Online Ideas: essays

By Hugo Blondel and Jacob Potash

Online Ideas (2022) is a short essay collection tailored to modern minds, trapped in fractal dopamine webs that stretch from poetry to pop. Its themes are timeless: how the rapper-poet mimics the genderless jehovah; how the individual splinters, expands and refracts through rainbow-colored tribal politics; how Trump, Gaga, polities and pop culture are all dancing in unison to some queer step. They reflect the shattered minds of two authors as their lives are disintegrating throughout the pandemic. They are written for those who are, as they say, a bit mental. Art historian and cultural critic Roland Betancourt, author of Byzantine Intersectionality, comments: "In an era of hot takes and click-bait op-eds born out of a tl;dr brevity, this volume provides a slower mode of pop cultural critique. The writings collected here are marked by a bygone time of sustained critique and long-form blogging, but they are distinctly new and matured in their interventions. Through a series of eminently readable essays, Potash and Blondel look back on our world with the weight of their erudition and subjectivities. The tone of these texts is trifurcated: there is a longing grasp, a tongue-in-cheek dismissal, and a pointed critique. We often do not know if there is disdain or embrace, leaving us with the distinct sense that this fervent, committed ambivalence is precisely what defines our moment. Moving between personal reflection and theological meditations, these texts model forms of thinking across time that place our popular culture in longer histories of intellectual thought. What does Biblical exegesis have to do with Nicki Minaj? Everything."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BB56YJTG
• ISBN13: 9798986336411
• Release Date: July 2022
• Publisher: Nachleben One
• Length: 66 Pages
• Weight: 0.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 4.3" x 7.0"