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.
Online Features
Listening at the End of the Twentieth Century
Gustavus Stadler
Reviewed: Tim Lawrence, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). I began reading these two … Continue reading “Listening at the End of the Twentieth Century”
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
Santarchy is Coming to Town
Micki McGee
No one could stop the red tide that flooded across New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco yesterday. Santacon took hold of the streets in these and other cities across the globe. With anarchist roots in the San Francisco … Continue reading “Santarchy is Coming to Town”
A Teaching (I) and (II)
Tavia Nyong'o“So many scholars read anxiously, with a hope not to learn, not to be discomposed by learning. They fish in indexes looking for confirmation of not being trumped, they skim the surface hoping that no phrase catches them. The aversion … Continue reading “A Teaching (I) and (II)”
Postcard from Amsterdam: 2006
Anna McCarthy
Time's Up?
Tavia Nyong'oAfter world leaders gathered in Copenhagen to manage climate change from above, activists and demonstrators around the world struggle to hold them accountable. Ashley Dawson introduces a new forum on climate politics.
'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”
10 Year WTO/Seattle Protest Anniversary
Biella ColemanWe are right around the corner from the tenth anniversary of the street protests that erupted on the streets of Seattle. To commemorate this anniversary, there are a slew of talks, screening, and events around the country. In NYC on … Continue reading “10 Year WTO/Seattle Protest Anniversary”
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”
Voices from an Absent Future
Tavia Nyong'oAudio Statement from students protesting tuition hikes at UCLA. And more footage from recent protests.
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”
Panel Discussion and Book Party, 20 November 2009
Social Text CollectiveNovember 20, 2009 Friday 4 to 6 PM Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU 20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor Panel members: Event and panel host: Lisa Duggan (SCA, NYU) The Queer Child: Or Growing Sideways in the … Continue reading “Panel Discussion and Book Party, 20 November 2009”