Recognitions and Company

Reviewing Brittney Cooper’s ‘Eloquent Rage’

My feelings, for their part, go on strike against me all the time, showing up with picket signs that scream truths I’d rather not hear, all while demanding that I renegotiate terms. —Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage, 204) What might one want when reading a personal narrative, a memoir, a story with multiple ...
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Recognitions and Company

The Banality of Good and Evil

Reflections of an anti-sociologist

I want to make it simple and to the point. That’s the best way to go. But some days, as I think and write, things become more complicated, and I struggle. Today is such a day. I wanted to write a straightforward post on a straightforward theme, on mistakes and ...
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The Banality of Good and Evil

Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Satire and the Abuse of Anti-Bullying Rhetoric

The White House Correspondents Dinner at the end of last month sent social media and the commentariat alight once again, reporting a scandal where the only scandal is how easy it is for persons across the political spectrum to be scandalized by what is, in fact, the healthy efflorescence of ...
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Wolf, Sanders, and the Scandal of “Safe Spaces”

Bodies in Transition

Derailing gender in the liminal space of breast cancer treatment

According to political historian and gender theorist Paul Preciado, we are living in the pharmacapornagraphic era. In this era, claims his book Testo Junkie, gender is produced through the body’s constant interaction with images, imagery, and social norms that represent a naturalized sex ideal, and through technological and pharmeucuetical interventions. There is ...
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Bodies in Transition

Austrian Politics

Black and Blue

In December 2017, Austria got its new government, a coalition between the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), headed by the charismatic 31-year-old college dropout Sebastian Kurz, the world’s youngest head of state, and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) — European ally to France’s Front national and official partner of Putin’s party United ...
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Austrian Politics

Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

Reflections on the 1984 Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance

When did coalitional organizing between feminists and conservative women become impossible? I’m not sure, but as a feminist there is one place and time that I remember vividly: Indianapolis in the spring of 1984. There, led by Mayor William Hudnut, III Republican politician Beulah Coughenour and local movement conservatives, that city ...
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Why Can’t Women Bridge the Left-Right Divide?

The Israeli Embassy, Tom Wolfe, and Sports Gambling

Past Present Episode 131

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: President Trump officially moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and violence in Gaza ensued. Neil wrote about Trump’s stance in his Huffington Post column this week. Natalia recommended this Tablet article breaking down the context for the violence in Gaza. “New Journalism” pioneer Tom Wolfe ...
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The Israeli Embassy, Tom Wolfe, and Sports Gambling

Reviving Humanities Education

A counterintuitive suggestion

A 2017 Pew Research Center poll reveals a majority of Republicans believe American universities have a negative impact on the country. It seems the nation’s system of higher education is falling prey to growing political polarization. Just as Republicans have increasingly come to distrust other seemingly liberal institutions, such as the ...
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Reviving Humanities Education

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

The Jewish part of Poland’s 1968

This piece is being simultaneously published in Polish by Kultura Liberalna. At its recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 protests at Warsaw University, the Law and Justice (PiS, in Polish abbreviation) government of Poland presented its official line: that 1968 was a “Polish national social movement against communism,” ...
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Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

Royal Wedding Roundup

Princesses, tiaras, bunting, ex-girlfriends, and ludicrous hats

At Public Seminar we are feminists, so we don't raise our daughters to be princesses. We are open-minded leftists, so we don't fawn over the ruling classes, but we don't long to guillotine them either. And we are anti-racists, so we haven't declared an end to racism worldwide just because a ...
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Royal Wedding Roundup