From the Editors Archives - Page 149 of 172

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The Armenian Violence Question

A Conversation on Means and Social Change

December 13, 2016 • by Tamar Shirinian and Nelli Sargsyan

How do we make sense of a general population's acceptance of militarization? We see the following conversation as an attempt to entangle and disentangle some of the complexities of this particular historical juncture in post-Soviet Armenia. In reflecting on the Armenian experience and on the larger process of postsocialism and ...

Education

Politics of Small Things

December 13, 2016 • by Patrick Gilger, S.J.

This piece is part of the OOPS Series, "Social Interaction." Jeffrey Goldfarb’s “The Politics of Small Things” is a both an insightful work of social analysis and -- through this analysis itself -- an enactment of this-worldly hope in, as he might phrase it, these dark times. Instead of focusing on ...

Feature

The Tweets of a Clown, When No One Is Around

How Comedy Will Demolish Trump

December 12, 2016 • by Richard Kaplan

“Well they're some sad things known to man, But ain't too much sadder than, The tears of a clown when there's no one around.” --Smokey Robinson Beyond bad teeth, I don't really have much in common with P.J. O’Rourke, the former humor writer for National Lampoon and for the last two decades right-wing comedic ...

The Tweets of a Clown, When No One Is Around

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What Does “Draining the Swamp” Really Mean?

Alexandr Dugin, Putin’s Brain, Weighs In

December 11, 2016 • by Lev Marder

More than once President-Elect Donald Trump has promised to “drain the swamp.” Can he rid Washington of corruption? Is he already failing at the task? What Trump actually means by “draining the swamp” is not that clear, considering how poor he is at defining what he takes to be corruption or ...

What Does “Draining the Swamp” Really Mean?

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The Metamorphoses of the 2013 Brazilian Protests

December 9, 2016 • by Isleide Fontenelle

In June 2013, Brazilian cities were occupied by street demonstrations sparked by the protest against the increase in public transportation fares in the city of São Paulo. Over the course of weeks, these demonstrations grew, a vast array of claims was incorporated, and new types of protesters emerged, eventually taking ...

The Metamorphoses of the 2013 Brazilian Protests

Feature

Can Art Save Us from Bullshit?

The Practice of Making Political Art that Works

December 8, 2016 • by Stephen Duncombe and Silas Harrebye

This essay is a version of a presentation given by the authors at the Public Calling conference, sponsored by the Fritt Ord Foundation & KURO/Public Art Norway, at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway on 1 November 2016. Many years ago, there was an emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes ...

Feature

Simone Weil, Friend of Job

Confronting the Beauty of the Terror of our Existence

December 7, 2016 • by Mark Larrimore

An aphorism by Simone Weil sits atop a manuscript I’ve never been able to finish. The manuscript is called “The Problem of Good” and the quotation from Weil goes: Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, ...

Feature

Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-1971, by Jonas Mekas

December 6, 2016 • by Vince Carducci

Back in the day when I was an aspiring young artist, one of my bibles was a well-worn copy (gotten at the late-great independent bookstore Paperbacks Unlimited) of Movie Journal, a collection of columns by filmmaker/impresario Jonas Mekas that had originally appeared in the Village Voice from 1959 to 1971, trumpeting the ...

Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-1971, by Jonas Mekas

Feature

Refashioning Patriotism

Selling Fear as Part of The War On Terror

December 5, 2016 • by Maria Christoforou

Less than one week after the World Trade Center attacks, campaigns for the restoration of the American economy and the recovery of the former consumer confidence and spending habits proliferated across the country. By transforming the national tragedy into a commodity, these campaigns initiated a discourse of patriotic consumerism and ...

Feature

Renzi’s Right Way

Italy’s Constitutional Reform Vote

December 3, 2016 • by Franco Palazzi and Moreno Stambazzi

On Dec. 4th, Italian citizens will cast their ballot to approve or reject a vast Constitutional reform firmly put forward by the so-called "center-left" government headed by Mr. Matteo Renzi. If the votes in favor prevail, a third of the articles of the Italian main law will change. This would ...

Feature

Hungary 1956

Sixty Years After

December 2, 2016 • by Virág Molnár

In a 1958 article “Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution,” published in the Journal of Politics and intended as an update to her seminal Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt called the Hungarian uprising of 1956 a “spontaneous revolution”: a rare occurrence that erupted unexpectedly, without a preceding and destabilizing ...