Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: The Tiny Hands of the Market”
In Central America under Covid-19, specifically in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, white flags have appeared all over the social terrain as indictments of a failed political and economic system whose primary effect for common people has been enduring a … Continue reading “On Waving the White Flag”
The hallmarks of poet and novelist Kevin Killian’s style are various—variousness, in fact, may be counted among them. Writer Dodie Bellamy, who married Killian in 1985, speaks of his “protean slips between high and low culture,” modeling an absolute equality … Continue reading “Extreme Remedies”
With her new book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (Columbia 2019), Wendy Brown joins more than a few scholars now reconsidering what we thought we knew about neoliberalism. Her previous book, Undoing the … Continue reading “On Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West“
Almost a decade ago, Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martínez published Los migrantes que no importan, first in Spain and then in Mexico, recounting his journeys with Central American migrants as they traveled through Mexico to the US border. It remains one … Continue reading “Introduction: On the Accumulation of Bodies”
In Gore Capitalism, transfeminist intellectual Sayak Valencia gives us a vocabulary, a taxonomy to articulate a horror that before 2010 we did not have words to name in Mexico. We had the numbers, the statistics, the hard, cold data to … Continue reading “Gore Capitalism and the Contemporary Grammars of Violence and Resistance”
Its grip is firm, yet soft. It confines you, but with the best of intentions. Like a weirdly sexual caterpillar or a slug that has come to rest on your shoulders, it covers the back of your head and your … Continue reading “Welcome Confinement: Notes on the Neck Pillow”
To what gods is one supposed to pray in this place, conveniently located at FRAport’s Terminal 1, Gate Z, where something so obviously glitzy as an undulating, wavy ceiling with a polished-gold finish can pass for “weltanschaulich neutral”? When one … Continue reading “Groves of Post-Criticality: Quiet Rooms at the International Airport”
The title of this piece refers to dreaming, an experience one can have awake and asleep alike. Dreaming takes you somewhere else, on a somewhat miraculous journey–pretty much like floating in mid-air. Boarding an airplane is still an exceptional situation … Continue reading “Dream with Me about Unwinding”
2015 was the tenth anniversary of the official launching of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement by Palestinian civil society organizations, including over 170 political parties, activist organizations, trade unions, women’s groups, and other segments of the Palestinian national movement, … Continue reading “A Radical Vision of Freedom”
Embedded within each of the three goals of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)–the right of return for refugees, full legal equality within Israel, and an end to occupation and colonization of Palestinian land—is an appeal to … Continue reading “Strengthening Anti-Racist Politics within BDS”
The U.S./Israel special relationship is at once affective, geopolitically strategic, and rooted in economics. In this essay I suggest that the neo-liberalization of the U.S. economy during the Reagan administration was tied to the formation of international free trade … Continue reading “Peace Dividends”
Social Text Collective Member Nicholas Mirzoeff reads his September 2012 Public Culture essay “Why I Occupy.”
Education outside of the traditional classroom is on the rise. Again. New non-traditional learning scenarios are emerging in many academic disciplines, spurred on by DIY culture, a tidal wave of student debt, and changes in technology. Moving beyond questioning whether … Continue reading “Educational Outliers”
On January 28, 2003 President George W. Bush delivered his third State of the Union Address focusing on global security. In its name, he both defended the U.S. War on Terror invasion of Iraq through lies about weapons of … Continue reading “Securing Blood: PEPFAR and Neoliberal War”
