Phil Cohen

eyeglass books

Towards an ecology of

political mindfulness

WAYPOINTS TO

WARDS AN

ECOLO

GY OF

POLITICAL M

INDFULN

ESSW

AYPOIN

TS Phil Cohen

eyeglass books

Autumn 2019

‘Bringing together the joyful wit and steely wisdom of his writing over recent years, this book is

nothing less than brilliant.’ Lynne Segal. Author of ’Radical Happiness:Moments of Collective Joy’

WAYPOINTS: Towards an ecology of political mindfulness by Phil Cohen

We are living through disturbed and disturbing times in which the maps drawn by political scientists no longer make sense of what is happening on the ground. Against this background the propagandists of neo-liberal individualism urge us to cultivate ‘resilience’ and ‘mindfulness’ as a way of seizing and surviving the present moment. Mindfulness in particular has been popularised as a way of promoting well-being by enabling people suffering from anxiety or depression to become more aware of internal mental states and their relation to external circumstances.

But what if this concept is applied not just to the adaptive strategies of an individual psyche but to the state of health of the body politic? It might then help us focus more precisely on how the stresses and strains of our everyday lives are connected to the social structures we inhabit. It might, for example, help us understand more concretely how issues, of race, gender, generation and class shape the most intimate registers of our being in the world.

From this starting point, the book charts a journey, at once intellectual and existential, across the fault lines of our conflicted society and divided selves. It brings together writings occasioned by recent political and personal events in an attempt to grasp their inter-connection in what is flashing past before it disappears into a fog of reminiscence or rhetoric. Many of the pieces collected here are this kind of auto-ethnographic reportage. Others, more essayistic in form, step back to think more strategically about some of the deeper processes at work in our increasingly uncivil society.

The first part of the book traces the seismic shifts taking place in the landscape of British politics, culminating in the Brexit vote, focussing on their cultural and ideological underpinnings. This is followed by a series of engagements with actual, mostly urban, landscapes, as they change underfoot, and suggests some possible ways of notating that encounter both at home and away. The next section explores personal memoryscapes of love and loss and their implications for understanding the dislocated times we are living through. The book concludes with a series of essays about the contemporary conditions of cultural production as these inform the poesis of singular arts practices.

Across these topics, Phil Cohen begins to map out an ecology of critical awareness as a timely antidote to the mindlessness currently being promoted through our political culture with its knee jerk responses to the multiple crises we face.

394 pages 133x203mm perfect bound RRP: £20 Publication date: October 2019978-1-9164719-5-5 (PDF) 978-1-9164719-6-2 (Paperback)

CONTENTS

Introduction: On Being ‘Woke’

Part One – Changing Political Cultures Brexit and the Island Story – A Fatal Attraction To Vote, Perchance to Dream: Moments in the Great Moving Left

(or Is It Right?) Show Mad Dogs and Englishmen:

The EU Referendum and Its Other Scene 1968’ and the Politics of Memory  On Translating Politics: The Legacy of French Situationism

Part Two – Thinking Places, Travelling Stories Crossing the Borderlands: The Dialectics of Trespass There Goes the Labourhood: An Urban Triptych A Twisted Thread: Imagining the Working-class City Glass Ceilings: In Memory of a Pioneering Urbanist Living the Dream: A Letter from Paris Pictures from a Not Quite Gone City In Search of the Antipodean

Part Three – Counter Finalities To Seek Within the Inferno That Which Is Not Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Threnody for Stuart Hall Our Dear Icarus In Place of Kaddish: A Letter for Ste Two Funerals and a Strange Conjuncture For Those Orphaned Late Santa with(out) Clause IV : Or, Socialism Is Not Just for Christmas Atishoo, Atishoo, We All Fall Down: Some Reflections on Body Politics Waiting Games People Play

Part Four – Cultural Formations Living with Painting Graphologies  Are We That Name? An Essay on Pseudonyms Black Atlas: The Poetics of Counter-Mapping The Occasions of Poetry

End notes and Index

How Many LightbulbsBehind the Scenes in The Science Museum StoresEdited by E. Haines, A. Woodhan, J. Wallett‘You come in this place and it’s like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when you turn the lights on with a clunk and gradually everything looms up out of the darkness and people go “Oh wow...!”’ Ben Russell, Curator, Science Museum Group978-1-9164719-0-0 (PDF)978-1-9164719-1-7 (Paperback)

paperback size 205x205mm, perfect bound, with illustrations Publication date: October 2019 Paperback RRP: £10.00

Postcards to GrandadA Family RomaceBy Phil Cohen‘A troubled yet exuberant vignette of imagined selfhood, inside-out to the world and history, in which old age and boyhood form a circling dance of inheritance, suffering and survival.’ Les Bell, Author of ‘Archipelagos’978-1-9164719-2-4 (Paperback)978-1-9164719-3-1 (Print on Demand)

paperback size 129x198mm, perfect bound, b/w illustrationsPublication date: April 2019 Paperback RRP: £10.00

Waypoints Towards an Ecology of Political MindfulnessBy Phil Cohen‘Thoughtful and beautifully cast treasures gathered along the journeys of an intellectually and politically engaged life.’ Caroline Knowles, Author of ‘Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Back Roads’‘Witty, stimulating, intellectual nuggets, to be savoured and returned to, which stay with you for a long time... A dialogue with an exquisite, subtle, supple mind.’ Ali Rattansi, Author of ‘Bauman and Contemporary Sociology: A Critical Analysis’978-1-9164719-5-5 Waypoints (PDF)978-1-9164719-6-2 Waypoints (Paperback)paperback size 133x203mm perfect bound Publication date: October 2019 Paperback RRP: £20.00

