Periscope articles and content
The subject of the combover stands in front of the mirror just so, to appear as a person with a full head (of hair/ideas of the world). Harsh lighting, back views, nothing inconvenient is bearable in order for the … Continue reading “on (not) mentoring”
Cruel optimism is the provocative concept Lauren Berlant has given to a phenomenon endemic to the present political and affective moment: the holding up of hope as a means of stifling dissent, forestalling change, and ultimately rendering any array of … Continue reading “Cruel Optimism for the Neurologically Queer”
Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism risks thinking the utopian in ways that are both bold and revelatory. My reflections on Berlant’s already influential book open with me taking the liberty of positioning Berlant’s work alongside my own writing on utopia. … Continue reading “Living the Wrong Life Otherwise”
As someone who has been writing about food and eating for a long time, I am most intrigued with Cruel Optimism‘s engagement with eating in the third chapter, “Slow Death: Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency.” My sense is that food exists … Continue reading “How Does It Feel?”
Lauren’s thought is fat: rich and extensive, spreading with pleasure. And I’m headed to murder, fat, and luxury as I seek to fete her. First, however, something in Lauren’s tone is moving. The sly, alluring sadism of optimism … Continue reading “Tone on the Range”
Dana Luciano: I’d like to start by pressing further on your comment (Cruel Optimism 21) about the need to invent new genres for theorizing, genres that can more effectively register, assess and imagine forms of response to the “new ordinary” … Continue reading “Conversation: Lauren Berlant with Dana Luciano”
Click here to read. This dossier takes its cue from one of the Occupy movement’s bedrock slogans, “This Is What Democracy Looks Like” (though this was first nurtured, as were many Occupy paradigms, tactics and customs, in the global … Continue reading “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?”
In January 2012, a delegation of scholars and teachers working in the United States went on a week-long investigative trip to Israel/Palestine organized by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The trip resulted in a … Continue reading “Palestine”
We are a group of scholars and academics who teach at universities in the United States who were part of a January 2012 delegation sponsored by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which was … Continue reading “Statement of USACBI Delegation to Palestine”
On July 1, 2011, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), sent a letter to several scholars at US universities, inviting them to join a historic delegation to Palestine. The letter began:
Cities are the cradles of human civilization, and they are also the testing grounds for humanity’s future. Over 50% of human beings now live in cities, and that percentage is going to accelerate rapidly as the megacities of the global … Continue reading “Bird on Fire”
The articles here by Kim Cunningham, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Jesse Prinz, Deboleena Roy, and Alyson Spurgas are collectively the outcome of an experiment we undertook with a broader group of faculty and graduate students at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. This experiment, called NeuroCulture, … Continue reading “Neuroculture”
When I told the Israeli border official who interviewed me that I was going to Ramallah, she sneered and wrinkled her brow: “Okay.” Why would anyone go there, she seemed to say. There was no mistaking her disapproval. Looking … Continue reading “Palestine Diaries”
I arrived in Ramallah well prepared . . . or so I thought. I’d read Saree Makdisi’s chilling portrait of Palestinian life under occupation, historical accounts by Rashid Khalidi, Walid Khalidi, Ilan Pappe, Nur Mashala, and Gabriel Piterberg, powerful critiques of Israeli apartheid leveled by Ali Abunimah, Omar Baghouti, and Uri Davis, exposés penned by Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, as well as pro-Zionist voices such as Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. I had Edward Said by my side, and the Electronic Intifada and the Palestine Monitor in my web browser. Our small delegation, formed at the behest of the U.S. Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, consisted of some of the smartest people I know, their collective knowledge of the situation surpassed only by our hosts at Birzeit University in Ramallah. We were there on a fact-finding mission.
When reflecting on the week-long visit to Occupied Palestine and Israel – the delegation organized by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) – in some ways, the meeting that was the most provocative was with the Palestinian academics who hosted us at a public policy research center in Haifa called Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research. There we encountered critical and incisive perspectives on the academic boycott by Palestinian citizens of Israel that showed how the politics look different from their social location. Their penetrating critiques and our productive dialogue ultimately strengthened my understanding of the situation of fragmentation on the ground in Palestine, and of the need to grapple with this complexity to address what is, after all, one occupation.
