Book / Graphic Novel Review Pyongyang a voyage into North Korea. By Guy Delisle

Pyongyang, a Voyage to North Korea  (2003)

By: Guy Delisle

Why I Bought This Book: a while back a coworker of mine started to ask me about North Korea and if the outlandish things that you hear about the country are true. So I asked him why the sudden interest in this hermit country and he explained to me that he had got this graphic novel that explored many of the crazy aspects of the country. So fascinated with the idea of a graphic novel about North Korea so I went to my local book store and got myself a  copy of this fascinating book.

The Story: Well the basic plot of the story is about the experiences of the author/illustrators having to work and live in North Korea, and I don't want to spoil too much talking about some of the absurd situations Guy gets himself into.  

What I liked and  Central Thymes:
•    I loved the simple and cartoonish art of the book, it adds nicely to the story. Each chapter has a full page illustration of important monuments of the country that show off Guy's artistic capabilities.
•    The book is just as insightful as it is funny, a fantastic read. 
•    Guy's culture shock is priceless, and he's pretty honest in showing that at moments he can be a snobbish prick. 
•    It's interesting to see how Guy's views of the country and its people changes as the book progresses.
•    The parallel reality that expats live in,  like the people that work for NGOs, international companies employs and diplomats, is fascinating because they are not allowed to interact with the locals freely, so they only interact amongst each other.
•    Guy seems to be a  music lover  and how he suffers listing to crappy official music that's on all day at his work, is something I can identify with because something similar happened to me working in a small frontier town 2000 km from my home in the middle of nowhere, the terrible music they listened there drove me crazy, jajajaja. 
•    The book is not scientific account and analyses of what's going on in the country, but what is valuable  is that most books and articles about the country tend to have top down perspective centering around the regime and its politics, this book has a bottom up from seeing what it like for a foreigner to actually be there and see for themselves the things that happen in the country.


What I didn't like:
•    The only bad thing about the book is that there isn't an introductory page giving a little bit of context to when the author was in the country and why, or to explain a little more about his job. You get a little bit and pieces, but personally, I want to know more about the author's background but I'm nit picking here.

Overall: 10 out of 10

Book Review and breakdown Slavoj Zizek's Trouble in Paradise. From the End of History to the End of Capitalism (2014) Work in progress

Trouble in Paradise. From the End of History to the End of Capitalism  (2014)

Here a link to a brief video that I made on the subject: link to my incredible video review of the Slavoj's book

By Slavoj Zizek

Why I Bought This Book: I actually caught a couple of dissertation of Zizek online, it was recommended to me by my Youtube feed. And immediately I was fascinated with him because even though I do not share most of his views on politics and international relations, he has a refreshing point of view from the left, being very critical of his own political background. So I went out to get one his books and to my surprise, I found about ten published books in Spanish at my local book store, I had no idea that he was such an established author.

What I liked and  Central Thymes:

·         Slavoj establishes that conservatives are not really conservatives, they have latched on to an ever changing capitalism system, becoming reckless. Even if it destroys many traditional social institutions, putting social cohesion under immense pressure. This is very true from my point of view, and it's increasingly evident that many time put ideology over the well being and the way of life, backing policies that are detrimental to them.

·         The real Conservative is the person that admits that there is antagonism in the capitalist system and it has gotten to certain dead ends. It is the person that calls out against out simple minded capitalist progress, so the radical left finds its self-playing the role of being the new conservatives. He's actually onto something here but later abandons this idea later in the book.

·         Rightwing conservatives always defend the freedom of choice but taking away the options.

Slavoj Zizek

·         Neoliberalism has taken market competition into every aspect of life, like in education and health.  

·         Zizek establishes a fascinating concept that in modern capitalism individual people are not seen as parts of the work force, but as entrepreneurs that make use and take advantage of his or hers economic capital. And while their lives progress they most take investments decisions relative to their economic well-being. They make a good and bad investment, like changing jobs, adding or losing their personal capital. After reading this I couldn't help to think about credit cards, and how debt is a possible way of political and financial control. But the book actually goes in this direction after that explain that there is a tradeoff of losing social protection for the debt. So from my point of view but I think Slavoj would be on the same page, be my personal conclusion with this is basically debt ties down social mobility something conservative just love. Slavoj uses the example you do not have the right to a home but must access long term credits.

·         People are free to make financial decisions so they are responsible they are their own capitalist responsible for their own future, but conservative just love to forget about how debt and externalities can ruin people's lives.

·          State must roll back its control to give the system freedom.

·         Slovoj has an obvious soft spot for pop culture and that brings some color to the book.

·         Slavoj expresses that the people that we call Islamic fundamentalist, are Pseudo-fundamentalist who are deeply troubled, fascinated and fixated on the lives of the nonbelievers, they obsess about the sinner and infidels. In their battle against sin, they are actual exteriorizing their lack of faith and conviction fuels the violence. They also secretly consider themselves as inferior, so politically correct discourse from the west towards these people just drives these people off the wall. The cultural difference isn't the issue with these fundamentalists, because are pushed to act  out of how much they have become similar to us.

What I didn't like:

·         It is interesting and frustrating at the same time that this book lacks any kind of focus, while in his dissertations he's much more centered and straight to the point, normally it's the other way around.

·         The lack of focus is so bad at moments where you as the reader actually get lost in what the hell he was talking about. The author is all over the place and just bombards you with information, it hard to keep up with what he's trying to explain.

·         At the book references Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History"  as one of the main concepts that it wants to debunk, but never revisits the idea after the introduction.

·         Zizek accuses Christianity of preparing the groundwork for this situation, one owes God infinite debt for one's life. But for me at least being Catholic I that it religious doctrine does not go hand and hand with hardcore capitalist doctrine, or just ask Francis what he thinks about neoliberalism.

·         Institution like Wikileaks is a true sign of the progressive democratization of information, the author completely ignores the political aspect of this phenomena. Now he's right in how that information will become more ubiquitous as time progresses, from my point of view it will not be a Hacker thing 20 years down the line.

Reading this book you get the feeling that I'm missing out on things because I'm not familiar with the rest of his body of work, you have to know what makes this guy tick to really appreciate what he's trying to convey in this book, I got to read his older stuff. So I can't grade this book.