June Books

Okay, taking a break from the protest series, here are the (very few) books I was able to complete in June.

1. The Eclogues and The Georgics by Virgil.

Well, I’m currently writing a chapter that lays out the details of imperial Roman ideo-theology (I wish people used that word, I find it really convenient).  Therefore, I thought I would go back and reread some of the relevant primary source stuff to look for things I might have missed the first time around.  It is proving to be a worthwhile exercise although, damn, 9 out of 10 of these pastoral poems are hella boring.

2. Let the Right One In by John Lindqvist.

After reading, and being disappointed by, the Iain Banks book I mentioned last month, I thought I would dig around a little more in the “horror” genre to see if I could find some things there that are also representative of really good literature.   Not that long ago, I had watched the movie called Let The Right One In and had enjoyed it.  It left me thinking that there was probably a richer story behind what was portrayed in the film, so I decided to go with Lindqvist as the next step in my horror quest.

The book really is quite good.  Having seen the film, I was stuck knowing what was going to happen, but story lines were much more fully developed (and darker) than in the film and the characters were much richer (the only thing I didn’t like was the vampire’s ability to communicate, um, her story to her companion).  I would recommend both the book and the movie (the movie has a couple of really awesome scenes, one of a kiss and one of something that occurs in a swimming pool).  When the vampire is a 12 year old girl, her caretaker an old male pedophile, and the boy she meets a picked-on kid with sociopathic tendencies, well, you know you’re not reading Twilight.

3. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

This was my next horror effort.  The google searches I did on the subject seemed to pretty consistently refer back to this haunted house novel as one of the classics in the genre.  I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much.  I thought the best element of the plot was the question of whether the haunted house was tormenting the protagonist or whether it was the presence of the protagonist that brought the haunting to the house.  That bit was done well.  The rest of it was pretty ho-hum.

I’ll probably dabble around with a few more suggested titles in this genre but don’t have very high expectations.  Suggestions are welcome.  John Updike’s “Rabbit” series is actually the scariest thing I’ve ever read (by a long shot).  Those books terrify me because they make me think: “Fuck!  Maybe that’s really all that we’ll ever amount to!”

On Protests and Less-Legal Tactics: Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that less-legal tactics do not impact the efficacy of traditional means of peaceful legal protests because those traditional forms are already completely ineffective.  The obvious place to go from here, is to explore the counter-charge that traditional less-legal tactics are also completely ineffective (a point repeated by many — often by those who theoretically claim to support a “diversity of tactics” — including some who responded to my last post).  I will take that issue up in my next post.  In this post, I would like to pause and say a few explanatory words about “black blocs” and “anarchists.”
Beginning with black blocs, the first point to emphasize is that a black bloc is a tactic, and not a particular organization or group.  Thus, as with any other resistance tactic employed — marching, squatting, etc. — a bloc will attract people from a wide variety other groups, if those people feel that a bloc would be useful at a certain time and place.  In this way, the bloc is a particularly good example of the decentralized,  rhizomatic nature of the multitude in action — and the inability of police to respond well to blocs (as demonstrated in Toronto, when the bloc there was able to escape arrest) demonstrates how the centralized, molar structures of our society are not well equipped to deal with things of this nature.  There are no leaders in black blocs — they are simply collections of free individuals who choose to work together (a good example of both democracy and anarchism, depending on whose definitions you are using) — so there is no particular party that the police can target.  Bloc participants are like a swarm of bees that gather and disperse but have no queen or hive.  No wonder the Powers-that-be hate them so much — not only are they hard to catch and manage, they are also better at creating a truly free and democratic space.  That’s a real problem.
So, what exactly is the black bloc tactic?  Simple — the black bloc tactic is the tactic of anonymity.  Rather, than being identifiable as distinct individuals, bloc participants become identified as a mass.  This is accomplished by the participants agreeing to all dress in nondescript black clothing (devoid of logos or patches) and do other things to mask their identities, like wearing black hoods and masks.  Of course, given the way in which police surveillance has increased over the years, the people who choose to participate in this tactic must find ongoing creative ways to join and leave blocs (a point to which I will return), but anonymity is relatively easily accomplished.
Once accomplished, a surprising number of results occur.  First of all, a black bloc can inspire confidence in people who might otherwise have been intimidated by the (equally anonymous and masked) police presence.  In fact, the reverse can even occur and police have often been intimidated by black blocs.  This, then, has prevented police from harming, arresting, and beating other non-bloc protesters (as when the bloc was called upon, by the Native Elders, to hold the front line of the protest that occurred during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics).  Similarly, bloc members have been able to “unarrest” many protesters (bloc members or otherwise) who were in the process of being arrested (officers will generally abandon those they are arresting when swarmed by bloc members).  It also opens public spaces that would otherwise have remained closed (as at the G8/G20 Summits in Toronto).  Finally, this reverse-intimidation can cause the police to over-invest at locations challenged by black blocs, thereby increasing the odds that protesters (usually peaceful ones) at other locations will achieve their objectives (at happened in Seattle in 1999).
Second, engaging in this form of protest is a genuine declaration of solidarity with one another.  Here individual identities are dropped and the goals of the protest and the larger cause become what are important.  What distinguishes us from one another is left behind and we become united.
Third, this solidarity is more than symbolic because it grants a safe, anonymous space to those who are targeted by police: known organizers, people who have been arrested in other protests, and those who engage in less-legal forms of resistance.  Of the first two parties, this is an important option, given their commitment to the goals of liberation and life and given that they tend to pay a higher price for their commitment than others.  Of the final party — those who engage in less-legal forms of resistance — it should first be stated that not all members of black blocs engage in those activities.  However, some people participate in blocs because their respect for the diversity of the protest movement, and the diversity of tactics, is more than rhetorical.  Thus, while not all members of the bloc in Vancouver would have made the personal decision to smash the window at the Hudson’s Bay Company, solidarity with those who chose to engage in that action meant that those who preferred other actions still chose to wear black.  More important than arguing with each other, or policing each other, the commitment to a common vision and goal is what drives this form of solidarity.
Fourth, the police response to black blocs is useful in revealing both that the Powers-that-be wish to wield hegemonic control over the public and that this hegemony is still contested.  As has been noted by several others: when domination is total, the exercise of brute force is unnecessary because each individual member of the public will have internalized everything necessary in order to control him- or herself.  Thus, blocs assist in unmasking this domination and also reveal subjectivities which are not yet totally dominated (and  which must, therefore, be controlled by brute force).  Blocs, then, at the very least, have the potential to be a biopolitical response to the exercise of biopower.  I’ll pick up on this point again in my next post.
So those are some of the benefits of employing a black bloc tactic.  I should make a final remark about the people who tend to participate in blocs.  I’ll not say a lot, given that the whole purpose of a bloc is anonymity, but there is something that should be stated regarding the way in which the police (and then the mainstream media) present bloc participants.  According to the dominant narrative, bloc participants are all “anarchists,” “juvenile delinquents,” and “people known to the police.”  Essentially, one is left with the impression that blocs are just a bunch of angry delinquent teens running around wanting to smash shit up because they were touched by their dads or something like that.  Further, we all probably knew some punk rock dude in high-school who had an anarchy symbol on his jacket and this description seems to match our memory of that guy.
Now, here’s the thing, this description comes nowhere close to describing the people who join blocs.  I can’t speak for all blocs everywhere, but my own experiences, suggest that those who join blocs are generally people who have been very invested in trying to make society a better place both professionally and in their own time.  These tend to be thoughtful people who have tried a number of other avenues to create positive change but have found those avenues to be dead ends.  In fact, bloc participants are often a lot like this guy — he’s not an at all out of place.  Of course, these people are usually “known to the police” only because they police took pictures of them at some other rally somewhere.  Not exactly criminals.  More like social workers and school teachers.
Finally, this leads me to some brief closing remarks about anarchy.  Anarchy is not, as most imagine, the embrace of chaos and violence and the total collapse of society into some sort of rampant individualism.  Rather, anarchy is the belief that people, themselves, should have the authority and ability to choose how they want to structure their life together (hence, Proudhon’s famous aphorism that anarchy is order [which, by the way, is where the most famous anarchist symbol comes from — the ‘A’ in the ‘O’ with the ‘A’ representing anarchy and the ‘O’ representing order]).  Further, anarchists believe that we should try to structure our life together in a way that is life-giving for all and not just for some.  Hence, these two things combined tend to lead anarchists to place little value in the rule of Law — especially since that rule is currently death-dealing to many and a way of protecting the expropriation of the Commons into private hands.  It is this kind of property that is theft, to quote Proudhon once again.  Not surprisingly, then, most of the anarchists I know are sensitive, thoughtful, and loving.  Yes, there is often anger present but this is an appropriate anger to possess.  It is the anger that arises from heartbreak.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying this but, in a word, the anarchists I know are “Christlike.”

