America as a Lottery

In a series of recent works on the rise of inequality in the United States and other countries, economists have proposed a number of policies that might help reverse current trends. But critics of Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty also often complain that their proposals aren’t feasible ...

Read More
America as a Lottery

The Drone of Minerva

The one kind of speculative thought that might be of service in the Anthropocene is surely some kind of philosophy of history, and yet within the academy itself it seems the one nobody wants to actually attempt. It is as if the debates at the end of the last century ...
Read More
The Drone of Minerva

William Gibson’s The Peripheral

The new Gibson novel seems to me to be about three things: space, time and class. In classic Gibsonesque style, it threads together stories that begin in two different places. One is the kind of landscape I recognize from spending time in upstate New York. A rural, mostly working class, mostly ...
Read More
William Gibson’s The Peripheral

Can Anyone Even Remember Postmodernism?

If one teaches the ‘postmodern’ moment to today’s students, it is worth remembering that when pomo was a big deal, they had probably not even been born. If ‘retro’ was one of the characteristic style moves of pomo, then there is now even retro-pomo, a kind of meta-retro, or meta-pomo, ...
Read More
Can Anyone Even Remember Postmodernism?

Pizzas for the People

Directed by Hwang Kim and produced by Festival Bo:m

In the course of a long running ideological conflict North Korea is one of the most culturally isolated countries in the world, which rejects any foreign influences through a tight control of media and communication equipment. To protect the North Korean identity from potential damaging western influences, short wave radios, ...

Read More
Pizzas for the People

Visualizing the Occupation

Lessons from the maps of the war on Gaza

Anyone remotely familiar with the intricacies of Gaza's survival has heard that the 365 square kilometers that constitute the Gaza Strip are an open-air prison. Some might have heard that access to the sea in front of the strip has been limited time and again for Palestinians to make a ...

Read More
Visualizing the Occupation

Utopian Realism

I once asked Jean Baudrillard for his impressions of his tour of the colleges of America. “Boring,” he said, “like any realized utopia.” This was a provocation on several levels. In the cold war, realized utopia mean Soviet terror, not American prosperity. And of course Baudrillard was as aware as Jameson ...
Read More
Utopian Realism

Human Trafficking

A psychoanalytic and socio-historical view

I am going to think and write about human trafficking through a perspective both psychoanalytic and socio-historical. In fact, part of my quest and my thinking about this matter is to find the right disciplinary mix to speak from and to. This essay is situated in a problem. ...

Read More
Human Trafficking