Politics Archives - Page 79 of 143

Feature

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Thoughts on social interaction, and questions of individual recognition and responsibility

May 18, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I hope we can agree: we are not alone, and even when we are alone, we are not alone. We humans are what we are as we interact with each other: no interaction, no person; no interaction, no politics; no interaction, no art, science and love; no sex and no ...

The Banality of Evil and the Death of the Author

Feature

Elections Turn On Policy, Not Public Relations

To win back the House, Democrats need to show how they will make change

May 16, 2018 • by Claire Potter

My liberal and left-wing friends continue to puzzle over a single, unanswerable question: why do white, working class people vote "against their interests"? Perhaps the reason that this is an unanswerable question is that it is the wrong question. I would like to suggest that they don't vote against their ...

Elections Turn On Policy, Not Public Relations

Feature

“Bloody Gina,” the CIA, and the Senate

Why Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing was a democratic farce

May 15, 2018 • by Jeremy Varon

Growing up near Washington, D.C., I developed a child’s awe at the city’s great temples of democracy: its monuments to Lincoln and Jefferson; the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence is housed; the Capitol Rotunda; and even the modern, workaday offices of Congress where the people’s business is done. ...

Feature

“Enjoy without Restraint!”

Fifty Years Ago in Paris

May 15, 2018 • by Sergio Benvenuto

This is an introduction to an in-depth narrative recollection on one of the most significant episodes of the 20th Century, May 1968 in Paris, from one of its participants, famed psychoanalyst Sergio Benvenuto. The full essay can be found here. This is the first time this essay has been published ...

Blue Monday

Democracy Now

Thoughts on losing, winning, and politics

May 14, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In my last two “Blue Monday” columns I reflected on the theme of “consonance and dissonance” and politics. More concretely, I suggested that it is very important, especially on the broad democratic left, to promote ...

Feature

Thinking and Acting in Grief

Dark thoughts on a bright Friday morning

May 11, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It has been a week of trying experiences and dark thoughts at Public Seminar and The New School. Jeremy Safran, a deeply respected colleague and wonderful person, was senselessly murdered. To make matters worse, the executive leadership of our beloved institution is fighting too vigorously in a labor dispute with our beloved students, ...

Feature

The Mirage of Universalism Behind European Localism

An Excerpt from The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy

May 11, 2018 • by Walter Mignolo

It should be clear by now that Eurocentrism is not limited to the “bad,” but it encompasses also the “good” and the “ugly.” That means that Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism are indeed part of the image of totality that Eurocentrism projects. The question is to delink from it and to ...

The Mirage of Universalism Behind European Localism

Feature

Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness

A brief, and incomplete, intellectual history of identity politics on the right

May 9, 2018 • by Claire Potter

How do we understand the contemporary conservative pride in political incorrectness? One of the core principles of contemporary conservatism today is that identity -- race, gender, sexuality -- should neither entitle anyone to rights, nor imprison them in an ideology. Identity, conservatives argue, is something that liberals use to create constituencies ...

Understanding Conservative Political Incorrectness

Feature

The Modernity of Sandor Ferenczi

A Life inscribed within the crucible of the history of the psychoanalytic movement

May 9, 2018 • by Thierry Bokanowski

This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of The Modernity of Sándor Ferenczi: his historical and contemporary importance in psychoanalysis, by Thierry Bokanowski. By providing a concise yet thorough overview of the life and work of Sandor Ferenczi, The Modernity of Sandor Ferenczi seeks to help make his thought and work better known. ...

Feature

The Scab

One who gives more value for the same price than another.

May 8, 2018 • by Jack London

"Such is the tangle of conflicting interests in a tooth-and-nail society that people cannot avoid being scabs, are often made so against their desires, and unconsciously" [Although the author of this paper has been chiefly known to the readers of the Atlantic as a writer of stories of the Klondike, he has given ...

Feature

The Lies of War

Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War

May 8, 2018 • by Michael Stewart Foley

Most everything one needs to know about Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s epic interpretation of the Vietnam War is evident in their summary of the conflict in the film’s eighteenth and final hour. “The Vietnam War was a tragedy, immeasurable and irredeemable,” declares narrator Peter Coyote. “But meaning can be ...

Education

Why We Strike

An announcement from SENS-UAW Strike Committee

May 7, 2018 • by SENS-UAW Strike Committee

The New School administration has completely abandoned the progressive principles on which it was founded. Sidestepping demands from the community to declare The New School a sanctuary campus, the administration is engaging in widespread union-busting practices while shelling out millions for flagship buildings and fancy new fonts. With an ongoing ...