On Protests and Less-Legal Tactics: Part 1

The events over the last few months — both in Vancouver during the Olympics and in Toronto and Huntsville during the G8/G20 Summits — have got a lot of people talking about protests in general and black bloc tactics in particular.  Now, a lot of well-meaning people have said a lot of well-meaning things about these events… but unfortunately a good deal of those things are inaccurate, misleading and false.  Sadly, having good intentions, an intelligent mind, and getting your picture taken next to some riot cops, doesn’t provide a person with the adequate foundation needed to accurately criticise contemporary movements of resistance.  Of course, I suspect that a number of these well-intentioned people would come to agree with me if they actually spent any significant amount of time in communities of resistance (instead of simply engaging in a spectacular form of protest tourism) so I thought I would share some thoughts as a person who has been a little more intimately involved with these things.  I will do so in a series of posts.
The biggest error made by those who criticise less-legal means of resistance  is the assertion that these tactics somehow make other forms of protesting less effective.  This is false.  Further, to make this argument is to play into the hands of the Powers-that-be.
The truth is that all of our standard means of peaceful protesting — rallies, speeches, marches with banners and bands, and so on — are already completely ineffective.  A good many actions like these occurred for years prior to the Olympics coming to Vancouver and they didn’t make a single bit of difference.  Nor did the legal protests that occurred at the Olympics, or the legal protests at the G8/G20 Summits.  What was very minimally effective in the 60s and 70s is not at all effective today.  The Powers-that-be incorporated protesting into their way of managing our societies a long time ago — with the distribution of permits, police escorts (to ensure the safety of protesters), the designation of “appropriate” protest locations (again, for the safety of protesters), and so on — but it seems that most of us need to be reminded of this fact.  Therefore, the point to be grasped here is that less-legal tactics do not make peaceful protests less effective — when something is already completely ineffective, it cannot be made more so.
Further, this helps to clarify why those who make this argument end up playing into the hands of the Powers-that-be.  This occurs in a few ways:
(a) Making this argument encourages people to continue to invest time and energy into a futile exercise (“This really does work, as long as the anarchists don’t fuck it up!” being the underlying thought).
(b) Making this argument helps to maintain the illusion that we are living in a society that can be called democratic, in the sense that the individual members of a society actually have an influence upon the running of that society (when, if fact, this is not an accurate description of the society in which we live).
(c) Making this argument also leads people to blame themselves — or other members of the multitude — for the absence of change.  Thus, the reason why the protests failed to create change in Toronto or Vancouver is said to be because of the deployment of black bloc tactics and other less-legal actions.  Of course, the truth is that it is the Powers-that-be who are to blame for the absence of positive change, and this way of thinking only leads to division amongst those who resist.
So, this is lesson number one: less-legal tactics do not negatively impact the efficacy of other forms of protests.

