wrul (they, iel, etc) reviewed This Life by Martin Hägglund
part-y
3 stars
It's several books in one, slighted overlapped.
The philosophical treatise is nothing special. The theological critique is illuminating. The final wind-up to an economic manifesto is incisive. The political blueprint leans a bit too hard on Haegglund's least substatiated claims around subjective relationships with time and mortality, but remains workable. The whizz through MLK's latter phase of activism blends well, as a piece of political biography.
And yet, as a single volume, This Life crawls along in repetitious circles. It's as though every passage expects to act as ambassador in isolation for the entire work. This leaves much of the writing --- including the thesis as a whole --- feeling disproportionately shallow, underdeveloped, or simplistic, for its length.
However, one stream (constituting the front of Part Two) really would warrant a wide readership in excerpt (and runs thicker, too):
The call to reconsider, reject, and replace the capitalistic understanding of …
It's several books in one, slighted overlapped.
The philosophical treatise is nothing special. The theological critique is illuminating. The final wind-up to an economic manifesto is incisive. The political blueprint leans a bit too hard on Haegglund's least substatiated claims around subjective relationships with time and mortality, but remains workable. The whizz through MLK's latter phase of activism blends well, as a piece of political biography.
And yet, as a single volume, This Life crawls along in repetitious circles. It's as though every passage expects to act as ambassador in isolation for the entire work. This leaves much of the writing --- including the thesis as a whole --- feeling disproportionately shallow, underdeveloped, or simplistic, for its length.
However, one stream (constituting the front of Part Two) really would warrant a wide readership in excerpt (and runs thicker, too):
The call to reconsider, reject, and replace the capitalistic understanding of value is incredibly obvious, but terrifically important --- and, if Haegglund's review of the literature preceding him is representative, shockingly singular.