Torture and Dignity

This lecture to the New School's General Seminar was originally published on the above date. Given the recent revelations concerning the CIA's program of torture, we are highlighting Bernstein's reflections today, Dec. 12, 2014. -J.G.

I. The Abolition of Torture

Human beings are the sorts of being who can undergo devastation: they ...

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Gezi, Occupy Solidarity, and Beyond

Global social movements lit up like constellations all around the world beginning in 2011. Protests in Egypt, Tunisia, the United States, Spain, Israel, then Turkey, Brazil, Bulgaria and Greece brought to the fore urgent socio-political issues including neoliberal economic transformation, the privatization of commons, the widening income gap, repressive regimes ...
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Gezi, Occupy Solidarity, and Beyond

Against Anarchism

For Edward J. Snowden and Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley): Heroes of transnational publicity -- in gratitude and with admiration.

One strategy for reimagining public sphere theory in the current conjuncture is neo-anarchism. Distrustful of global governance institutions, and of the expert networks entangled with them, this approach looks to anti-systemic movements ...

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Against Anarchism

Thought-Defying Evil

In the summer of 1945 Melvin Lasky, who was stationed in Germany with the American occupation forces, visited Karl Jaspers. Lasky, a correspondent for the Partisan review, mentioned the name of Hannah Arendt. Jaspers had lost contact with Arendt since 1938 and was stunned to discover that she was still ...

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