My Writing Project

A few folks have asked me about the progress I have made on my current writing project.  Just for kicks, I thought I would provide the outline of the material I have written thus far.  Still a lot to do but I’m excited to have things coming together.  I’m especially excited about the chapter I’m currently writing — relating Pauline eschatology to the eschatology of imperial Rome — but I’m afraid I need to delay in order to work on a lecture I’m giving next month as well as an article I’ve been trying to write for awhile.  Anyway, for those who get excited when they read a Table of Contents, this post if for you!
Paul and the Uprising of the Dead: Eschatology, Ethics, and Empires
Introduction
0.1 Paul and the Anastasis of the Dead
0.2 Difficulties in Studying Paul
(A) Limits
(i) The Seven Non-Contested Letters
(ii) The Book of Acts
(iii) Secondary Literature
(B) Paul’s Non-Systematic Writings
(C) The Integrated Nature of Paul’s Life and Writings
(D) Distance from Paul
(E) Naïvité of our own Context(s)
0.3 Reading Paul as Scripture: Exegeting Authority
0.4 Situating Paul Within the Grand Narrative of the Bible
0.5 The Scholar as Partisan
0.6 Outline
Part One: The Apostle to the Nations and the Imperium Romanum
1.  Political Readings of Paul: The Main Alternatives
1.1 The Conservative or Spiritual Paul – Summary
(A)  Paul the Teacher of Conservative and Bourgeois Morals
(i) The Conservative Paul as a Positive Influence upon Society
(ii) The Conservative Paul as a Negative Influence on Society
(B) Paul’s Focus upon the Internal and Spiritual Freedom
(C) Paul’s Focus Upon an Imminent End and Disregard for the World
(D) Paul was Politically Conservative because He was Socially Powerless
Excursus: Seyoon Kim on Paul and Politics
1.2  The Conservative or Spiritual Paul – Questions and Criticisms
1.3  Paul, the Founder of a Christian Subculture – Summary
1.4  Paul, the Founder of a Christian Subculture – Questions and Criticisms
1.5  The No-Longer-Directly-Applicable Paul – Summary
(A) Paul did not realize the implications of his own thinking and writing
(B) Paul provides us with multiple political options
(C) Accepting Paul’s general principles while rejecting the specific details
1.6  The No-Longer-Directly-Applicable Paul – Questions and Criticisms
1.7 The Counter-Imperial Paul – Summary
1.8 The Counter-Imperial Paul – Questions and Criticisms
1.9  Conclusion
2.  Apocalyptic Eschatology Part One: The Background
2.1  Introduction
2.2  Eschatology
(A) Eschatology’s Loss and Recovery
(B) The Eschatologies of Pannenberg and Moltmann
(C) Eschatology Within Biblical Scholarship
(D) Summary
2.3  Apocalyptic
(A) A Similar Trajectory: Losing and Recovering Apocalypticism
(B) Apocalyptic Literature
(C) Apocalyptic Movements
(D) Summary
2.4  Paul’s Apocalyptic Eschatology
(A) Arising out of Jewish Apocalypticism and Centrality in Paul’s Life and Writings
(B) Features of Paul’s Christological and Pneumatological Apocalyptic Eschatology
(i.a) Eschatological Tension and the Overlap of the Ages
(i.b) A Realized Eschatology?
(i.c) The Overlap of the Ages Expressed in Imperative and Indicative Tenses
(ii) The Apocalypse of God’s Eschatological Spirit in Paul and the Assemblies of Jesus
(iii) Eschatology and Ethics: Questions of Pauline Sources
(iv) Eschatological Judgement
(v) The Parousia of Jesus Christ
(v.a) Christ’s Imminent Return and the Formulation of an Interim Ethics
(v.b) No Delay of the Parousia and the Formulation of a Timeless Ethics
(v.c) Paul Changed His Mind About the Imminence of Christ’s Return
(v.d) Hope Not Certainty: Further Qualifying Paul’s Sense of Imminence and its Ethical Implications
(C) Summary
2.5  Summary and Conclusion
3. Apocalyptic Eschatology Part Two: Confronting the Founding Narratives of Empires

