Blog

  • Giving voice to inner screams

    Giving voice to inner screams

    For the late Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, cinema was always an opportunity for dialogue with the audience. In this essay, Henry Roberts explores the aesthetics and political power of Sembène's cinematic oeuvre.
  • Lenin looks back in anger

    Lenin looks back in anger

    In this excerpt from Lenin’s Childhood, Isaac Deutscher creates a scene from the Twentieth CPSU Congress, 1956, where an imagined Lenin reflects on what Leninism has become.

  • Lenin: Geared to One Purpose

    Lenin: Geared to One Purpose

    In Not By Politics Alone, Tamara Deutscher describes a Lenin whose whole being was geared to one purpose, the purpose of the revolution.
  • Realizing Africa

    Realizing Africa

    "Through his filmmaking and overall cinematic framework, Sembène realized the dream of a unified and borderless Africa which its political leaders have yet to produce." Matene Toure revisits Ousmane Sembène's 1988 film Camp de Thiaroye, highlighting his life's ambition of inspiring revolutionary action through film.
  • Ruth Wilson Gilmore: On the Centenary of Lenin's Death

    Ruth Wilson Gilmore: On the Centenary of Lenin's Death

    Ruth Wilson Gilmore asks how might the politics explained or implied in Lenin’s writings inform our analytical and practical grasp of what is to be done now, in her introduction to Imperialism and the National Question.

  • Big Ship Stuck

    Big Ship Stuck

    Georgina Voss explores the strangeness of scale in global supply chain systems through the ship that launched a thousand memes, the Ever Given.

  • Testimonial 15: In defense of Palestine solidarity

    Testimonial 15: In defense of Palestine solidarity

    In testimonial 15 of our Palestine Uncensored series, scholars in Vienna speak out about the University of Vienna's unilateral cancellation of a teach-in series about Palestine. In the face of censorship, they ask "What would it mean for our solidarity to rest not on notional liberal values, but on a materialist commitment to Palestinian life and endurance, justice and liberation?"
  • Reclaiming Lenin

    Reclaiming Lenin

    For the centenary of Vladimir Lenin's death, Paweł Wargan revisits Lenin's revolutionary thought and shows how Lenin can help us navigate our political conditions today.