Is marriage equality a conservative victory?

Obergefell and the Enduring Legacy of Family Values

Like many gay people, I found out about the Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right through text messages from friends and family members. People from all across the country wrote or called to congratulate my husband and me, expressing optimism for what the court’s ...

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Syriza and the Public Sphere

Having been closely following the Greece events, I can’t remember a recent story, at least in the American and British papers, that does not describe Syriza in such terms as “adolescent,” “unserious,” “gamesmanship,” “jousting,” “inexperienced,” and “unprofessional.” One might think from reading the news that the Greek people are latency ...
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On the American Psychological Association and Torture

This morning’s New York Times summarizes the findings of a recently completed report containing the findings of a seven-month investigation by a team led by David Hoffman, a Chicago lawyer with the firm Sidley Austin, commissioned by the American Psychological Association (APA). This report (commonly referred to as the Hoffman Report) documents ...
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Democracy or Immaturity?

Interpretations of the Greek referendum in the Euro Zone

The referendum that Alexis Tsipras announced in the early hours of June 27, just days before the expiration of Greece’s rescue program, was from the very beginning a dangerous gamble with little chance of success. His main objective was to strengthen his position as far as his internal ...

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Dolezal and the Defense of the Community

Reflections on the unique difficulties of passing from white to black in America

Nevertheless, it's remarkable how much media commentary seems to revolve around reinforcing the racial boundary. All the more strange since every commentator at the same time is obliged to note that race has no biological underpinnings but is culturally constructed, as evidenced by the uniquely American rule of racial classification ...
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The Greek Referendum: A New Battle of Marathon

The historical resonance, significance and challenges of ‘no’ on July 5th

Some commentators have compared the victory of the "Oxi" at the Greek referendum of July 5th to a Pyrrhic victory, implying that while the anti-austerity camp won this battle, it is doomed to lose the war, strangled by the insurmountable economic difficulties caused by the lack of liquidity. Others have ...

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Wendy Chun, on software and the machine

Is the relation between the analog and the digital itself analog or digital? That might be one way of thinking the relation between the work of Alexander Galloway and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. I wrote elsewhere about Galloway’s notion of software as a simulation of ideology. Here I take up Chun’s of software as ...
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The 24M Elections in Spain

A new era in the regime’s crisis

The local and regional elections of last May 24th arrived four years after the great social upheaval symbolized by the 15M Movement and the Indignados. The starting point of a long and deepening political crisis, the 15M was both a moment of change and a genuine foundational event within the contemporary ...

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We Are All Greek

During the thirties Edmund Wilson recalled his reaction to the stock market crash of 1929 as “not depressing but stimulating. One couldn’t help being exhilarated by the sudden unexpected collapse of that stupid, gigantic fraud.” I fear that we may be coming to a point when many people throughout the ...
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Can Architecture be Democratic?

The tension between The People and their places

Can architecture be democratic? Most people would readily agree that the built environment is bound to be political. Yet in the popular imagination the combination of “architecture” and “politics” tends to conjure up distinctly undemocratic figures: totalitarian leaders designing monumental edifices and avenues for eternity. And if authoritarians ...

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No-Futurism

As a tenured academic I am one of the last of an almost extinct social class – the bourgeois. Unlike the capitalist, who owns capital, the bourgeois is the professional who keeps the superstructures of capitalism going, including those of art and knowledge. Our job is to be a superstructure ...
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On Galloway

Take the tv show, 24. In what sense could one say that the show is ‘political’? It certainly appears so in a ‘red state’ sort of way. The Jack Bauer character commits all sorts of crimes, including torture, in the name of ‘national security.’ But perhaps there’s more to it. Galloway draws ...
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