May Books

Well, I’m in full swing writing my next two chapters, but I did manage to finish off a few things.
1. Commonwealth by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.
I haven’t come across any really positive reviews of this book (John Gray, for example, finds it hardly even worth discussing).  However, I’m going to go out on a limb and state that I really did enjoy it.  In fact, I’ve enjoyed this entire trilogy (Empire, Multitude, and finally Commonwealth) quite a lot.  In the first volume, the authors explore the rise of the transnational empire of global capitalism.  In the second volume they look to the multitude — the plurality of subjectivities working together towards a better life free from the constraints of empire.  In this final volume, they look at those things which both work against and towards the creation of “the commons” as a way of structuring life together outside of the constraints of private propety.  Of course, I’m aware of the criticisms raised against Hardt and Negri’s project.  Yes, they repeat themselves a fair bit.  Yes, they can be frustratingly vague or overly simplistic in their analysis and in their proposed solutions.  Yes, they can be overly romantic.  Fair enough.
However, despite these criticisms, there is a lot of real value in this volume.  In particular, I really enjoyed their reflections on the development of parliamentary democracy as the republic of capital, their desire to have resistance movements move beyond identity politics, their cautious suggestions about the need to institutionalize the revolution, and their restoration of love to this conversation.  Further, although their concluding remarks about joy and laughter have been treated disdainfully by others, it is interesting to note a point of resonance with the Latin American liberation theologians.  Something worth pursuing further, I reckon.
Anyway, this book and the whole trilogy are recommended reading.  They provoke a lot of good thought and have the potential to open up positive trajectories in a person’s life.  I know they have had that impact upon me.
2. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon by George Woodcock.
After reading Kropotkin’s autobiography last year, I decided I would (very slowly) begin to work my way through biographies related to the birth of the anarchist movement.  I finished a biography of Herzen last year, and this book on Proudhon was the next installment.
It was a very good book.  Woodcock knows his subject matter very well and is able to relate the events of Proudhon’s life (during the fall-out of the French Revolution and Jacobinism), demonstrate the ways in which his life and writing are interconnected, and explain the (sometimes complex) social and economic theories Proudhon developed.
I must say, I am more than ever convinced that anarchism is the best way of trying to organize our life together.  It seems to me that it has the possibility to attain to the goals of both democracy and communism, while avoiding both of their flaws.  And, as far as I can tell, it also seems to be in keeping with the way of Jesus Christ.
Recommended reading, for those who desire to learn more about these things.
3. Within a Budding Grove (In Search of Lost Time Vol. 2) by Marcel Proust.
I really enjoyed this installment of In Search of Lost Time.  I think I’ve become accustomed to Proust’s narrative voice and his long, tangential sentences.  His insight into our interactions with others, our perceptions of ourselves and even his way of describing and exploring what it is like to get drunk and lose oneself in the company of others are all really delightful.  A few samples:
Each of our friends has his defects, to such an extent that to continue to love him we are obliged to console ourselves for them–by thinking of his talent, his kindness, his affection–or rather by ignoring them, for which we need to deploy all our good will.  Unfortunately our obstinacy in refusing to see the defect of our friend is surpassed by the obstinacy with which he persists in that defect, from his own blindness to it or the blindness that he attributes to other people.  For he does not notice it himself or imagines it is not noticed.  Since the risk of giving offense arises principally from the difficulty of appreciating what does and does not pass unnoticed, we ought at least, from prudence, never to speak of ourselves, because that is a subject on which we may be sure that other people’s views are never in accordance with our own.
And here’s a quotation which I think would be worth comparing to Rilke’s opening lines in his first Elegy:
For beauty is a sequence of hypotheses which ugliness cuts short when it bars the way that we could already see opening into the unknown.
And here’s one on drinking:
I was enclosed in the present, like heroes and drunkards; momentarily eclipsed, my past no longer projected before me that shadow of itself which we call our future; placing the goal of my life no longer in the realisation of dreams of the past, but in the felicity of the present moment, I could see no further than it.  So that, by a contradiction which was only apparent, it was at the very moment in which I was experiencing an exceptional pleasure, in which I felt that my life might yet be happy, in which it should have become more precious in my sight, it was at this very moment that, delivered from the anxieties which it had hitherto inspired in me, I unhesitatingly abandoned it to the risk of accident.  But after all, I was doing no more than concentrate in a single evening the carelessness that, for most men, is diluted throughout their whole existence.
One more:
“There is no man, ” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it.  And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man–so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise–unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded.  I know that there are young people, the sons and grandsons of distinguished men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement from their schooldays.  They may perhaps have nothing to retract from their past lives… but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile.  We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world… I can see that the picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life.  But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived.
I’m very glad I decided to read this hell-damn-ass long book. Hopefully typing out these quotes might inspire a few others to do the same.
4. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.
For some reason, this book got mentioned a few times in things I was reading.  I had heard that Banks was sort of being represented as the current voice in Scottish literature and that he was utilizing some elements of Scottish horror or macabre.  When I was very young I remember looking at a collection of Scottish ghost stories my Grandfather had and my Scottish relatives also had some… interesting… ghost and alien stories of their own.  So I thought I would check out The Wasp Factory.
The story itself was decent — it’s about a young boy who is some sort of sociopath (he has killed three other children, as he lets you know early on) and what happens when his older brother escapes from an insane assylum and begins to work his way back home.  A lot of reviewers seem quite appalled about all of this, and the way in which it is related, but I wasn’t too put off by the subject matter.  I suppose I have encountered enough appalling things in real life.  That said, I found the ending to be fairly disappointing.  The big twist at the end was decent enough but then Banks seemed to feel the need to psychologize and explicitly explain how everything was related to that twist.  To me, that felt like he was overdoing things.  The reader should have been able to make the connections he makes and I think the story would have been better served if he left a lot more unsaid at the end.
As I was reading, I was thinking that the narrator’s voice sounded a lot like the voice employed in Ender’s Game (which I reviewed a month ago).  Couple that with Banks’ remarks in the preface that he wanted to be a science fiction writer and it has left me wondering if there is a certain (juvenile?) voice that is common to that genre.  Then again, maybe the similarity is that both books are about young males with sociopathic tendencies.
All in all, I don’t think this book was all it was cracked up to be.  Pretty ho-hum.
Monthly Mix-Tape
1. Handel, Lascia Ch’io Pianga (stumbled onto this stunningly beautiful song thanks to the first five minutes of Triers’ “Antichrist”); 2. A Perfect Circle, The Nurse Who Loved Me; 3. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Black Water (going to see this band later today!); 4. Roky Erickson with Okkervil River, Goodbye Sweet Dreams; 5. Great Lake Swimmers, Various Stages; 6. The National, Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks; 7. Shearwater, Black Eyes; 8. Mumford and Sons, Sigh No More; 9. Band of Horses, On My Way Back Home; 10. MGMT, I Found A Whistle; 11. Pink Floyd, Pigs On A Wing.

Note to self…

…when breaking police lines it is not a good idea to put your hand near the gun of the police officer with whom you are struggling.  This is something to keep in mind as people pushing from behind you can throw you off balance and your hands might end up going where you don’t intend them to go.  Oops.

7. What Would You Do?

[It has been awhile since I posted anything in this series, but it is one of my favourite things to do with this blog.  I think it is an important exercise in creative thinking.  Often we will encounter events or people in life and, because they are new to us, we are unsure of how to respond.  Only after the fact do we tend to think, ‘Shit, this is what I should have done…’.  Therefore, I think these exercises can help prepare us to be more conscious to some of these situations, especially, given my own focus, to situations involving street-involved people.]
About a month ago, I stopped into the small coffee shop close to my work to get some caffeine before my shift started.  When I entered the shop I noticed a young woman and a security guard standing by the bar and I originally thought that they were both waiting on drinks (no security guards work there, but they do have an office close by — I work in a bit of a sketchy neighbourhood).  However, I soon realized that the security guard had been called into the shop because the young woman (about 20 years old?) was acting strangely and aggressively.  She was talking to herself, posturing, and going through a wallet — throwing most of its contents into the garbage.  Both the security guard and the girl working at the shop seemed at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to this situation.  The guard tried speaking to her, but she ignored him.  I ordered my coffee and as I waited I noticed that the young woman was not wearing any shoes or socks and that she was also wearing what appeared to be pajama bottoms.
So, what would you do if you were me?  Don’t tell me what you think would be a good thing to do, or what you would want to do.  What, if anything, do you think you would actually do?

