Raspberry Beret

This submissions was part of the #PurpleReigns: A Tribute to Prince event hosted at the New School, Friday, September 23rd. Lesbians loved Prince. And butch lesbians, like me, particularly loved Prince, seeing ourselves in his gender-bendy performances. “Raspberry Beret,” originally recorded in 1982, was released by Prince and the Revolution in 1985 ...
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Raspberry Beret

The Ballad of Dorothy Parker

This submissions was part of the #PurpleReigns: A Tribute to Prince event hosted at the New School, Friday, September 23rd. Thanks to Aly and especially Pam Tillis. I want to thank Pam. We did a David Bowie event here at the New School in February which was very moving and a ...
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The Ballad of Dorothy Parker

Psychogeography and Speculative Design

Another City for Another Life: I’m starting work on a course, possibly a collaborative one, that would have three components. 1. Psychogeography, as a way of moving through the city, gathering a knowledge of its ambiences, but concentrating on its special moments. 2. Unitary Urbanism, or the practice of imagining another ...
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Psychogeography and Speculative Design

Identity & Difference

A couple of months ago, I attended a symposium in Sweden on Europe and the “refugee problem.” I presented a paper in which I celebrated neither cultural differences nor cultural identity, neither cosmopolitanism nor nationalism. Instead, I underlined the necessary interplay between identity and difference, in the sense that there ...
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Identity & Difference

American Elections: A Conversation on the Left

In 2016 Andrew Arato and Nancy Fraser looked at the coming election. This is what they had to say.

This dialogue was originally published on September 26 2016: as we make the turn into a new election year, Public Seminar returned to how these influential political theorists imagined left politics. Arato: Nancy we have had a conversation about the elections a week ago in Great Evremond, Mass, and one thing you ...
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American Elections: A Conversation on the Left

Africa contra Hegel

There was once a fantasy, shared by left and right alike, that the states of the under-developed world could come, whether by leaps or by steps, to approximate those of the so-called developed world, as if they represented some kind of historical destiny. This idea belongs to what one might ...
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Africa contra Hegel

Why Study the Internet? An Introduction

This post is the first installment of the OOPs Course Work, Love, Learn Play: Our Lives on the Internet. An edited version of my introductory lecture, it provides a provisional answer to the question: what is this course about?  This course is about discovery. It is about new things, some of which ...
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Why Study the Internet? An Introduction

A Burkini Removed and Secularism Exposed

France has apparently overturned its “burkini ban.”  This happened after images surfaced of French police forcing a woman to undress on a beach. It’s worth pausing to consider what secularism even means at this point. Secularism, at the level of the state, means setting public institutions and laws on a universalist footing ...
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A Burkini Removed and Secularism Exposed

Issues in 21c Critical Theory

Below is the course I'll be offering in the Liberal Studies Masters program at the New School for Social Research this semester. There's links below to (most of) the blog posts that will serve as lecture notes. GLIB 5555 | LCST 4458 | Issues in 21 Century Critical Theory | How ...
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Issues in 21c Critical Theory