Evil is Not a Psychiatric Illness

A reflection on Dr. Steven Reisner’s message

Since the earliest days of Trump’s candidacy, media has been glutted with op-eds suggesting he is unfit for the role of presidency because he is “mentally ill,” with doctors and psychiatrists intentionally violating the Goldwater Rule by attempting to diagnose the new president without having had any clinical contact. At ...
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Evil is Not a Psychiatric Illness

Populism as Neoliberalism

On John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century in the Trump Era

Are neoliberalism and Trump’s populism incompatible? In the scattered debates that have arisen in the wake of his presidential victory, these two somewhat vague terms are contrasted with one another in order to make sense of his rhetoric of protectionism for US manufacturers and labor, to the detriment of immigrant ...
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Populism as Neoliberalism

Interview with Darrick Hamilton

During this semester’s course on Slavery, Race & Capitalism, taught by Professor Julia Ott , we have discussed the voracious nature of capitalism and the precarity it inflicts, disproportionately, upon subaltern groups. From assigned readings on historical and contemporary scholarship, as well as guest lectures, we have explored the ways ...
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Interview with Darrick Hamilton

An Unhappy Marriage of Neoliberalism and Neo-mercantilism

Political economy of Turkey in a double bind

Economic commentators divide Justice and Development Party reign into two periods: the golden years of 2002-2008 and the lackluster years of 2009 onwards. This periodization may need to be qualified (and not only due to recently changed statistical definitions of Turkstat) by adding a third period starting roughly in the aftermath ...
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An Unhappy Marriage of Neoliberalism and Neo-mercantilism

Understanding Neo-Fascism (Part 1)

Trump-shock and Resonant Violence Five theses for Comprehending Trumpian Fascism

The new regime bears important similarities to classic fascism, meaning that it buzzes with rapid intensifications of white supremacist nationalism, dismissive attacks on reason, autocratic leadership, deepening entwinements of state and capital, disenfranchisement, the attack on liberal and representative democratic institutions and, increasingly, right-wing populist violence. However, this new fascism ...
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What is Politicized Psychoanalysis?

Trump Problems and the Neoliberal Normal in Psychoanalysis

When I ask my students to tell me what comes to mind when they hear the term neoliberalism they say: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; the outsourcing of labor to the global south; gender and sexual compliance in public assistance and welfare programs; the systematic oppression ...
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Punk Preempts the Post-Popstar Age

Prosumption and Celebrity within Neoliberal Economics

“maybe they’re born with it. maybe they watched loads of YouTube tutorials.” So reads the SoundCloud page description of Internet-native photographer, artist, and musician Arvida Byström. In the 1977 issue of the UK fanzine Sideburns, the punk movement was once instructed, “this is a chord, this is another, this is a ...
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Punk Preempts the Post-Popstar Age

American Elections: A Conversation on the Left

In 2016 Andrew Arato and Nancy Fraser looked at the coming election. This is what they had to say.

This dialogue was originally published on September 26 2016: as we make the turn into a new election year, Public Seminar returned to how these influential political theorists imagined left politics. Arato: Nancy we have had a conversation about the elections a week ago in Great Evremond, Mass, and one thing you ...
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American Elections: A Conversation on the Left

Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

Eviscerating the Constitutional Court and purging the judiciary, complete politicization of the civil service, turning public media into a government mouthpiece, restricting opposition prerogatives in parliament, unilateral wholesale change of the Constitution or plain violation of it, official tolerance and even promotion of racism and bigotry, administrative assertion of traditional ...

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Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power

The IMF Makes Class Warriors of Us All

On October 24, 1973, the Egyptian military, under the command of General Hosni Mubarak, and under instructions from President Anwar Sadat, dealt an unprecedented blow to the most powerful regime in the Middle East: Israel. As the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal and established bridgeheads in the Sinai peninsula, ...

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The IMF Makes Class Warriors of Us All

Mr. Clinton’s Lament

In 2014, when the editorial staff of The New Republic resigned en masse to protest its looming corporatization by a publisher aiming to convert it to “a vertically integrated digital media company,” I was a bit smug in my surprise. Ironic, I thought: the magazine, which lurched from “popular front” ...
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