Political Education for Everyday Life
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Bad Subjects seeks to revitalize progressive politics. We challenge progressive dogma by encouraging readers to think about the political dimension to all aspects of everyday life. We seek to broaden the audience for leftist and progressive writing through a commitment to accessibility and contemporary relevance. more »
featured articlesThe Speciousness of Origin: Notes from Palermo
The Neoliberal/Right-wing Psyche
Cyber-liberty, Democracy and the Arab Psyche
Word of Click: Social Networking and the Arab Spring Revolutions
Three Close Encounters With Daniel Ellsberg
Protest at the Michigan State Capitol
Letter from Cairo: Spirit of Revolution and Cartoon Signs in Tahrir Square
Youth in the Era of Disposability
Class Warfarin: Antidote
by Joseph Natoli
Class Warfarin: Hemorrhaging
Class Warfarin: Dosage
Snapshots of Cuba
Can't Forget the Motor Kelley: Mobile Homestead at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit
Response to "Can't Forget the Motor Kelley"
Things were much more complex than what is suggested in the article's phrasing, both in terms of what was going on in people's minds, and in terms of the objective phenomenon of "white flight" out of Detroit. read » I’m Just a Wizard Laboring in a Violent and Softcore Consumer Culture: A Historical Look at the Changing Culture of Consumption in Digital Games
Tales of the Urban Rats, Circa 1982
reviewsmore »Supernatural Aid in the Case of Robert Johnson
Color Me Obsessed: a Documentary on the Replacements by Gordon Bechard
The Black Keys Howlin’ For You
Theodore Roethke ≠ Captain Beefheart
Letter to a Friend Concerned About Fascism
The Walking Dead: Staggering Toward Mediocrity
Waiting for "Superman": Private Markets and Public Education
Unable to Leap Tall Buildings and Much Smaller Objects: Why Americans Don’t Embrace The Adventures of Tintin
The End of America Waltz With Bashir
See Bad Reviews for earlier reviews |
call for papersBad Subjects Issue #82: M(other)hood
This issue of Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life invites submission from 1k-3k words and original art work that provides insight into the many political, social, and cultural aspects of women's lives. When it comes to women's lives, the personal truly is political. Regardless of the culture a woman lives in, aspects of both her public and private lives—from her appearance to her civil and reproductive rights to her abilities as a parent—are fodder for discussion, debate, and derision. Women are held up to seemingly impossible standards, reinforced by social norms, religion, and the media. read » new issue (2011)Bad Subjects Issue #81: Arizona Biopower
When Arizona is brought up many scholars, educational and immigration rights activists across the U.S. just shrug and say “Arizona is crazy” or ”that is Arizona for you”. However, we strongly believe that Arizona is a bas-relief to a matrix of racialized biopower that seeks to criminalize and denigrate subjects based on fear driven paranoia about indigenous and mestiza/o peoples. We sincerely hope that this issue of Bad Subjects will make a positive difference in highlighting the racism, violence, and anti-immigrant hysteria coming out of Arizona today. read » recent issuemore »
editorialsmore »
Terror, War Crimes, and Regrets Too slow to get a Facebook page up calling for capture and public trials of war criminals Bin Laden, Bush and Cheney. read » OCCUPY EVERYWHERE TOGETHER by Adam Cornford Great Scott! Why Florida's Governor Is Wrong to Promote Only STEM Education by Tamara Watkins
Predator Drones, Reaper Drones, and Total Disconnect by Rosalie Riegle
This Mad River Overflows: Mother's Nature's Austerity Program by Joseph Natoli 
Stranded three days in Rochester, Vermont in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene’s 24 hour downpour swelling multiple Green Mountain tributaries of the Mad River and the White River and flash flooding this town, I return to Michigan and read what the newspapers have written, hear what I had not been able to hear while stranded. read »My Problem with Michele by Tamara Watkins Michele Bachmann recently stated that her literal interpretation of the Bible encourages her to be submissive to her husband. Her admission raises questions about the nature of her candidacy, and whether the electorate should be wary of the influence political spouses wield. read »New Boss, Same as the Old Boss by Zack Furness
Economic Inequities Pull the Cart of Revolution by Kody Gerkin
Share With Us These Information Arts: Stephen Wilson 1944—2011 by Mike Mosher
I fear the tree of liberty is irrevocably damaged. read »
Michael Jackson's life is one story in the history of Black struggles in 20th Century "America." read » Good News Blockheads on the Meltdown See Bad Editorials for earlier editorials
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On a visit to our sewn and preserved fellow species in a Palermo natural history museum, the author ponders our inveterate need to diminish and hold out of sight our connectedness in the mesh of all life and the invalidities of our politics and presumptions resulting from our rigorously maintained blindness.
The author considers the present political situation as a psychomachia, a drama in which what any of the dramatis personae say or any of the bi-partisan accords they enact do no more than mask the “Unthought” that conceals the hidden heart of the matter. In this first "diagnosis," the author examines the neoliberal psyche.
We in the West typically refrain from couching international insights in culturally sensitive ways. In the Arab world the freedom to converse and not the mere googling of information is what can trigger political change and social networks make this possible.
