Elevate Difference

Reviews by Marcie Bianco

Marcie Bianco

Marcie Bianco is finishing up her PhD dissertation on Marlovian Ethics, in addition to which she also holds an AB from Harvard, a MSt from Oxford, and a MA from Rutgers. She is a part-time librarian at a posh NYC private school, a lecturer on Shakespeare at Rutgers, a personal trainer, and a writer and journalist. She is currently the news editor for Cherry Grrl, and, in her spare time, she loves frolicking around the city with her Chihuahua, Deleuze.

The Affect Theory Reader

As the first definitive collection of essays on affect studies, The Affect Theory Reader demonstrates how the affective turn in academia has been, and continues to be felt, throughout a variety of disciplines. Studies on affect produce qualified and valuable effects in the realms of aesthetics, ethics, and politics—to name just a few.

The Extra Man

Based on the Jonathan Ames novel of the same title, The Extra Man is a film about, among other things, the amusing network of personal eccentricities that are produced when people engage with each other in society.

Fish Out of Water

In Fish Out of Water, Ky Dickens recalls her effort to reconcile her devout, Christian faith with her homosexuality. She claims she feels like a “fish out of water,” because, after coming out during her senior year of college at Vanderbilt, she was ostracized from her academic community, but, at the same time, didn’t quit feel an affinity to the gay community at large.

Le Tigre: On Tour

“What’s the status of Le Tigre?” an eager—albeit slightly angst-ridden—fan asks Kathleen Hanna during the Q&A session after the screening of Le Tigre: On Tour. I, too, had been wondering the same question—because this band, who has proven so formative to women young and old everywhere, seems to exist only in our collective lesbo-feminist consciousness at the moment.

Between the Sheets: Nine 20th Century Women Writers and Their Famous Literary Partnerships

The adage, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” is a backhanded compliment to women, and one that implicitly avers a submissive feminism of codependency.

The Heretics

The Heretics: Stories from a Feminist Collective premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) during the first two weeks of October, 2009.

You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity

Each essay in Laurie J. Shrage’s collection, You've Changed, takes on the challenge of analyzing the philosophical, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the—for lack of a better or more acute concept—umbrella category of “trans” identity. This same challenge, which underlines the collection’s creation, is the same challenge that often times handicaps its clarity and ultimate success.

The Naughty Kitchen With Chef Blythe Beck

Oxygen devised a new show from a most novel idea: produce a “food show” as a documentary, or in their terms, as a “docu-series.” The show, The Naughty Kitchen, has the drama of the popular Top Chef without the competition. Instead, it delves into the mania and frenzy of the restaurant business from Chef Blythe Beck’s perspective.

The Good Fairies of New York

Having recently moved to New York City, one of my first excursions was to the Strand Bookstore. Late one evening in May, I walked into the shop and, feeling slightly overwhelmed but giddy with excitement, I ventured into the maze of tables and shelves surfeit with books. Within ten minutes, I happened upon a book entitled The Good Fairies of New York. The title caught my attention: fairies? New York?

A Night of Shorts (06/05/2009)

The Wellesley Project’s inaugural show, A Night of Shorts, brought six single-scene dramatic performances and two choreographed pieces to the WorkShop Theatre for a short-run at the beginning of June. While home for the Project is New York City, its namesake—Wellesley College—figures as the catalyzing spirit behind the Project’s conception. Its founders, Caitlin Graham and Janice Yang, envisioned the Project as an artistic medium for women to pursue opportunities in both theater and production.

The Non-Believer’s Bible

The Non-Believers Bible was passed along to me for review by a colleague who found the writing style to be painful, thereby foreclosing the possibility of her writing a deliberate review. Rather than headache-inducing, I found the text to be perplexing. Both while in the midst of reading it and after finishing it, one question continuously echoed in my mind: How to read this text?

Examined Life

Astra Taylor’s documentary, Examined Life, is fantastically untimely in both its form and content. Formally, the documentary is structured as a series of eight, roughly ten-minute segments in which nine of today’s leading critical thinkers ruminate upon a social and ethical issue.

Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy

An international bestseller when it was first published over a decade ago, Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World has recently been re-released with a new appendix consisting of a short set of thematic and plot-related questions. Gaarder’s novel, brilliant in its philosophical scope and concision, narrates the intellectual maturation of its protagonist, Sophie Amundsen, a fourteen-year-old girl living in Norway. The novel is comprised of brief synopses of major philosophical theories and figures, from classical myth to twentieth century existentialism, from Socrates to Beauvoir.

Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind

The title of the new documentary on feminist theorist Judith Butler plays upon Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s hypothesis that there are three possible kinds of encounters with aliens: the first kind is defined as “sighting,” the second as “evidence” and the third as “contact.” The title not only suggests that the intention of the documentary is to make “contact” with “Judith Butler,” but that, more to the point, something has prohibited this contact.

Sticky Fingers: Queers Running the Stage Art Gamut (2/17/2007)

Sticky Fingers featured a medley of performances ranging from spoken word poetry to electro-rock by queer artists from across the eastern seaboard. Held at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY, the show was stimulating in its polymorphous perversity, the performances audacious in their satirical elements and guttural verve. Manhattan-based artist Chavisa Woods opened the night with her spoken word piece “No One is Ever Going to Touch You Like This.” Woods’ piece was a powerful inquiry the reality of passion and fantasy.
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