Textual Criticisms and the Meaning of Life

Historical Criticism: Your life is lived in context and understanding that context with all it’s various aspects (political, social, religious, cultural, historical, economic, relational, familial, linguistic, and so on) will allow you do realize why you live the way you do.  Good luck with that.
Source Criticism:  Your life is actually a corrupted and altered version of prior lives and of the original source of life.  The key to understanding what is important about your life is finding ways of tracking what parts of that source has remained pure and unaltered in you (the genetic code for your dominant brown eye colour, perhaps?).
Redaction Criticism: Outside voices have unduly influenced your life and changed you from the original version of yourself.  In order to restore your original self, you must discover and cut out those parts of you that have been influenced by others (red, pink, gray, and black beads can be employed in order to figure this out).
Literary/Narrative Criticism:  Your life has a beginning, middle, and end.  It also has a cast of characters who play various roles.  Therefore, what is of ultimate importance about your life is not your life itself but the stories you tell yourself about your life.  So, get storied and feel free to use your imagination (I’m testing this one out on my son — by the time he’s five he’ll be thinking I’ve gone to the moon, battled Norse dragons, traveled through time, and gave up a career as an underwear model in order to serve others… I love my life as narrated by me).
Feminist Criticism: A lot of things in life look like penises.  This is not a good thing… unless that penis-shaped object vibrates (in which case it’s use could be liberating instead of oppressive).  If you happen to have a penis-shaped object attached to your body, you will need to take certain measures in life to ensure that you don’t fall into the culturally and historically conditioned habit of abusing people who don’t have penis-shaped objects attached to their bodies.  If you don’t have such an object attached to your body, you’ll still need to become aware of the ways in which you have internalized a penis-shaped mentality.
Reader-Response Criticism:  Your life means completely different things to different people.  Stop worrying about that and accept it is a good thing.
Theological Interpretation:  God is the meaning of your life, the universe, and everything.  This is true regardless of what actually happens in your life.
Others? Queer Theory?  Counter-Imperial hermeneutics?  Feel free to throw something down in the comments.

How to Write a Thesis…

…or at least this is how I do it.
Given that some people have asked me about the method I use to write, I thought I would write my process down here.  I would be curious to hear how it compares to others.  What follows could be employed for everything from writing term papers to writing books.
(1) Thesis Question
As soon as you know that you will be writing, begin to think about a question or an argument that interests you (if this is for a term paper, begin thinking at the start of the course, if it’s for a Masters thesis, begin thinking at the start of your degree).
(2)Rough Outline
As soon a you think of a question or argument that interests you, begin to compile sub-topics and necessarily related questions into a (very rough) outline.
(3) Research
Research like a crazy motherfucker.  Seriously. You need to demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of your topic (or as close as you can get to that) so bury yourself in the appropriate literature.  However, you also need to be creative so read widely.  If, for example, you are writing on the question: “Is there a counter-imperial element to Paul’s writings?” then you need to know the ins-and-outs of Pauline scholarship.  However, it’s also very useful to read what others outside that guild have written about Paul.  This is because so-called outsiders sometimes glimpse elements that ‘insiders’ overlook.  Further, read others who have written on this topic (say on counter-imperial politics more generally) as they will enrich your reading and your thinking.  So, to continue the example, it’s worth looking at the liberation theologians and the ways in which they employ the biblical texts, it’s also a good idea to look at what social and political theorists have written on the subject, and so on.
As you research, continue to expand or correct the (very rough) outline you created.  You will discover sections that you need to add and you might wish to drop other sections that you discover to be no longer relevant.  You will also discover that you may need to tweak the order of your various sections.  It’s always good to ask yourself: “Why does this section follow from the prior section?”  Additionally, you may find that your original thesis question was too vague or not really where you want to go, so you should clarify that while engaging in this research.
It’s also good to go back over things you have already read in order to see how your prior readings apply to your thesis (after all, you’ve probably already been reading around this topic, if it is something that interests you).  This is why it’s useful to build a library and read every book with a pencil in order to trace arguments and note areas that jump out at you.  Referring back to your own library allows you to do a lot of research very quickly.
In this raw research phase, I tend to type quick bullet notes and leave these notes organized first by author then by book (this comes in handy later).
This stage takes the bulk of my total writing time — probably about 60% of it.
(4) Organize your notes: Part I
Once your research i done, your general outline should be pretty clearly established.  You should know the flow of your argument and all the major sections contained therein.
So, at this stage, I print off my rough notes and go back and use a pen to write in the margins beside each bullet point what section that point belongs within.  I then create a new text document, with all my section headings and cut and paste the notes into their relevant sections.  While cutting and pasting, I also underline the key words or points made in each note so that I can easily see what is important.
(5) Organizing your notes: Part II
With this done, I turn to my first major section and once again print a hard copy of the document.  I then look at the various subsections that make up that section and, once again, write that in the margin next to each bullet.  I then repeat the process of creating a new document, with all the subsections marked and cut and paste the bullet points into their appropriate spots.  As you do this, you may find some points that actually fit better into other major sections and so you can move these around accordingly.
(6) Organizing your notes: Part III
The flow of your argument, and what you want to write, should be getting increasingly clear at this point but there is still one more stage to go.  Once again, I print off a hard copy of each subsection and, using a pen, I mark the key point or theme of each paragraph within that subsection.  Then, creating another text document with each paragraph labeled, I go back and cut and paste the bullet notes into their appropriate paragraphs.  Again, because your argument is getting clearer all the time, you may find notes that fit better in other sections, so make sure to take the time to cut them out and move them to that place.
At this stage your argument should be crystal clear.  You should know exactly what you want to say and you should know why each section follows each other section, why each subsection belongs where it does, and why one paragraph leads to the next.  I realize that this is a painstaking process but it really pays off not only in terms of the richness of your own thoughts (you’ll have spent a lot of time thinking about what you are going to write by this point) but also in terms of the clarity of your writing.  Clarity is priceless — it’s the difference between a B grade and an A grade (regardless of how ‘smart’ your argument is).
Also, given that this takes time, and given that you won’t always be writing but will probably want to takes some breaks to read (and eat and sleep and all that other stuff), it’s a good idea to continue doing some reading around your topic while engaging in these last three stages.  It’s easy to continue adding notes to various sections as you organize them.  This will continue to enrich your paper and will allow you to stay on top of any new scholarship that appears in your field while you are writing.
Stages (4)-(6) of of this process probably take 25-30% of my total writing time.
(7) Write!
Now you know what you want to say and when you want to say it, so all you need to do is say it.  Once again, I print a hard copy of my now extremely well organized notes and I write a first draft, working from paragraph one, of subsection one, in section one, all the way through to the end.
Of course, sometimes writing comes more naturally than at other times and so, if you ever start feeling blocked or too tired to start a new section or continue whatever part you have in progress, it’s nice to give yourself a break by going back and rereading and editing a previous section.  If you do this as you write, you will have already edited your thesis several times before you even finish it.
At this point, because everything is organized very thematically, it is handy to also have a copy of your very first rough notes (organized by author and book) because referring back to that will ensure that you don’t quote somebody out of context, and it will help you to remember the broader arguments of the authors you decide to engage in more detail.
Again, you can still continue to read literature that is relevant to your subject as you engage in this process.  However, at this point, I tend to focus my reading on sections that I have yet to write.
(8) Edit
You have now completed a very polished draft of your thesis (given the multiple edits you did while writing).  However, I still go over the whole thing at least two more times after I finish writing.
Once those edits are done, I will put everything down for a week and try not to think about it.  Then I will go back to the thesis and edit it twice more.  This will help me to see points where my thoughts are either unclear (perhaps they are clear to me, because I’ve been buried in this subject for a year, but I need to ask if they are clear to the reader who is picking this thesis up for the first time) or where they need to be refined.
And that’s it.  Given all the prep work, the writing and editing tends to go quite quickly for me.  I would estimate that steps (7)-(8) take about 10-15% of my total writing time.
So, voila, follow these steps and you should get a 4.0.  Not only that, you may find that somebody wants to publish your thesis.

