Communism Archives - Page 3 of 7

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Interview with Jane Lazarre

Deborah Kalb sits down with Lazarre to discuss her latest book

September 2, 2018 • by Deborah Kalb and Jane Lazarre

Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir about your father, and how long did it take you to complete it? A: I decided to write this memoir about my father over 40 years after his death for many reasons – some formal and intellectual, and some in Toni Morrison’s ...

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“The Young Karl Marx”

A film review

July 30, 2018 • by Ronald Tiersky

After a month in American theaters, the box office for “The young Karl Marx” was all of $58,277. This is almost incomprehensible as this is a wonderful, politically, historically and culturally rich film. A major international collaboration with first rate foreign actors, the film played at a single indie theater on ...

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200 Years of Karl Marx

Some lessons on the politics of commemoration

July 24, 2018 • by Kathy M. Newman

This year marked the 200th anniversary of the birthday Karl Marx, a fierce critic of capitalism. In an effort to think through the legacy of—and the possible futures of—Marx’s influence, the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University hosted Marx@200, a program of more than two dozen lectures, performances, panels, and ...

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A New Committee with Lech Walesa, 2018

Reflections on the limitations of the continuing struggle for democracy in Poland

July 12, 2018 • by Leszek Budrewicz

In opposition to the threat to democracy in Poland today, Lech Walesa is calling for a united front against the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), reviving a citizens committee he led thirty years ago in the democratic struggle against Communist dictatorship. Here the first of two pieces responding to ...

Democracy

Revolution, Democracy, and Restoration Revisited

In Poland and beyond

July 11, 2018 • by Elzbieta Matynia

To be sure, the time is out of joint, and we feel as lost as Hamlet does when he bursts out: Oh, that ever I was born to set it right! Indeed, things appear not as they ought to, and one wonders how to set them right. Although this is a view from afar, painted ...

Revolution, Democracy, and Restoration Revisited

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Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

The Jewish part of Poland’s 1968

May 21, 2018 • by David Ost

This piece is being simultaneously published in Polish by Kultura Liberalna. At its recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 protests at Warsaw University, the Law and Justice (PiS, in Polish abbreviation) government of Poland presented its official line: that 1968 was a “Polish national social movement against communism,” ...

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

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From Velvet Revolution to Velvet Dictatorship

Reflections on Democratic Regression

May 3, 2018 • by Adam Michnik

Let me start by describing how communism died. The first thing to perish was the communist faith. And this faith had two dimensions. It was a faith in the project of a just world, a world of solidarity and freedom. And it was a conviction that people had finally deciphered ...

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Agent Sabina

On the abjection of Julia Kristeva

April 28, 2018 • by Albena Azmanova

Julia Kristeva’s recently released secret service files reveal a similar persona to that which comes through her writing: unruly, witty, courageous. And yet Kristeva is denying the allegations. Is it something other than the truth that she fears? ‘On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth showing through’ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable ...

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The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg

An excerpt from Trans-generational Trauma and the Other

April 24, 2018 • by Adrienne Harris

The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg, by Adrienne Harris, appears in Trans-generational Trauma and the Other, a volume of essays published in 2017 psychoanalytically meditating on the question of the transgenerational transmission of trauma, metastasizing and alienated historical ghosts, and the inter-subjectivity of Big History. Public Seminar spoke with Dr Harris – who is, among many ...

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Courage Before the Break

Agnes Heller’s Theory of “Radical Needs” Revisited

March 30, 2018 • by Max L. Feldman

“Good persons exist, how are they possible?” With this question, inimitable Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller outlines her philosophical territory. As readers of critical theory, it is hard to know how to begin expressing our admiration for the energetic grande dame of our tradition. One anecdote might suffice: Heller’s mentor, the great, but ...

Democracy

Democracy Dies in Darkness

A keynote address from the Dramaturgies of Resistance conference

February 28, 2018 • by Elzbieta Matynia

I have been fascinated by a dimension of political life that occurred in the latter part of the twentieth century in both non-democratic and democratic contexts. I think of this dimension -- something I experienced myself -- as closely related to the politics of hope, and I call it performative. Just ...

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Sex in the Time of Communism

The ripple effect of the #metoo campaign

December 7, 2017 • by Maria Bucur

My first sexual experience was on a bus in Bucharest. I was 7, surrounded by a throng of people. Like many other kids who lived in the communist bloc, I had parents who worked full time, which meant that I mostly went to school alone. I also came back from ...