This essay asks how the political identity and the domain of civic participation we reference with the term citizenship has been transformed in the contexts of neoliberalism. Michel Foucault famously argues that the subject of a market-centered, neoliberal governance structure … Continue reading “Neocitizenship and Critique”
Issue: Issue 099
TV Urgente: Urban Exclusion, Civil Society, and the Politics of Television in Venezuela
john patrick learyThis essay explores the politics of representation in contemporary Venezuelan television, which in its mainstream forms has produced an urban imaginary that models national citizenship on the geographic, class, and racial divisions of the Venezuelan metropolis. The nation’s airwaves have … Continue reading “TV Urgente: Urban Exclusion, Civil Society, and the Politics of Television in Venezuela”
The Labor Factor in the Creative Economy: A Marxist Reading
laikwan pangThis paper offers a Marxist analysis of the creative agency conceptualized by the new creative economy. Analyzing the differences and continuities between the creative economy and the traditional industrial economy, I explore how creative labor is selectively invested with the … Continue reading “The Labor Factor in the Creative Economy: A Marxist Reading”
Seventeen Years, Seventeen Murders: Biospectacularity and the Production of Post-Cold War Knowledge in El Salvador
ellen moodieThis essay develops the concept of biospectacle, in which the politics of managing populations becomes sensational visual display. It does so as it explores a series of events in 1999 surrounding the arrest and trial of “El Directo,” a gang … Continue reading “Seventeen Years, Seventeen Murders: Biospectacularity and the Production of Post-Cold War Knowledge in El Salvador”
Not Yet Beyond the Veil: Muslim Women in American Popular Literature
dohra ahmadFollowing a brief discussion of Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART, this essay examines the newly burgeoning genre of “oppressed Muslim women” narratives. For each of the texts under consideration–Jean Sasson’s PRINCESS, Latifa and Shékéba Hachemi’s MY FORBIDDEN FACE, Azar Nafisi’s … Continue reading “Not Yet Beyond the Veil: Muslim Women in American Popular Literature”
Editorial Note
brent hayes edwardsFrom its inception, SOCIAL TEXT has regularly published work in translation. Although translations have perhaps been less prominent than in some other journals (the early New Left Review, New German Critique, and Telos, for example), the commitment to making significant texts in foreign…
A Short Introduction to Adorno's Mediation between "Kultur" and Culture
mark kalbusThis introduction to the translation of Theodor W. Adorno’s “Kultur and Culture,” originally a lecture not intended for transcription and publication, situates the talk amongst Adorno’s analyses of U.S. society and traces his distinctions between European and American understandings of … Continue reading “A Short Introduction to Adorno's Mediation between "Kultur" and Culture”
Kultur and Culture – Theodor W. Adorno
mark kalbusThis lecture examines American and European understandings of the concept of culture and highlights the need for developing critical thought instead of yielding to the strength of the status quo in either setting. At the heart of the contrast between … Continue reading “Kultur and Culture – Theodor W. Adorno”
Questions on Intellectual Emigration – Theodor W. Adorno
mark kalbusThis article explores the notion of contribution and the role of emigrant intellectuals in relation to their new cultural context. Using the example of German exiles in the United States, Adorno suggests that if emigrants find the demands for intellectual … Continue reading “Questions on Intellectual Emigration – Theodor W. Adorno”
Depression Today, or New Maladies of the Economy
John AndrewsDrawing on recent theories of affect and affectivity, this essay argues that depression is an “affect” that connects the individual and the social. In particular, depression serves as both a response to, and a cause of, economic fears and uncertainties–a … Continue reading “Depression Today, or New Maladies of the Economy”