April Books

Well, my reviews ended up being a little more sustained this month.  That makes me happy.
1. World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age by C. Kavin Rowe.
This book has received praise from some top-notch scholars (like Robert Jenson, Markus Bockmuehl and Michael Gorman) and has also received glowing reviews in journals (as diverse as First Things and RBL) and on some other great biblioblogs (see, for example, J. R. Daniel Kirk’s two part series here and here).  Needless to say, this book has received a lot of positive attention and it is very well-deserved.
In World Upside Down, Rowe challenges the traditional reading of Acts (that sees Acts as an apologia to the Powers, and that also sees Acts as speaking highly of the Roman Empire).  Instead, Rowe argues, Acts posits a world that has been turned upside down — a world wherein the culture and politics bound up with (imperial) pagan theology are undermined by the embodied, communal proclamation of the revelation of Israel’s God in the crucified and resurrected person of Jesus.  Rowe makes this case carefully, exegetically, and persuasively.
Of course, anybody familiar with Luke’s Gospel should not be surprised by this.  The thoroughly subversive nature of Luke’s first volume has often been noted (to take the most well-known example, compare Luke’s more ‘material’ version of the Beautitudes with the more ‘spiritual’ version found in Matthew) and one would expect to find that theme continued in Luke’s second volume.  Indeed, I have often wondered how scholars could hold such differing views about Luke’s two volumes given that they are actually a single work of writing.
Therefore, Rowe presents us with a reading of Acts that fits well with the narrative trajectory and themes already begun in Luke’s Gospel.  I won’t go into detail as to what he argues — one can read the links provided above for that — but Rowe basically begins with an initial chapter dealing with definitions and how one reads Acts.
In the second chapter, he explores the ‘collision’ the occurs between Christian theology and its concomitant practical outworkings (‘ecclesial life’ which is ‘the cultural explication of God’s identity’) and paganism and its concomitant outworkings.
In the third chapter, Rowe looks at moments of conflict that result in Paul being questioned by the State authorities.  I found this chapter to be quite rich, especially when compared to the superficial analysis of these events provided by Seyoon Kim in his recent book, Christ and Caesar.  Kim argues that the imperial authorities regularly find Paul innocent because Paul is, in fact, engaging in a form of theopolitics that is not at all threatening or radical (of course, I find it puzzling that Kim takes these authorities as reliable guides, especially considering that these authorities decided to crucify Jesus… and would later on kill Paul and the other apostles).  Rowe, on the other hand, agrees that Paul is not trying to orchestrate a coup or engage in something that is fundamentally anti-state for the sake of being anti-state.  However, Rowe argues, this does not mean that Christianity did not carry revolutionary implications for the state of things under Roman power.  For, he writes, ‘the rejection of insurrection does not simultaneously entail endorsement’ and, furthermore, ‘the state is not equipped to discern theological truth… the gentiles attempt to see with closed eyes… they are under the [power and authority] of Satan’.
Turning to the fourth chapter, Rowe looks more at the upside down nature of the world of the early Christians and spends time contrasting the lordship of Caesar with the lordship of Jesus.  What Rowe argues is that both of these lords offer a different understanding of that which is contained in the notion of ‘lordship’.  Jesus demonstrates lordship by establishing peace through crucifixion, subversion, service and suffering, while Caesar seeks to attain lordship by establishing peace through pacification and ruthless military dominion (NB: relating the creation of peace to lordship was especially important in Luke’s Roman context given the way in which the Empire had been devastated by a series of civil wars — the one who would be able to restore peace to the Empire, would be the one with a rightful claim to lordship, and this becomes a fundamental part of Augustan ideology).  Thus, not so much contradicting those who engage in counter-imperial readings of Paul, but nuancing them in an important way, Rowe argues that Jesus is not raised up to challenge the status of Caesar; rather, Caesar is the upstart and the rival, ‘Jesus lordship is primary–ontologically and politically–not Caesar’s’.
Finally, in the last chapter, Rowe explores the implications of reading Acts for engaging in what he refers to as ‘the politics of truth’ in our contemporary context.  Here, I very much appreciated the way in which Rowe links exegesis and application — simply to read Acts is to already engage in application and these things cannot be separated.  Therefore, Rowe spends the bulk of this chapter exploring what reading Acts means in relation to themes of tolerance and bearing witness to truth.  Here, in order to avoid both shallow appeals to tolerance and oppressive appeals to exclusivity, Rowe argues that the politics of truth are fundamentally shaped by the nature of lordship as it is embodied by Jesus.  Witnessing is not just proclamation, it is also ‘living out the pattern of life that culminates in resurrection’.  Unfortunately, I found this chapter a little disappointing (‘tolerance’, or some such related subject, seems to be the go-to subject for application when it comes to NT scholars these days… at this point, this strikes me as done to death and makes me wonder about the lack of imagination or the lack of awareness of one’s own historical context that this might reveal).  I was hoping Rowe would link his reading to more contemporary matters related to socio-economic issues, but I hope to press him more on his thoughts in this regard in the near future, so I will close here.
Suffice to say, this book is very highly recommended reading.
2. Paul, Philosophy and the Theopolitical Vision: Critical Engagements with Agamben, Badiou, Žižek, and Others edited by Douglas Harink.
Many thanks to Christian at Wipf & Stock for this review copy!
It’s always hard to do justice to essay collections in these short blog reviews, and it is especially difficult in this case because there are so many fascinating essays contained in this book.  However, in the introduction, Douglas Harink does a fine job of summarizing that which ties these pieces together.  He writes:

The messianic event, as the interruption, qualification, and transfiguration of all discourses, marks the common theme of the essays of this volume… Put theologically (which is the primary discourse of most of the essays here), what creates Paul as a subject and interrupts the “previous regime of discourses” is an apokalypsis… the philosophers studied here have found in Paul’s apocalyptic messianism a point of departure for a fundamental criticism of modern philosophy.

