HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl, a gloomy and lyrical historical drama that tells the story of the catastrophic explosion of a nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine in 1986, has taken the unusual decision to cast a nearly all British cast of actors. Why does Stalinism seem so plausible in a British accent, and what does that say about the parallels between contemporary Britain and the USSR?
Last month, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a prototype of its Starlink satellite. With them, Musk hopes to create the world's first global Internet service. But, should space be merely a new arena for the dominance of global mega-corporations? And could we repurpose this new infrastructure for emancipatory ends? In this article, Aaron Bastani argues that the repurposing of this vital service could help socialists begin dreaming as big as the oligarchs.
Emily Apter's Unexceptional Politics "is a sprawling and remarkable mapping of the terrain of terms, idioms, and actions that constitute the philological and conceptual depth of our contemporary political lives." These commentaries were presented as part of a roundtable discussion on the book as "an entry port, a spur for continued engagement with the rich range of concerns that Unexceptional Politics raises."
In these videos, Sophie Lewis offers a radical feminist analysis of surrogacy, abortion, gestational labour, and the family. She is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family.
With France marking six months of ‘yellow vest’ rallies and civil unrest, a new movement is making itself heard. The Gilets Noirs, the largest collective of undocumented migrants in France, have been conducting a series of high profile actions, most notbaly the recent protests at Charles De Gaulle airport calling for an end to deportation flights. In this article, Luke Butterly reports on the movement.
Sophie Lewis offers a critique of surrogacy as it is described in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
On gestational communism and radical kinship: McKenzie Wark, Jules Joanne Gleeson and Natasha Lennard respond to Full Surrogacy Now by Sophie Lewis
Jacobin’s David Broder interviews Marco Revelli about the weakening of the traditional parties, the decline of democratic antibodies to the far right, and the possibility of reviving different forms of mass organization.
Cassandra Troyan navigates the histories of sex worker resistance and struggles against gendered violence and capital, towards revolution.
C. L. R. James, the pioneering Trinidadian socialist historian and writer, died on this day 30 years ago in London with his funeral held a few weeks later at Tunapuna Cemetery, Trinidad. On the arrival back in Trinidad of his body, his long-time comrade John La Rose read passages of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal - the great Caribbean poem of exile and return. In this article, Jackqueline Frost investigates the continental connections of James and Césaire, and the politics of return.
Are the Yellow Vest protests in France simply the reflection of a resurgent far right populism, and who has gained most from the wave of protests? In this article, the Quantité Critique collective investigate the politics of the movement, and argue that at play is a decisive political battle between the left and right.
In these videos, Mithu Sanyal examines the role of race and the recurrent image of the black rapist, the omission of male victims, and the racist agenda behind media reporting of rape. She is the author of Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo