Caitlyn Jenner: Our Pharmacapornographic Hero

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. In April of 2015, Caitlyn Jenner came out as a transgender woman on Diane Sawyer’s 20/20. Formerly known as Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn’s identity before her transition represented the paragon of what it meant to “be a man.” Caitlyn was ...
Read More
Caitlyn Jenner: Our Pharmacapornographic Hero

Utopias of the Surface

Nothing is really visible, not even in the noon sun’s blinding reflection on the shimmering sea. A magical time, when gods appear. -Claudio Magris, A Different Sea Almost every day, I walk a few blocks west from my apartment to the Hudson River. This is one of the few places where the ...
Read More
Utopias of the Surface

Politics of Small Things

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 ...
Read More
Politics of Small Things

Social Resistance

May We Rise

I begin with the satisfaction of saying in public what so many of us have said in private: What a fucking nightmare! Like millions of others, my household on election night was one of inconsolable grief and rage. Within the seas of pain were especially heartbreaking scenes: immigrant and Muslim ...
Read More
Social Resistance

Teaching After Trump

I woke up on Wednesday morning, like so many others, heavily distraught by the win of President-elect Donald J. Trump. I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me. My mind scrambled to explain how this could happen. I then felt a painful concern for my fellow ...
Read More
Teaching After Trump

The Mass Psychology of Trumpism

Old and New Myths

Having spent quite some time studying the philosophy of political myth and, in particular, of fascist narratives, I could not but perceive something troubling in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again!” Every word is important. Let us explore each one by one. ...

...

Read More
The Mass Psychology of Trumpism

Proclaim The New School a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented Students

An Open Letter to President Van Zandt and Provost Marshall

The result of the U.S. election cannot be understood in isolation from the global context of migration and refugee flows. Fear and ignorance about what causes people to leave their communities, and about the effects this has in the societies they join are at the core of xenophobic reactions and ...
Read More
Proclaim The New School a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented Students

Freud and Irigaray in Grey Gardens

Penis Envy as Male Phantasy

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. The American documentary Grey Gardens, directed by the Maysles brothers, is a celebrated landmark of its genre. The viewer enters the life of Edith “Big Edie” Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Beale. The peculiar couple lives in ...
Read More
Freud and Irigaray in Grey Gardens

Women Count

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. On Monday October 24, women in Iceland left work at 2:38 p.m. to protest the gender wage gap. The time was decided by calculating the gap percentage to the regular work day: Every day, the hours that women work ...
Read More
Women Count

Exile as Haven

On The New School Dorm Room Doors Vandalized with Swastikas

Those of us at The New School received news on Saturday that dorm room doors had been vandalized with swastikas. The president has acted swiftly, calling it a hate crime and enacting a zero tolerance policy for such actions. Since this may be an act of students -- entry to ...
Read More
Exile as Haven