After Harink’s introduction, Part One of the book (‘From Apocalypse to Philosophy’) is an essay by J. Louis Martyn  exploring the ways in which Paul’s gospel proclamation invades the philosophical context of his day.  Over against philosophical systems, Martyn claims that:

The gospel is not one phantasia among others.  The gospel is the dynamis theou, the present, powerful, intrusive act of the God who raised his crucified Son from the grave.  The gospel is the specific apocalypse of Christ as God’s own end-time act.

This, then, is why the gospel generates a new community that is ‘God’s new moral agent’ and that engages in the same form of cruciform love that was expressed by Jesus in opposition to the ‘anti-God powers’ that rule over this present age.
Following Martyn, in Part Two of the book, we are presented with three papers that focus upon the ways in which Nietzche, Heidegger, and Benjamin engage with Paul (although we still see a fair amount of reflection relating to Badiou, Taubes and Agamben, anticipating later parts of the book).  I didn’t find any of these essays to be particularly mind-blowing but they were still quite fun to read.  Although these essays might not have provided me with any new insights related to Paul, I did find their reviews of the philosophers at hand to be clear and quite useful.  Alas, too my shame, I have not spent nearly enough time reading any of these big three.
In Part Three, we receive two essays that are focused upon engaging Badiou’s reflections upon Paul, and a third essay that engages with both Badiou and Žižek.  I found this section to be quite strong.  Further, in my own reading, I have mostly plundered Badiou (especially) but also Žižek (but less so) and have mostly just exploited them as points of inspiration rather than trying to follow them or engage them more systematically.  Consequently, the more thorough and systematic engagement that occurs here was quite useful and it was interesting to compare it to my own reflections.
Neil Elliott’s essay, ‘Ideological Closure in the Christ-Event: A Marxist Response to Alain Badiou’s Paul’, was excellent and one of the real stand-out essays of the book (of course, I might be unduly biased, given how much I have appreciated what Elliott has written elsewhere!).  When asking why Paul, who has traditionally been seen as the opponent and not the ally of emancipatory politics, is suddenly gaining so much interest amongst continental philosophers, Elliott suggests the following:

When Badiou declares that Paul is “our contemporary,” it is in part because he finds a precise parallel between Paul’s situation and ours.  But it is also because he find in Paul the ideological gesture, the performance of a “universal truth” that militates against the ideological constraints of Paul’s situation and our own.

Both Paul’s situation and ours are characterized, Badiou declares, by “the destruction of all politics,” evident then in the legal usurpation by the principate of the political structures of the Republic, and in our own day by a parliamentary-democratic system that carefully insulates the economic order from popular will, that is, from politics.

Now, for Elliott reading Paul in such a context, and in apocalyptic terms, leads to this conclusion:

Paul’s proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection means, inevitably I think, that the biopower of the state is not sovereign, that its totalizing claims can be resisted… The formation of a community whose collective subjectivity depends upon the failure of the state’s totalizing claims over their allegiance is inherently subversive.  For such a community to practice an economic mutualism that crossed, and thus annulled, the distinctions of slave vs. free or, implicitly, conqueror vs. conquered, would have constituted the performance of a genuine collective universalism such as Badiou describes.

However, Elliott immediately points out, Badiou does not engage in much detail with such political readings of Paul’s focused upon Jesus’s death and resurrection.  Rather, Badiou still seems bound by the standard issue that has dominated traditional Protestant readings of Paul, i.e. Paul’s understanding of the Law and its relation to Jews and Gentiles.  Thus, Elliott charges Badiou with making the same mistake that has been made by many Protestant scholars: a falsely constructed opposition to Judaism, Jewish identity, and the ‘exceptionalism’ of the Jewish law are made central to Paul’s thinking.
In opposition to this, Elliott posits a less abstractly ‘philosophical’ and more actively ‘political’ focus in Paul and returns to the theme of Jesus’s death and resurrection.  Consequently, drawing from Jon Sobrino, Elliott argues that “the universal truth at the heart of the Pauline gospel is no philosophical abstraction but is realized in an alternative politics, the civilization of human solidarity that is the civilization of poverty”.
Moving to Part Four of the book, we have two essays that focus upon Agamben.  Paul J. Griffiths’ piece, ‘The Cross as the Fulcrum of Politics: Expropriating Agamben on Paul’, was another one of the stand-out pieces in the book.  First of all, Griffiths provides a very clear and even exciting overview of the central themes in Agamben’s philosophical project and the ways in which his explicit reflections upon Paul fit within that project.  Thus, he explores Agamben’s reflections upon zoe and bios, citizenship and humanity, the law and violence, the messianic vocation and messianic time.
Griffiths then wants to try to intensify Agamben’s reflections and propel them in a more Christian direction.  He does this by first emphasizing that the messianic call does not merely revoke our vocation, but that it does so by crucifying it and so the “vocation’s revocation involves death.”  This then leads Griffiths to suggest that “the revoked and crucified vocation of the Christian citizen should be evident in quietist political action”.  Note, that this position is both quietist and active.  So, while Griffiths had triggered my alarm bells and had me thinking he was going to reassert a more traditional reading of Paul, he does not actually do this.  He explains:

It is a quietism… only of interest in the outcome of such action: that, and only that, is what is renounced by the citizen whose vocation as such has been revoked.  What gets put to rest by this quietism is a particular set of consequentialist interests, and what gets liberated is a genuinely Christian political agent.

