familial dystopia

i recently (finally) read we by zamyatin, after having it in my possession for over a year or so now. as with 1984, which it is said to have inspired, i kind of enjoyed the dystopian aspects of the novel much more than when the protagonists discover 'freedom', 'love' or their 'humanity' etc.



and so today on the bus on my way to surface, i was thinking about various things ongoing in my personal life. i am not particularly in favour of monogamy, as one of my previous posts possibly points to. (it is in fact the first part of an ma essay i wrote; i shall get round to editting and posting the rest soon so perhaps one can better understand my position -- should anyone so desire). however, non-monogamy in reality is a lot messier htan in principle. so anyway, somehow my thoughts led me to that old maxim of the family unit being, well, a unit of capitalism, the capitalist 'machine'. specifically, i suppose, it is means of furthering the human population whilst keeping it within its own ideology - mini-baby making machines. how then, is this different, from the dystopian world of we or indeed the fictional world of atwood's the handmaiden's tale? well, ultimately the difference is that in dystopian fiction, the ideology is very clear-cut and takes form in one of its most extreme manifestations.

maybe, then, i enjoy the early parts of dystopian novels because that is when that dystopian world is articulated and set. maybe i like it when the ideology are clearcut and reach their logical conclusion. even now, our undersatnding of 'the family' and family values has become much more complex complicated than that of hte 1950s household. real life is not a dystopia, but, rather much more messy - for better and worse.


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i am out of practice with writing, so excuse me if this is jilted. also, i don't have anything interesting to say about the subject in relation to mad men. (all i have to say is i want it back on my screen soon, plz). so instead, let me end then with a few links i've found interesting lately, but haven't managed to articulate further thoughts on.

* this reddit "ask me anything" written by someone who is intersex was really interesting and i admire the original poster very much. (thanks, lok).
* i wanted to say something interesting about this and museums -- but what? i think further thoughts will have to be elaborated later. something to do with funfairs vs museums and interactivity and the like. (the blogger is dating the man who started improv everywhere).
* and finally this article (from quite a while back) on sxsw:

A related danger of the merging of online and offline life, says business thinker Tony Schwartz, is that we come to treat ourselves, in subtle ways, like computers. We drive ourselves to cope with ever-increasing workloads by working longer hours, sucking down coffee and spurning recuperation. But "we were not meant to operate as computers do," Schwartz says. "We are meant to pulse." When it comes to managing our own energy, he insists, we must replace a linear perspective with a cyclical one: "We live by the myth that the best way to get more work done is to work longer hours." Schwartz cites research suggesting that we should work in periods of no greater than 90 minutes before seeking rest. Whatever you might have been led to imagine by the seeping of digital culture into every aspect of daily life – and at times this week in Austin it was easy to forget this – you are not, ultimately, a computer.

 * edit also This Is My Porno Face: Reflections on Gender Performance and Power in Rock Music (via stephen)