, will happen now 

poeta nascitur, non fit - the poet is born, not made 

qui dedit benificium taceat; narrat qui accepit - let him who has done a good deed be silent; let him who has received it tell it 

saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit - often, it is not advantageous to know what will be 

sedit qui timuit ne non succederet - he who feared he would not succeed sat still 

si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war 

struit insidias lacrimis cum feminia plorat - when a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears 

sub rosa - under the rose 

trahimir omnes laudis studio - we are led on by our eagerness for praise

urbem latericium invenit, marmoream reliquit - he found the city a city of bricks; he left it a city of marble 

ut incepit fidelis sic permanet - as loyal as she began, so she remains

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do you have any recommendations for really scary and/or disturbing books or movies? especially if they are similar in tone to house of leaves!

alright, if you liked house of leaves you might like— 

existential void-horror (ihumans driven by ambition or curiosity or circumstance venture into dark places and find themselves gazing into a silent and swallowing abyss and being gazed back into until they crack open and are changed into something frightful and fractured and deranged):

in space: moon; sunshine; solyaris and solaris (remake; i prefer tarkovsky ‘72 but both are disturbing), alien; event horizon; 2001: a space odyssey; pandorum; doctor who episode “midnight”; william gibson, “hinterlands”; peter watts, blindsight; terrence holt, in the valley of the kings; dan simmons, hyperion.

terrestrial: the descent; the abyss; the divide; dan simmons, the terror; cube; jacob’s ladder; thomas ligotti, “nethescurial”; jorge luis borges, ”the zahir”, ”tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius”; h.p. lovecraft, the call of cthulu and other stories; edgar allan poe, “the pit and the pendulum”.

haunted houses & hauntings:

shirley jackson, the haunting of hill house; kathe koja, the cipher; h.p. lovecraft, “the rats in the walls“ & ”the shunned house”; stephen king, the shining; richard matheson, hell house; the orphanage; the devil’s backbone; [rec]; session 9; edgar allan poe, “the fall of the house of usher”; henry james, the turn of the screw; ringu; SCP-087; the changeling.

sinister postmodernist metafiction:

vladimir nabokov, pale fire & bend sinister; paul auster, oracle night and the new york trilogy; cabin in the woods; pontypool (also a bbc radio drama); philip k. dick, the three stigmata of palmer eldritch and “second variety“ and every story he ever wrote; franz kafka, ”the trial” (proto-postmodern); eraserhead.

humans turned monstrous:

robert louis stevenson, strange case of dr jekyll & mr hyde; ira levin, rosemary’s baby; john ajvide lindqvist, let the right one in & let the right one in (swedish film); 28 days later; no country for old men; coraline; cormac mccarthy, the road; dan simmons, carrion comfort; jose saramago, blindness; richard matheson, i am legend; stephen king, salem’s lot, pet sematary, ”the jaunt” (short story); peter straub, ghost story; ian banks, the wasp factory; linda addison, how to recognise a demon has become your friend; octavia e. butler, dawn.

if any of yall are interested in poetry and learning how to read, analyse, and appreciate a poem, check out this free course by the University of York that goes in-depth about reading poetry! i’m taking it now and it’s really good, 10/10 would recommend to anyone who is even a little bit interested in poetry

Black Feminism & Abolition

if you want to actually engage with intersectional feminism & what abolition really means, this is your homework:

Angela Davis - “Are Prisons Obsolete?”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore - “Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California”

Angela Davis - “Abolition Democracy”

Angela Davis - “Freedom is a Constant Struggle”

“If They Come in the Morning… Voices of Resistance”

Carole Boyce Davies - “Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones”

Safiya Bukhari - “The War Before”

Patrice Douglass - “Black Feminist Theory for the Dead and Dying”

Patrice Douglass & Frank B Wilderson - “The Violence of Presence: Metaphysics in a Blackened World”

“Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?”

Evelyn Hammond - “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality”

Sadiya Hartman - “Seduction and the Ruses of Power”

Sadiya Hartman - “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route”

Audre Lorde - “Sister Outsider”

Audre Lorde - “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

bell hooks - “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”

Michelle S Jacobs - “Black Women’s Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence”

Claudia Rankine - Citizen

Assata Shakur - “Women in Prison: How We Are”

Assata Shakur - “Assata: An Autobiography”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor - “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective”

Zoe Samudzi & William C Anderson - “As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation”

this is a curated list of texts that i find the most helpful for illustrating why we all should also be abolitionists. the bolded are the ones i’ve found the most helpful thus far. & reminder to buy the books when you can, preferably from independent / leftist / black-owned bookstores… and see what you can find at your local library! keep these works in circulation!

This is part 1 of a few on dystopia that I’ll be publishing every Monday because I find it incredibly interesting that we are so fascinated by societies that are going horribly wrong.

dark academia literary works: a masterlist

Hello! I replied to this post on Reddit today, trying to compile all the dark academia books I could think of, and then thought that maybe all of you here might find it useful too, so here you go. It is a very, very broad list, a mix of classic and contemporary literature, and there is no set criteria besides having a dark vibe (this includes murder and crime but could just be the way it’s written as well) and portraying an academic setting, most of the time from the student’s point of view. I haven’t read all of these myself and so I can’t judge on quality, but hopefully this will inspire people to add on to it in the comments.

Here you go!

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson The Secret History, Donna Tartt If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio Maurice by E. M. Forster The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Possession by A.S. Byatt The Truants by Kate Weinberg The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Vicious by V. E. Schwab The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (tangentially related) A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro The Likeness by Tana French The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (coming out tomorrow!) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman Oleanna by David Mamet Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Other classics that are not Dark Academia in content, but which I would include in a list of the DA canon: The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer Shakespeare’s plays (Macbeth, Hamlet are good ones to start with) A Separate Peace, John Knowles The Bacchae, Euripides Greek tragedies (a good one to start with is Antigone, very popular and staged many a time) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Beat generation literature Jane Austen’s books (light academia, anyone?)