By Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. Travel: Getting from this place to that place in one piece. We arrived in Phnom Penh on the so-called fast boat from Chau Doc, a mere six hours upriver, and weighing at least two kilos lighter, after the slow/fast sweatbath in the ever-increasing heat. At the Viet/Cambodian border, a minor blip with Sherry’s passport might well have sent us back downriver.
Category: Topics
Postcard: Saigon Letter
Social Text CollectiveBy Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner. Sherry and I arrived at Tan Son Nhut Airport–a designation like so many others with a grim resonance for us for more than forty years–just minutes before Tet, the week-long New Year’s Festival was to begin. Outside the airport people were clamoring for taxis–so anxious or so excited were they to get into Saigon proper before the Year of the Tiger began. We got in the mood.
Postcard from Berlin
Tavia Nyong'o
125 years after the Berlin Conference inaugurated the Scramble for Africa, Black Berliners and their allies marched through the streets of the Kreuzberg neighborhood.
Logos of our Lives
Biella ColemanTwo of the more influential books that have taken swipe at our contemporary intellectual property landscape concerned themselves with trademark, logos, and capitalism. Here I am thinking of Rosemary Coombe’s seminal The Cultural Life of Intellectual Property and Naomi Klein’s more activist take on the subject, No Logo. What would happen if you condensed the arguments in these two books into a 15 minute video?
Survival
Ashley DawsonEver since the effective collapse of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, I’ve been thinking about how we represent survival and futurity in a conjuncture in which hegemonic ideology is so clearly bankrupt and the ruling classes in the world’s most powerful nations are so transparently unwilling to take the steps necessary to save civilization.
New Social Text Book on Alter-Globalization
Social Text CollectiveProtest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era, by Heather Gautney, details the history of the alter-globalization protests over the last decade and the attempts by various groups on the global left to build alternatives to neoliberal development through the mechanism of the World Social Forum.
Hacker and Troller as Trickster
Biella ColemanIf you read the literature on tricksters, you will confront a string of words that capture the moral quality and sensibilities of these figures, figures scattered across time and place and largely enshrined in myths and stories: Cunning, deceit, … Continue reading “Hacker and Troller as Trickster”
Water No Get Enemy
Tavia Nyong'oI’m no native informant. But I gather that the song featured prominently in the Broadway show Fela! means something like “nobody hates something as useful as water.” Make yourself as indispensable as this, goes the implied wisdom, and any detractors you gain will just look silly. An appropriate motto for a musician like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti …
Sea Shepherd in New Zealand
Biella Coleman
Last fall, after watching At the Edge of the World I became obsessed with the eco-radical conservation group Sea Shepherd who have been around since the 1970s trying to put an end to commercial whaling. So when I learned that I was going to New Zealand for the month of January, I was keen to find out whether Sea Shepherd was more present in the public than in the US.
A Corporation is Not a Person
Ashley DawsonTwo days ago the Supreme Court issued what is perhaps its most calamitous ruling in a century.
Seeing Haiti
Tariq JazeelThere’s so much to think about, take in, and give right now in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake that perhaps a lone blog entry like this isn’t at all suitable.
Digital Activism
Ashley DawsonActivists are increasingly turning to online resources to help bring about progressive, grassroots-empowering social change. I recently learned of two interesting initiatives to build awareness of the possibilities for networked activism.
Justice for Don Belton
Tavia Nyong'oDon Belton, a professor of English at Indiana University, was tragically killed by an assailant who, many in his local queer community are concerned, may seek to use a variant of the notorious “gay panic” defense. They are also concerned that hateful, racist, and homophobic remarks have been circulating on messaging boards under articles about Don’s murder.
The Continuity of US Imperial Discourse
Ashley DawsonPresident 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.
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