From the Editors Archives - Page 122 of 172

Feature

Is it Time for the Kneeling Freedman Statue to Go?

Remolding our Political Aesthetics

October 17, 2017 • by Gordon Mantler

The contrast between the two is striking and one reason why I take students there. The Emancipation Memorial, designed by Thomas Ball, portrays a stern Abraham Lincoln standing over a kneeling, newly freed black man. In one of Lincoln’s hands is the Emancipation Proclamation; the other floats above the prone ...

Is it Time for the Kneeling Freedman Statue to Go?

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A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Hope and Shame in American Identity

An “American Girl” to love

October 16, 2017 • by Stacey Novack

The song, with its adolescent breathlessness and jangly melody, is about life-altering promises and unrelenting hope, especially hope that persists in the face of disappointment. It’s a song that almost “can’t help” but generate a bouncy-kneed, happy nostalgia in the listener, and, at least for some, a mild accompanying shame. ...

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Bronx School Killing, Romance Novels, and Game Shows

Past Present Episode 102

October 15, 2017 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Natalia, Niki, and Neil debate a fatal stabbing at a Bronx high school, the history of the romance novel and its critics, and the evolution of the game show genre.

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Bronx School Killing, Romance Novels, and Game Shows

Feature

Flashback! Hawaii

Past and Present looks back

October 13, 2017 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this week's flashback episode, we revisit our segment on the history of Hawaii.

Education

In the Wake of September’s Georgia Tech Shooting

Mental health on college campuses

October 13, 2017 • by Alice B. Grossman

A few years ago, a close friend at school exhibited signs of mental instability. Whatever he was working through was affecting his own life and happiness as well as that of his friends’. He verbally abused those closest to him and bounced back and forth between interacting as the friend ...

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Speculation and Counter-speculation

From value to price, from labor to debt, from revolution to disruption

October 12, 2017 • by Joshua Simon

Finance is speculation on debt. In the past decades, finance has replaced production, while debt has replaced waged labor as the main generator of profit in the contemporary economy. Under the reign of production, labor-time aimed to semiotize value. In other words, each terrain of human activity was assigned a ...

Feature

Normalizing the State of Emergency

France’s recent anti-terror legislation

October 12, 2017 • by Rafael Khachaturian

This measure codifies what has been an ongoing state of emergency, originally enacted by the Socialist President Francois Hollande in the wake of the attacks of November 2015. Since then, the state of emergency has been extended six more times in the face of ten more attacks, reinforcing what has ...

Feature

How (Not) to React to the Far Right in Germany

On the attempt to respond to the rise of the AfD Party

October 12, 2017 • by Philipp Nielsen

Even though this result was in line with the last pre-election polls, this success has come as a shock to Germany’s other parties. Since the results were announced, the country’s political and journalistic classes have been engaged in a collective soul-searching to account for the AfD’s rise. A good amount ...

Feature

How We Got Here

Transition failures, their causes, and the populist interest in the constitution

October 11, 2017 • by Andrew Arato

The answers to these questions are related. In the following, in the form of six theses, I start with what I mean by “populism”. Next, I wish to point to the two deficits of liberal democracy that provide the context for the rise of populist politics. These deficits have been ...

Feature

Public Seminar Interview with Khary Lazarre-White

Lazarre-White discusses his latest book ‘Passage’

October 11, 2017 • by Patrick Gilger, S.J.

Mr. Lazarre-White recently spoke with Public Seminar about where Passage came from, the experience of writing it, and what he hopes the novel will communicate. Copies of Passage can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at your local book retailer. *** Public Seminar: Thank you for taking some time with Public ...

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Triangulation is the Not-So-New Black

Party Coalitions, Racial Scapegoating and the Carceral State

October 10, 2017 • by Daniel Kato

Bill Clinton vilified African-Americans with his draconian crime bill while pushing for economic deregulation policies that he hoped would woo Republicans while also not upsetting the labor base of the Democratic Party too much. By the time Obama came around, African-Americans went from being vilified by the Democratic Party to ...

Feature

Who Goes to Jail for Sex Crimes?

Weiner’s sentencing should be a wake-up call

October 10, 2017 • by Haylee Millikan

Despite his plea to serve his time as a suspended sentence, he will spend 21 months incarcerated for sexting with a 15-year-old. In a series of exchanges, he cajoled her into undressing and touching herself on Skype, and then sent her explicit messages about what he would do to her ...