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

Casablanca at 75

A Refugee Story

Zolberg Institute Presents:   Casablanca at 75: A refugee story April 04th, 7pm-10pm, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Room 202, 55 West 13th Street.  Casablanca is one of classical Hollywood's greatest romances, but its underlying story concerns the plight of European refugees, an unusually timely, urgent theme for today. This event, which focuses on the ...
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Casablanca at 75

May Day

Washington D.C.

Different groups with different themes marched from different places to rally together in Lafayette Square in front of the White House. The largest of these was organized by SEIU and CASA. Its theme was immigration, and current policies opposed to immigration. In addition to unions, religious and Latino groups were ...
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May Day

Recovering Community: Part I

Remembering the Jungle at Jules Ferry

We know the scene; there is a gathering, and someone is telling a story. We do not yet know whether these people gathered together form an assembly, if they are a horde or a tribe. But we call them brothers and sisters because they are gathered together and because they ...
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Recovering Community: Part I

When Fascists Break into Parliament

A Reflection on the Crisis in Skopje

When fascists break into your country’s parliament you feel like you’ve been talking about right-wing populism in academic settings for far too long. You feel like you’ve been talking about the causes and the cures of something just getting underway in the West, all while this is the only kind of ...
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When Fascists Break into Parliament

From Protest to Organizing

How organizing yields power and provides a moral education

One evening in late January, my family and I went to a demonstration at which a few hundred people with signs and banners packed themselves onto a concrete plaza and declared our Brooklyn neighborhood to be a “hate-free zone.” We saw a few friends, some familiar-looking neighbors, and a lot ...
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From Protest to Organizing

The Politics of Incorporation

The limits of populism in a psychoanalytic perspective

In recent decades, contemporary political philosophy has pathologized the psychological processes involved in politics. Emphasizing rational action, political philosophy has deemed affect, the political imaginary, and dynamics of identification and incorporation negatively, as potential spaces of distortion or social regression. One of the major consequences of this perspective is to reduce ...
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The Politics of Incorporation

Sweatshop City

Laura Y. Liu

Laura Y. Liu is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School. Her ongoing research project, Sweatshop City, examines the urban geography of migration, industry, and neighborhood change in New York City.

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Sweatshop City