The Greatest Threat to Orderly Thought

Robert Drinan and Religious Progressives in Politics

When Robert Drinan, S.J. (a Jesuit), ran as a liberal anti-Vietnam War, anti-Nixon candidate for a U.S House seat (MA’s 3rd District) in 1970, he upset a 14-term incumbent, Philip J. Philbin, in the Democratic Primary. He eventually became the first Catholic priest to hold an elected office after winning ...
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The Greatest Threat to Orderly Thought

On Adivasi Development and Resistance in India

Existential questions faced by the subaltern

Existential questions faced by the subaltern When accepting the 2004 City of Sydney Peace Prize, Arundhati Roy remarked, “there's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” This quote aptly captures the persecution and repression faced by people marginalized by society’s relentless ...
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On Adivasi Development and Resistance in India

Presidential Visits to Yad Vashem

Misrepresentation and Misrecognition, yet again (Part One)

You will by now have seen one report or another contrasting the responses of Presidents Obama (who visited as a senator and presidential candidate) and Trump to Yad Vashem, the Israeli national museum and memorial dedicated to the victims of the Nazi Genocide, the survivors of that crime, and the ...
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Presidential Visits to Yad Vashem

Homesteading the Lower East Side

A Review of Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016) The Lower East Side has long been an object of fascination for those who study New York. It has been a location for bohemia, from the early 20th century to the Beats and ...
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Homesteading the Lower East Side

Trump as Ubu Roi

On the charismatic appeal of vulgarity

Many are the analogies for the current President of the United States. Such analogies always contain within them theoretical debates about the nature of Trump’s appeal, the prospects for his rule, and how the coterie around him will conduct themselves in relation to Trump, in relation to each other, and ...
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Trump as Ubu Roi

The Psychopathology of the US Elections

Why Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power is Relevant Today

When it was published in 1960, Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power did not achieve the acclaim enjoyed by his novel Die Blendung (1935), his dramas Die Hochzeit (1932), Die Komödie der Eitelkeit (1950) and Die Befriesteten (1964) and, later, the many volumes of aphorisms and the three volumes of his ...
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The Psychopathology of the US Elections

Who Knew Running Yahoo Was So Hard?

Marissa Mayer Takes One for the Team

As we begin to think about writing the history of the Age of Trump, my advice is to follow the money. For example, answer this question: how do CEOs make a fortune by killing businesses and putting working and middle class people on the unemployment line? If your answer is "Sending ...
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Who Knew Running Yahoo Was So Hard?

The Radical Imagination

Imagining the future in financial capitalism

Architectural fantasy stimulates the architect’s activity, it arouses creative thought not only for the artist but it also educates and arouses all those who come in contact with him; it produces new directions, new quests, and opens new horizons. Iakov Chernikhov (1933), ‘101 architectural fantasies’ Why the radical imagination? Today more than ...
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The Radical Imagination

Not Everything Political is Politics

Reflection on the March for Science

Mark B. Brown is a professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), as well as various publications on the politics of expertise, political representation, and climate change.
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Not Everything Political is Politics

Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...
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Hanged at Sunrise

Finding Refuge

When Secure Borders Are Not the Answer

As countries in the global North fortify their borders against irregular migrants from the global South, border walls proliferate. Argentina constructed a wall at its border with Paraguay. Hungary recently erected a second, electrified fence at its border with Serbia. And Donald Trump’s administration is still committed to building at ...
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Finding Refuge

Recovering Community: Part II

Remembering the Jungle at Jules Ferry

In its time at Jules Ferry, the Jungle crossed a threshold in the nature of its transgression as a political subject. This transgression was its establishment of community. What the Jungle came to embody in political form was a common project; common, that is, in two senses of the word. ...
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Recovering Community: Part II