This is the audio version of the sixth part of Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy and a Sense of the Modern (Routledge 2020) by Mark Maguire and David A. Westbrook.

The fundamental problem with security is epistemological: since the enterprise is oriented towards the future, what is to be done cannot be known. Thus the prevailing mood, for all the pretense toward rationality, is anxiety. Here begins an elaboration, and critique, of Weber’s idea of bureaucracy.

Here, as elsewhere, and in a sense in the German critical tradition, we are using the social as the foundation for philosophical inquiry.

My apologies for the sound quality. Rough year, and these are the raw files.

This is the audio version of the fifth part of Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy and a Sense of the Modern (Routledge 2020) by Mark Maguire and David A. Westbrook.

This is Chapter Four, “The Mysterious Public,” a word imbricated in complicated ways with the very notion of security, the legitimation of violence, and so the state, to say nothing of the environment we inhabit.

Vincent Parlato did a fantastic job composing and performing really interesting music for each part, which sets off the rather dark discussion. In some ways, I think the audiobook is better than the text. He also edited the audio files, so I sound better than I really do. But life has gotten in the way, and we need this book to be available to the public. I therefore will put up the rest of the book in relatively short order, as raw audiofiles.

I hope Vince has time to come back to this project in due course. Be that as it may, Mark and I thank Vince for the great work he has done.

This is Chapter 3 of Maguire and Westbrook, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern, "The Secret College."  In it, we begin our discussion of the social structures in this world.

Part Three of the audiobook for Maguire & Westbrook, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern.  This part discusses the political character of "security," and why "security" cannot be "solved."

Part Two of the audiobook for Maguire & Westbrook, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern.

This is the first part of an audiobook, Maguire & Westbrook, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern.  The text has been published by Routledge, and is generally available.

Part II of my book, Welcome to New Country: Music for Today's America, available in print on Amazon.

Part II of my book Smith Lake.

An introduction, and the beginning, of my book Welcome to New Country: Music for Today's America.  Popular music as window into meanings, personal and even constitutional, for the way so many of us live. 

The limitations and excitement of the photo essay as a form, and my efforts to use it to articulate some subjectivities of the era just past, between the Global Financial Crisis and the Covid Pandemic.