Further, this Christian political agent is also marked by skepticism, hope, and lament.  This combination of factors, according to Griffiths, carries a number of advantages.  First, it provides a ‘more accurate understanding of the limits of our capacity to make accurate prospective judgments’; second, it allows these people to not be discouraged by claims that their political proposals won’t produce the goals they desire (‘Eschewing consequentialist judgments about a proposal’s enactment… may very easily be extended in the direction of eschewing such judgments about the likelihood of a proposal’s enactment’); third, this then permits continued advocacy regardless of both consequentialist and utopian objections; and, fourth, such people can abandon pretence.
Now, what is interesting to me, is that Griffiths seems to be trying to create a bit of a bridge between those who take after Niebuhr and those who take after Hauerwas and Yoder.  Thus, we have a deep skepticism and political (or perhaps historical or anthropological) realism coupled with a form of political action that is committed to a certain way of being, regardless of whether or not that way of being can actually ever be implemented or embodied.  To be honest, I am quite suspicious of what Griffiths is proposing (for example, I think we need to become more rigorously consequentialist in our political action, not less so, but this leads me in a different direction than both Griffiths and those to whom he is opposed… although Griffiths is frustratingly vague about ‘the particular set of consequentialist interests’ that he seeks to counter).  However, he certainly got me thinking and left me with some good questions to pursue.
Finally, in Part Five, we have three essays that, as far as I can tell, didn’t fit as well into the other categories and got lumped together at the end.  The first, by Jens Zimmerman, is a helpful analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary philosophical readings of Paul, coupled with an alternate proposal rooted in the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  The second, by Gordon Zerbe, is also a very helpful look at the type of communities that are being called into being (or not) by Agamben, Taubes, Badiou, Žižek, and Paul.  Last of all, Douglas Harink, concludes the volume with an essay exploring assumptions made by commentators about the notions of time and history and how those assumptions impact one’s ability to read Paul’s epistle to the Romans.  Thus, he looks at Robert Jewett as a strong representative of a “historicist’ or ‘modern’ notion of time, at N. T. Wright as a representative of the ‘salvation-historical’ group, at Barth for a ‘time-and-eternity dialectical notion’ and at Agamben for a ‘messianic’ notion of time.
So, I realize I didn’t touch on all the essays in this book but hopefully this sampling gives the reader a good idea of the quality of material contained herein.  I strongly recommend this book to readers of Paul (I’ve been trying to get those who read Paul to engage ‘outside’ voices, like the continental philosophers, not because I think they are always right, but because I think they often see important things that we miss because of the ‘insider’ lenses that we bring to the texts.  These lenses make us think we already know what Paul is writing about when, in fact, we often do not already know anything of the sort).  Further, for those who are curious about what is going on in philosophy and its relationship to Paul, but are unsure of where to start, this would be a very helpful guide.  Recommended reading.
3. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy.
This is the tale of a brother who impregnates his sister and then, after she gives birth, takes the baby and disposes of it in the woods.  A wandering tinker discovers the child, the sister sets off in pursuit of the tinker and child, and the brother pursues the sister.  Meanwhile, three other figures are also wandering the land living off of the lives of others… and, somewhere along the way, a herd of pig stampedes into the waters.  But, as with other McCarthy novels, that doesn’t mean any demons have been cast out.
I’m noticing another theme that seems to run through McCarthy’s novels.  Violence, of course, is the first and most obvious theme.  Violence, paired with both the glorious and the grotesque.  Violence that is neither good nor evil.  Violence that simply is.
However, another theme appears in several prominent characters — from the Sheriff in No Country, to the Kid in Blood Meridian, the brother in Outer Dark, Lester Ballard in Child of God, and the Man (or perhaps the reader?) in The Road — and I think this only became clear to me after reading this last book.  I think this is the theme of being caught up in a world that is vast, unreliable, monstrous and beautiful.  But, such a swirl is it all that one can never be sure if the monstrous is beautiful or if the beautiful is monstrous, or if they are one and the same thing.  So, these characters sit perched on the cusp of the world, coming close (at times) to understanding things — perhaps they even did understand things at one point — but ultimately they are unable to do so.  And, in the end, they are all devastated.
4. Suttree by Cormac McCarthy.
Cornelius Suttree was born into some wealth and, unlike many, received an education, but he turned his back on that life (as well as on his family) in order to live amongst the down-and-outs in Knoxville in the 1950s.  As usual, in narrating this story, McCarthy summons an eclectic but electrifying cast of characters.  What I find interesting about this (especially in light of the remarks I just made about characters standing on the edge of a world they cannot comprehend), is that Suttree appears to have come very close to some form of comprehension.  Granted some events still stagger him, but the challenge for Suttree is not arriving at understanding; rather, it is the realization that understanding doesn’t count for much.  Thus, near the end of the novel, when Suttree makes the only remark that comes close to explaining why he has chosen the lifestyle that he has, he states (in a conversation with himself):

Of what would you repent?
Nothing.
Nothing?
One thing.  I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name.  Of that vanity I recant all.

And, really, it makes me wonder: would we all be better served if we recanted our efforts to attain to meaning, or something meaningful, in our own lives?  I wonder how much my own efforts are leading me down a path akin to Suttree’s…
5. The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison by Warren Fellows.
This is Warren Fellows’ (semi-autobiographical) account of the time he served in a Thai prison after being busted on heroin trafficking charges.  In the book, he spends some time explaining how he got into trafficking, what his time in prison was like (the bulk of the novel), and then what it was like transitioning back into ‘normal’ life in Australia.  It was a pretty intense and gripping story.  The opening scene — wherein Fellows cuts open an egg-sized boil on another inmate’s neck, only to see a bunch of worms spill out — is pretty much burned into my brain.
Mental Note: never go to prison in Thailand (yet another country to cross off the list… yeah, Russia, I’m looking at you).
Monthly Mix-Tape
1. The Veils, Under the Folding Branches; 2. A Perfect Circle, Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Sound of the War Drums; 3. Sunset Rubdown, The Empty Threats of Little Lord; 4. The xx, Shelter; 5. Titus Andronicus, To Old Friends and New; 6. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Home; 7. The Antlers, Two; 8. Mumford and Sons, Blank White Page; 9. Broken Bells, The High Road; 10. Blink-182, Stay Together for the Kids.