Paratroopers in Kabul recently provoked controversy by filming themselves using an image of Jeremy Corbyn for target practice. In this piece, Tariq Ali placed the incident in the context of the establishment's fears of having Corbyn as Prime Minister.
Corey Robin on the history of conservative thought, the significance of Donald Trump's presidency, and Ayn Rand's contribution to conservatism, with Alex Doherty on the Politics Theory Other podcast
German filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator Hito Steyerl mediates on the function of art in the era of digital globalization. In this excerpt Steyerl explains the future of the design of killing, taken from her chapter: ‘How to Kill People: A Problem of Design’.
Silvia Federici has been one of the most influential and widely cited Marxist feminist scholars of the last 50 years. Her landmark work, Caliban and the Witch, argued that witch hunts were an organized campaign of mass murder of women who defied the increasing implementation of a patriarchal, authoritarian order under a rapidly developing capitalist state. In this article, Emily Janakiram argues that her work, and particularly her essay “On the Meaning of Gossip" can help shed light on a much maligned yet invaluable part of solidarity among workers and women.
New Left Review recently republished a relatively unknown 1961 essay from Raymond Williams on the 'Future of Marxism'. In this article, Daniel Gerke responds to the article and offers an illuminating account of what is identified as the consistency of Williams’s internationalism.
In this excerpt from Duty Free Art, Hito Steyerl questions the emerging role of contemporary art as currency in the age of planetary civil war: an era marked by rising inequality and rapid technological change.
Alain Badiou interviewed about the Gilets Jaunes, Macron and future of the French left.
What would a 21st century programme of political education look like? Darran McLaughlin writes about the forthcoming Bristol Transformed - a series of panels and workshops featuring Julian Manley (one of the architects of the Preston Model), Cat Hobbs (We Own It), Aaron Bastani, Dawn Foster, Soweto Kinch, Grace Blakeley, Owen Hatherley, James Meadway, and others.
In this edited excerpt from The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey views Foucault's life through his thought on desire, S&M and new forms of sexual practice in '70s gay culture:
Calling all Foucault fans! We have 40% off all our reading relating to the work and theory of Michel Foucault. Ends March 31, 23.59 EST.
Franco “Bifo” Berardi responds to Hito Steyerl's book Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War
There are three kinds of idiots: those who can count, and those who can’t. The ones who can count are obsessed with debunking received ideas and finding the hidden truth behind it. They measure things, calculate, and through the rigorous use of their own idiosyncratic reasoning they know why the earth is flat. Then there’s idiots who want to diverge from received ideas but are more playful, willful, intentionally absurd. Byung-Chul Han reminds us of this kind of idiocy which Deleuze thought characteristic of the philosopher. Is Han this kind of special idiot? Maybe.