Benjamin’s philosophy presents problems best addressed not academically, but in dialogue with living political processes. And it is in Latin America, particularly Venezuela, that Benjamin’s ideas have been most vividly illustrated and interrogated. | more…
For a century, the counterrevolutionary reaction to the events of October 1917 has arguably been the most determining ideological factor in Western politics. Today the victory of that counterrevolution is complete, but Western powers still need their inherited antithesis, in changing form, as self-justification. | more…
Russell was both a liberal and a socialist, a combination perfectly comprehensible in his time, but almost unthinkable today. As a liberal, he opposed concentrations of power in all its military, governmental, and religious manifestations. But as a socialist, he equally opposed the concentrations of power stemming from the private ownership of the means of production, which therefore had to be put under social control. | more…
Since Trump’s election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of “populism.” In today’s political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the failures of neoliberalism give rise to neofascist movements, but also to connect these to the structural crisis of concentrated, financialized, and globalized capitalism. | more…
What can a class analysis tell us about fascism’s national particularities and early forms? Why was there no mass movement for a separate fascist party in the United States? The lessons of several now-forgotten works of scholarship from the 1930s are critical to our understanding of American fascism—not only for what they tell us about its history, but also about how to fight it today. | more…
Argentina has long been plagued by cycles of economic mismanagement, including multiple failed neoliberal experiments. Before his election as president, Mauricio Macri promised resumed growth, an export boom, lower inflation, a smaller budget deficit, and less poverty. Since then, has the new neoliberalism outperformed the old? | more…
In an idyllic canyon near Santiago, a group of twelve women were electric with emotion from sharing personal stories and experiences, and, of course, from singing. Deep bonds were forged among participants, few of whom knew each other prior to the workshop. They were there to compose women-identified songs in a setting that alternated between individual and group composition. | more…
Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but with historically distinct features specific to the political economy and culture of the United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. | more…
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[/wcm_nonmember] Although today there are some setbacks in the region, nobody can deny that there is a huge difference between the Latin America that Hugo Chávez inherited and the Latin America he left us. A new revolutionary subject has been created. | more…
The anthropocentric tendency to view nature or the environment as everything that is not human obscures the productive processes that go on in “nature.” But non-human animals are also the purposeful producers of their own worlds: they too engage in their own species-specific objectifying activity that transforms what is, from their perspective, nature; they too build worlds in their own bodily image. | more…
As astronauts penetrate ever further into the cosmos, how are their bodies and subjectivities being transformed? While space travel remains governed by mechanisms of power and domination that tend to treat astronauts as tools, the practice of “space medicine” is now beginning to interact with astronauts’ bodies in a more multidirectional, dialectical fashion. | more…
Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, the alt-right organization Turning Point USA introduced its notorious Professor Watchlist…, listing some 200 radical academics in the universities as dangerous professors. Stories regarding this list were soon being carried in major papers throughout the country. In contrast to David Horowitz’s list of “the 101 most dangerous academics in America” a decade ago, the current Professor Watchlist has behind it the new sense of power on the extreme right provided by Trump’s electoral victory.… There can be no doubt that this is part of an attempted new McCarthyism. In terms of its overall orientation, the alt-right strategy here resembles the Gleichschaltung (“bringing into line”) in 1933–35 in Hitler’s Germany, where intimidation was directed at all the major cultural institutions, including universities, with the object of getting them to align with the new dominant views. | more…