Review Essays
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery (1855) exemplifies—both in its content and reception— the kind of uncomfortable, status quo-defying denunciation which is subjected to erasure, suppression, or misrepresentation. Even though its questions and provocations about 19th-century American slave society have never truly been addressed by the systems…
Read Full Article...Toyin Falola’s book Global Yoruba: Regional and Diasporic Networks is a landmark in Yoruba Studies, and almost certainly going to become a permanent point of reference. It is an epic book, unparalleled, to the best of my knowledge, in its breadth in exploring the natal, larger African and diasporic development of Yoruba history and culture, emphasizing the growth of…
Read Full Article...Works Discussed: Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization Siddhartha Deb, Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India Over 2,000 people, overwhelmingly Muslim, were slaughtered in the 2002 riots that swept through the western Indian state of Gujarat. As detailed by Richard Seymour in Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of…
Read Full Article...The war between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah, the expansion of hostilities into Lebanon and the missile assault on Israel by Iran have thrust the Jewish state foremost into the headlines. It has also sown new divisions in the American social and political fabric, further exacerbating tensions and hatred in what is already a deeply divided…
Read Full Article...Works Discussed: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting, edited and translated by Ara H. Merjian and Alessandro Giammei Ara H. Merjian, Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art, and Neocapitalism The first part of Heretical Aesthetics actually recycles the title of the first section in Ara H. Merjian’s previous, much lengthier, volume, purportedly on…
Read Full Article...In the 2019 UK General Election, beleaguered by a concerted campaign of print and broadcast media attacks, enfeebled by in-party subterfuge, and twisted inside out over how to resolve the salient issue of Brexit, a ragged and limpen Labour Party succumbed to a heavy defeat. Jeremy Corbyn, the first politician proposing a break from neoliberal orthodoxy to front…
Read Full Article...Evil is a concept with a hazy definition. Admittedly I use the term without having a confident grasp of what behavior constitutes evil. Does evil mean very or extremely bad behavior? Yes, but not precisely because evil, I conclude, connotes conduct that is not relative to other behaviors. It goes beyond them and touches the…
Read Full Article...The primary paradigm for psychiatry at the moment is founded on the premise that mental disorders are largely a result of genetic, biologic causes, and therefore treatment rationales and understanding of mental illness are firmly rooted in this paradigm. Genetic research purports to demonstrate the truth of its premise. This research however, is beginning to…
Read Full Article...Books reviewed: The Pox Lover: An Activist’s Decade in New York and Paris by Anne-christine d’Adesky, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements by Hilary Moore and James Tracy (San Francisco: City Lights Press, 2020) Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and Future of Addiction by…
Read Full Article...Derrida, Kristeva and Foucault. Whatever you might think about these legends of French Theory and American academic culture, reading Thomas de Zengotita’s Postmodern Theory and Progressive Politics will have you wondering who is having the thoughts: Is it the Cartesian subject, skeptical and analytical; a French postmodern not-a-subject, intertwined with an infinite cascade of texts; or, perhaps,…
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Latest Issue
2025: Vol. 24, No. 1-2
Latest Issue
2025: Vol. 24, No. 1-2
Between The Issues
