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• "The Peculiarities of the English and the Decline of Britain" - Ellen Meiksins Wood on the Nairn-Anderson thesis and the Bourgeois paradigm

  Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading political theorist and one of the world's most influential historians. Her wide-ranging and original work, covering topics which range from examinations of Athenian democracy to contemporary American imperialism, has, alongside Robert Brenner, inaugurated the 'Political Marxist' approach to history. Political Marxism is founded upon a critique of the teleology and formalism of many forms of Marxism in an attempt at rehistoricising and repoliticising the Marxist project. The influence of Ellen's distinctive work can be seen across the social sciences and has influenced generations of scholars.
  
  To celebrate her work, we're publishing an extract from The Pristine Culture of Capitalism on the Nairn-Anderson thesis, Britain and the bourgeois paradigm.
  
  Verso, Birkbeck Politics Department and the Sussex PM group, will be hosting a symposium on the work at Ellen Meiksins Wood on Wednesday 4th November at Birkbeck. For full details click here.
  
  
  
  

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  By John Merrick / 30 October 2015 / comments

• "We have to think intersectionally"—Yishay Garbasz on the politics of allyship and solidarity

  "For people who also are trans, it is our basic humanity that is challenged. Anger is the only sane response." Nine Yamamoto-Masson interviews Yishay Garbasz about the politics of allyship, solidarity, cultural memory, institutionalised oppression, visibility and survival. 
  
  Yishay Garbasz is an artist and author whose main artistic interest is the inheritance of post-traumatic memories. British-Israeli and based in Berlin, she works across multiple media: “I'll learn whatever I need to in order to get the job done,” she says. “Mostly I use photography; I was trained as a photographer and as a dancer, but I also use video, installations, kinetic sculpture, light installations, performance. This is something incredible that my teachers taught me: if I can see it in my mind, and I have enough experience and confidence, I can make it in the real world.” 

  Garbasz was in conversation with Juliet Jacques at the Representing Trans: Acts of Self-definition event at the Tate Modern to launch Jacques's Trans: A Memoir. Both trans women, they discussed the importance of resisting sensationalist representations of transgender people, and how their artwork and writing addresses the question of representing trans lives as lives. They left a deep impression on many of the attendees, echoing in fragments on social media. One fragment in particular, from Garbasz, seemed to hit a nerve: “There are no allies, only actions. There is no magical status – only a readiness for action”.
  
  

  - Eat me Damien, Yishay Garbasz, 2010: Sculptures, Formaldehyde protected testicles removed during surgery, Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. "This has nothing to do with gender," she said at the Tate Modern. 
  

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  By Nine Yamamoto Yishay Garbasz / 30 October 2015 / comments

• Understanding Ethical Catastrophe on a Global Scale

  
  Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, rounds-up a series of op-eds in response to the ever-worsening global emergency of crisis-profiteering. Loewenstein's analysis of contemporary news items offers a coherent frame for understanding the source and scope of this ethical catastrophe on a global scale.

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  By Antony Loewenstein / 30 October 2015 / comments

• Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy awarded the Diana Forsythe Prize—and taken up in a HAU Journal symposium

  Gabriella Coleman's Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous has been awarded the 2015 Diana Forsythe Prize by The American Anthropological Association's Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology and Computing (CASTAC). 
  
  
  

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  By Colin Beckett / 29 October 2015 / comments

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