President Obama recently gave two speeches that should be seen as signposts of contemporary U.S. empire. Their continuity with American exceptionalist rhetoric of the past is striking, underlining the extent to which Obama is trapped within the paradigms of the past.
Author: Ashley Dawson
Ashley Dawson is professor of postcolonial studies in the English department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. His latest books include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). A member of the Social Text Collective and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist.
Ashley Dawson is professor of postcolonial studies in the English department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. His latest books include People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017), and Extinction: A Radical History (O/R, 2016). A member of the Social Text Collective and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist.
Authored by Ashley Dawson
Eat the rich!
Ashley DawsonNew York governor David Paterson has just announced that he will be withholding $750 million in scheduled payments to schools and local governments across the state in response to the state’s fiscal problems. According to an article in the NYT
'We Get More Ambitious:' An Interview with Wu Ming
Ashley DawsonIntroduction: The Wu Ming Foundation is a collective of four self-described “guerrilla novelists” based in Bologna, Italy. The collective was born in 1994, when hundreds of European and South American artists, activists, and pranksters hijacked the name of a Black … Continue reading “'We Get More Ambitious:' An Interview with Wu Ming”
Class war
Ashley DawsonThe Governor of New York State has called for a cut of $53 million to the City University of New York system. This comes after a $68 million cut to CUNY last year, and a 15% tuition hike for CUNY … Continue reading “Class war”
Bios
Ashley DawsonBiopolitics, or, in Achille Mbembe’s baleful articulation, necropolitics, is one of the central keywords of modernity in general and of the present moment in particular. Expanding Foucault’s fragmentary consideration of the term, the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito offers an analysis … Continue reading “Bios”
Hazel Carby on Interdisciplinarity, 1 December 2009
Ashley DawsonDecember 1st 2009, Tuesday, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm, Proshansky Auditorium, The Graduate Center, CUNY (34th Street & 5th Avenue) The CUNY Provost’s Annual Symposium on Disciplinarity brings together scholars in the humanities who examine disciplinary boundaries, canonical divides, and … Continue reading “Hazel Carby on Interdisciplinarity, 1 December 2009”
Apocalypto
Ashley DawsonToday should be remembered as the beginning of the end. According to an article in the Guardian, President Obama has acknowledged that it is now too late to secure a legally binding climate deal at the Copenhagen summit. We will … Continue reading “Apocalypto”