Is There No Feminism With Capitalism?

Reading Public Seminar, Thinking about the Relationships between Gender Justice and Free Public Life

The developing debate over #MeToo and the MeToo backlash raises critical questions concerning the broad and deep struggles for democracy and social justice, perhaps the most central: are gender justice and capitalism compatible? Many of my friends and colleagues think not. I disagree. My dissent from the leftist consensus of my ...
Read More
Is There No Feminism With Capitalism?

Give a Woman an Inch, She’ll Take a Penis

Backlash and the fragility of privilege

On February 8, 2018, The New School will host an event entitled "Sexual Harassment and Assault: Eros, Power, Violation, and Consent." Psychologist Jeremy Safran will moderate a panel featuring Lew Aron and Adrienne Harris from NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Katie Gentile from John Jay College of Criminal ...
Read More
Give a Woman an Inch, She’ll Take a Penis

Beyond Ekphrasis

Writing your heart out in a museum

Enter any museum, traditional, contemporary, technological, scientific, historical, and you see people moving slowly, standing quietly, observing. All well and good. People arrive in museums to learn and understand art. They study the installation; they ingest the presented explanation and interpretation. Perfectly reasonable and expected. As a young person taken to ...
Read More
Beyond Ekphrasis

How the “Pussyhat” Became a Feminist Fashion Icon

Feminists have long had a fraught relationship with fashion. But the pussyhat looks set to change that.

Almost a year ago, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, hundreds and thousands of women gathered in Washington D.C. to protest the president’s policies towards women, LGBTQ, Muslims, immigrants and other minorities. The world looked on with awe at the sea of pink that formed on the Great Lawn; in ...
Read More
How the “Pussyhat” Became a Feminist Fashion Icon

The Campus Speech Wars

You have conservative students, so teach them

In the coming weeks, I want to write more about the meaning of free speech, how we understand free speech differently depending on how and where we are positioned, and whether our difficulty in listening to--and understanding--each other is a crucial context for exercising our first amendment rights. But since ...
Read More
The Campus Speech Wars

The Many Faces of the #MeToo Backlash

From Weinstein to The New School: Push back against sexual harassment allegations is gathering steam

For every allegation of sexual assault or harassment there seems to be both a wave of solidarity and also a backlash. The #MeToo campaign, which garnered 1.7 million tweets in 86 countries by October 24, 2017 just nine days after actress Alyssa Milano kick started it in response to allegations of sexual ...
Read More
The Many Faces of the #MeToo Backlash

Toward a Feminist Definition of Feminism

A historical exploration of the word, ‘Feminism’

Recently, Merriam-Webster announced that its “Word of the Year” -- the most looked-up word in 2017 -- was feminism. Use of the word spiked nearly 70% this year, especially in the wake of the Women’s March. Look-ups of the word also spiked after Kellyanne Conway claimed that she was not a feminist ...
Read More
Toward a Feminist Definition of Feminism

Nowhere is Somewhere

Solidarity and the space between nations

Since the Brexit referendum in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump in November 2016, there has been a distinct shift away from a liberal international order based on supranational organizations supporting human rights, freedom and equality towards the primacy of the nation-state. Moreover, sentiments of fear and resentment ...
Read More
Nowhere is Somewhere

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Greater Vision

Bending the arc of time towards justice

When I sat down to write this essay, I began a process of learning, re-learning, and un-learning about Dr. King. As I began to read a sampling of the works that other scholars have written about him, as well as his speeches and other writings, I once again encountered the ...
Read More
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Greater Vision

Imagination and Interpretation

On the dialogue between Cornelius Castoriadis and Paul Ricoeur

On March 9th, 1985, Paul Ricoeur and Cornelius Castoriadis met at the studio of the France Culture "Le Bon Plaisir" radio broadcaster. In 2016, the transcript of their dialogue, their only public debate, was published [1]. This publication is significant not only because it highlights the points of convergence and divergence ...
Read More
Imagination and Interpretation

The Myth of Black Confederates

And the rise of fake racial tolerance

One of the latest Confederate monument fights is currently brewing in South Carolina. State Representatives Bill Chumley and Mike Burns have proposed erecting a monument to black Confederate soldiers. The problem, of course, is that there were no black Confederate soldiers. The Confederate government refused to allow blacks to enlist ...
Read More
The Myth of Black Confederates