19 Station Road, Wivenhoe Colchester CO7 9DHAll titles available mail order Trade enquiries welcome www.eyeglassbooks.cominfo@eyeglassbooks.com telephone 07757305327

Phil Cohen

eyeglass books

Towards an ecology of

political mindfulness

WAYPOINTS

TOW

ARDS AN ECO

LOGY O

FPO

LITICAL MIN

DFULNESS

WAYPO

INTS

Phil Cohen

Phil Cohen

eyeglass books

Towards an ecology of

political mindfulness

WAYPOINTS WAYPOINTS

In this prose poem Phil Cohen explore

s the ‘other scenes’

of his family history, the stories he was

not told, about

where he came from. They feature the m

ysterious,

romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a J

ewish revolutionary

from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Gla

sgow Gorbals

during the period of Red Clydeside be

fore the First

World War. Through this interleaving

of stories, in which

elements of fact and fantasy become m

erged, Cohen sets

out to examine his complicated herita

ge as a ‘mischling’.

Postcards to Grandad is a bold experimen

t in what happens

when a writer and an artist from diff er

ent backgrounds

combine creative forces to tell the story

of a diasporic

journey across generations and culture

s, in which

recurrent elements of tragedy and far

ce interact with the

contingencies of shifting places and tim

es.

“A troubled yet exuberant vignett

e of imagined

selfhood, inside-out to the world

and history,

in which old age and boyhood for

m a circling

dance of inheritance, suff ering and

survival.”

Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')

“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic j

ourney into

some of the complexities of Jewis

h diasporic

identity, past and present. On the

way he

explores the intersections, both p

ersonal and

political of class, gender and ethn

icity which

continue to shape the way we live

now.”

Nira Yuval Davis

(Emeritus Professor of

Migration, Refugees and Belonging,

University of East London.)

eyeglass books

www.eyeglassbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4

Cover design: John Wallett

Postcards to Grandad

A Family Romance

Phil Cohen

graphics: John Wallett

eyeglass books

In this prose poem Phil Cohen explores the ‘other scenes’

of his family history, the stories he was not told, about

where he came from. They feature the mysterious,

romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a Jewish revolutionary

from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Glasgow Gorbals

during the period of Red Clydeside before the First

World War. Through this interleaving of stories, in which

elements of fact and fantasy become merged, Cohen sets

out to examine his complicated heritage as a ‘mischling’.

Postcards to Grandad is a bold experiment in what happens

when a writer and an artist from diff erent backgrounds

combine creative forces to tell the story of a diasporic

journey across generations and cultures, in which

recurrent elements of tragedy and farce interact with the

contingencies of shifting places and times.

“A troubled yet exuberant vignette of imagined

selfhood, inside-out to the world and history,

in which old age and boyhood form a circling

dance of inheritance, suff ering and survival.”

Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')

“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic journey into

some of the complexities of Jewish diasporic

identity, past and present. On the way he

explores the intersections, both personal and

political of class, gender and ethnicity which

continue to shape the way we live now.”Nira Yuval Davis

(Emeritus Professor of

Migration, Refugees and Belonging,

University of East London.)

eyeglass books

www.eyeglassbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4

Cover design: John Wallett

Postcards to Grandad

A Family RomancePhil Cohengraphics: John Wallett

eyeglass books

Phil Cohen

Phil Cohen

eyeglass books

Towards an ecology of

political mindfulness

WAYPOINTS WAYPOINTS

In this prose poem Phil Cohen explore

s the ‘other scenes’

of his family history, the stories he was

not told, about

where he came from. They feature the m

ysterious,

romantic fi gure of his grandfather, a J

ewish revolutionary

from Vitebsk who emigrated to the Gla

sgow Gorbals

during the period of Red Clydeside be

fore the First

World War. Through this interleaving

of stories, in which

elements of fact and fantasy become m

erged, Cohen sets

out to examine his complicated herita

ge as a ‘mischling’.

Postcards to Grandad is a bold experimen

t in what happens

when a writer and an artist from diff er

ent backgrounds

combine creative forces to tell the story

of a diasporic

journey across generations and culture

s, in which

recurrent elements of tragedy and far

ce interact with the

contingencies of shifting places and tim

es.

“A troubled yet exuberant vignett

e of imagined

selfhood, inside-out to the world

and history,

in which old age and boyhood for

m a circling

dance of inheritance, suff ering and

survival.”

Les Bell (Author of 'Archipelagos')

“Phil Cohen takes us on a poetic j

ourney into

some of the complexities of Jewis

h diasporic

identity, past and present. On the

way he

explores the intersections, both p

ersonal and

political of class, gender and ethn

icity which

continue to shape the way we live

now.”

Nira Yuval Davis

(Emeritus Professor of

Migration, Refugees and Belonging,

University of East London.)

eyeglass books

www.eyeglassbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-9164719-2-4

Cover design: John Wallett

Postcards to Grandad

A Family Romance

Phil Cohen

graphics: John Wallett

eyeglass books

How

Many Lightbuklbs

eyeglass books

How Many LightbulbsBehind The Sce

nes

in the Science

Museum Stores

Edited and with

introductions by

Elizabeth Haines

John Wallett and

Anna Woodham

eyeglass books

Autumn 2019