Politics Archives - Page 38 of 113

Activism

A Chronicler of Human Complexity

Swedish magazine Ord&Bild asks three James Baldwin scholars why his writing is so resonant today

October 27, 2021 • by Douglas Field, Justin A. Joyce and Cora Kaplan

James Baldwin has become the most cited literary figure in the Black Lives Matter movement. But his writing was never political in the narrow sense. So what makes Baldwin relevant today? On complex answers to a simple question. Ord&Bild: The first question is straightforward: what makes the work of James Baldwin relevant ...

Politics

Moonwalking in Brasilia

How Jair Bolsonaro creates the illusion of moving forward while sliding back

October 26, 2021 • by Felippe Ramos

In Brazil's ongoing experiment with a far-right populist President, there is a gap between Jair Bolsonaro's performance in face-to-face rallies and on social networks and his minimal accomplishments as a politician constrained by a complex constitutional network of institutions and norms. Bolsonaro’s oral and written communication is filled with the hallmarks ...

Politics

Media Secret Keepers

Why local journalists don’t care more about corporate subsidy mysteries

October 22, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

On October 15, 2021, the Tampa Bay Times published an article explaining that the St. Petersburg, Florida city council granted nearly half a million dollars plus a potential future property tax exemption to an unnamed retail corporation, a “mystery company” as the lede puts it. Reading between the lines, it seems the ...

Politics

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

No—Butler did something far more useful. They asked us to think more deeply about body politics

October 19, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

The latest Judith Butler story goes like this: Butler, a renowned philosopher and queer theory bigwig, did an interview with Jules Gleeson of The Guardian. The interview was published on September 7, 2021: social media instantly exploded over Butler's assertion that so-called “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (otherwise known by their opponents ...

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

Politics

Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

October 13, 2021 • by James Miller

The idea for a symposium in Public Seminar on “Constitutional Politics” grows out of a two-day conference on Liberalism & Democracy: Past, Present, Prospects. I organized these conversations at the New School in February 2019, in collaboration with Helena Rosenblatt, a historian at City University of New York Graduate Center. One of the key participants was Aziz Rana of Cornell University, ...

Constitutional Politics

The Merits—and Risks—of Constitutional Politics

Further comments on the prospects for democratizing modern forms of government

October 13, 2021 • by Aziz Rana and Sanford Levinson

Sanford Levinson: The participants in this symposium all join in desiring significant constitutional reform, focusing on the general rubric of “democratizing” what is now almost universally recognized to be an undemocratic political structure established by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. As in 1787, when the mission was to supplant the “imbecilic” government ...

Constitutional Politics

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

October 13, 2021 • by Anthony Barnett

It’s a fact that the United States is no longer the world’s pre-eminent superpower—a change that cannot help but transform America’s political conception of itself. Its decline in relative power will of course take time. The dollar still rules, the military reach of the States is unequalled. But the US has ...

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Constitutional Politics

Chile Tries to Write a New Constitution

Progressives in the nation’s Constitutional Convention see an opportunity for creating a more just society

October 13, 2021 • by Jennifer M. Piscopo

In a national referendum held on October 25, 2020, nearly 80 percent of Chileans agreed that the country should have a new constitution, to be written at a convention attended by specially elected delegates. The vote was the climactic result of weeks of paralyzing demonstrations in 2019, as students, feminists, workers, Indigenous peoples, pensioners, and thousands of others had taken to the streets to protest economic and social injustice. With resounding majorities choosing change, Chileans ...

Constitutional Politics

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Amid a racial uprising and calls for “political revolution,” why pretend that our political disputes turn on the “best” reading of an eighteenth-century text, the Constitution?

October 12, 2021 • by Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn

Aziz Rana’s genealogy of American constitutional veneration overturns the conventional wisdom, not merely about the chronology, but also about the reasons for this worshipful attitude towards a document drafted in the late eighteenth century. At the same time, his forthcoming book, Rise of the Constitution, is politically explosive: for it ...

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Constitutional Politics

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

October 12, 2021 • by Sanford Levinson

“Veneration” is a term that James Madison used in Federalist 49, to express the kind of great respect he hoped the new Constitution he had helped write would command in the debate over ratification then raging in America. Yet as Aziz Rana reminds us, many of America’s most notable political ...

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Constitutional Politics

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

October 11, 2021 • by Aziz Rana

In the last two centuries, 220 countries have appeared on the global stage and, between them, they have produced a remarkable 900 written constitutions. The sheer numbers are telling: For the most part, societies treat their constitutions instrumentally. When these legal-political orders break down or social upheaval brings new elites and alliances ...

Activism

New Yorkers March for Abortion Justice

A photo essay

October 6, 2021 • by Jo Freeman

Women’s Marches are becoming an annual event. The first one in 2017 was to express outrage at pussy grabber Trump’s election. Subsequent ones have varied in substance and style. They have shifted from January to October – which is is a better month for outdoor protest. This year, several hundred ...

Politics

A Chronicler of Human Complexity

Swedish magazine Ord&Bild asks three James Baldwin scholars why his writing is so resonant today

Media Secret Keepers

Why local journalists don’t care more about corporate subsidy mysteries

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

No—Butler did something far more useful. They asked us to think more deeply about body politics

Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

The Merits—and Risks—of Constitutional Politics

Further comments on the prospects for democratizing modern forms of government

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

Chile Tries to Write a New Constitution

Progressives in the nation’s Constitutional Convention see an opportunity for creating a more just society

Imagining a Post-Constitutional Political Culture

Amid a racial uprising and calls for “political revolution,” why pretend that our political disputes turn on the “best” reading of an eighteenth-century text, the Constitution?

How to Cure America’s Constitution Worship

Many American states have not only frequently amended their constitutions, but, at least as importantly, have replaced existing constitutions with presumably better, updated, ones

Why Americans Worship the Constitution

New Yorkers March for Abortion Justice

A photo essay

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