Social networking's political value in the U.S. may not exceed its distracting/seductive values but such has not been the case with the Arab Spring Revolutions.
On three different occasions after Ellsberg became a national celebrity or pariah, I ran into him while doing peace work. He was always doing the work with every fiber of his being.
The collective energy of our group reached out to the public, and I still feel that energy.
I'm so glad I lived to witness this great moment in our history and the history of the whole world, and yet more, to be part of it. The signs people drew at Tahrir Square are simple, but so meaningful.
Poor minority youth are not just excluded from "The American Dream" but become utterly redundant and disposable waste products of a society that nof longer considers them of any value.
In the end, this is a war first with ourselves. As long as we refuse to admit that we are not self-creating nor free to choose to be free to choose, this will be a war we cannot identify, a war without a label. And as long as both the poison and the antidote remain without labels, the wealth of the few will increase as will the distress of the many. 
The glossary of word/world implanted in our minds that we need to excise is not limited to the following autopsy report in this the third in a Class Warfarin series.
Like the poisoned rat, we can't make a connection between our decline and our appetites, or, more precisely, what we've been fed that's labeled 'fair and balanced" and we've greedily consumed.
Wall Street chicanery and finagling has led to austerity demands on the working class and the middle class as well as a new assault on unions. We are now engaged in what Ralph Nader called a "tug of war with one side pulling", and dimensions of class struggle in the U.S. have changed.
From October 13th through 20th, 2010, I visited Cuba on a wonderful deluxe tour that I’ll never forget. But after my first few days in Habana, I wasn’t so sure about lifting the travel ban and embargo.
Artist Mike Kelley returned to Michigan with a rolling replica (of sorts) of his boyhood home in the suburb Westland. This vehicle, towed around Detroit, is to become part of a permanent structure on the grounds of MOCAD.
With networked gameplay and great downloads came the potential for virtual assets to be bought and sold, along with all of the other content.
The Urban Rats were a short lived, loosely-knit San Francisco based collective of young artists, students, filmmakers, musicians, and political activists trying to figure out how to make politically relevant and engaged urban street art.
If not for Mr. Johnson and his myth, what would our world today not only sound like, but be like?
When it comes to The Replacements, there are two types of people—those who’ve never heard of them, and those who are unwavering in their conviction that they are the best American rock band in history. Filmmaker Gorman Bechard's documentary on the band, Color Me Obsessed, recently had its Michigan premiere.
It’s safe to say The Black Keys have effectively duped a substantial amount of the music-listening population. Keep this on the down-low, but the secret truth of the matter is what they really are is…a blues band.
Some poems of Theodore Roethke, and the December, 2010 death of Captain Beefheart, led me to similarities in their two poetic voices.
This letter came from a long-time activist who as a Millennial Spectator has remained unhappy with all government but here re-directs a young friend's attention to the greater dangers of global corporate dominance. 
I had high hopes for The Walking Dead, as I have a soft spot for the undead, and hoped for practical tips on how to slaughter them should they come to my town. Alas, rather than getting a well-written story full of strong, developed characters, all I got were some decent special effects and a product that forced me to contemplate gender stereotypes. 
Markets seek a maximization of profits everywhere and at every time. The trick is to turn “public” into “private,” a bit of legerdemain that is presently underway. This is what is deep down turning up the heat on the issue, or potential market, of education.
As Tintin fans around the world wait in giddy anticipation of the 2011 release of the new 3D Tintin film directed by Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson, many Americans find themselves asking the question: Who is Tintin?
Editors: Arturo J. Aldama, Peter J. Garcia & Mike Mosher
In commemoration of the endless Afghanistan war and as a final activity of a national Catholic Worker gathering, activists sat down in front of an entrance to Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
Jay Leno recently quipped: “Huge riots continuing in Egypt. Experts say one of the problems over there is, there’s a huge difference in wealth between the extremely rich and the vast majority of people who have nothing. Well, thank God that could never happen in this country.” Don’t kid yourself; it has happened.
One thing I fail to understand about the media and blogosphere coverage regarding the events unfolding in the Middle East is the utter inability of the press to talk about what is actually at stake here, what's really being fought for.
This generous man shared with us the splendors and surprises of Information Arts, an arena of art practice worthy of the complexity, contradictions and interconnectedness of our time.
The history of student activism in post-war Japan has created an atmosphere in which leftist student groups are either dismissed as outdated and inconsequential, or vilified as violent and out of touch with reality.
On one January evening, I got a call from a friend who was weeping like a child. As she choked back the tears, Dawn broke the tragic news to me.
One aspect of American politics that I’ve become increasingly obsessed with of late is what seems to be an ongoing separation of “liberals” from “Democrats.” 
Many on the left have criticized Stuart Towensend's cinematic recreation of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. But the film may actually have done a better job of capturing the event by dispensing with a unified viewpoint than it could have by aspiring to get all the facts right.
If the Obama presidency signals the dream of a post-racial America, then the shooting of an unarmed Black man in Oakland signals the continuous nightmare of racial violence.
Bankers and our banks, solid as a rock.
82: M(other)hood
Collective Action