Kenneth Pomeranz
‘The Great Himalayan Watershed’ From Asia’s mountainous heart flow rivers on which half the world’s population depends. Pomeranz examines the complex interaction between human water needs, fragile ecology and vast infrastructural projects—and the far-reaching consequences of their conjugation.

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NLR 58 was mailed out to subscribers on 15th July 2009

CONTENTS

  1. Kenneth Pomeranz: The Great Himalayan Watershed From Asia’s mountainous heart flow rivers on which half the world’s population depends. Pomeranz examines the complex interaction between human water needs, fragile ecology and vast infrastructural projects—and the far-reaching consequences of their conjugation.
  2. Miroslav Hroch: Learning from Small Nations Leading scholar of national questions discusses his personal trajectory and theoretical development, against the backdrop of the Czech experience. Sociological and historical roots of national feeling, and comparative perspectives on their European destinies.
  3. R. W. Johnson: False Start in South Africa Disappointments of post-apartheid rule, marred by mass unemployment and corruption, amid the enrichment of a new black elite. Does the arrival of Zuma, and new salience of the SACP within the ruling alliance, portend a lurch to ethnic conflict and capital flight?
  4. Patrick Bond: In Power in Pretoria? Responding to Johnson, Patrick Bond locates the origins of the ANC’s neoliberal record since 1994 in the compromises of the transition era. Rhetoric versus reality, and the subordination of trade unions and SACP alike to capital’s prerogatives.
  5. Etienne Balibar: Althusser and the Rue d'Ulm Retrospective look at the life and work of Althusser, seen within the structures—personal, political, institutional—of the École Normale Supérieure. Teaching, thinking and writing at the intersection of private and public realms.
  6. Fredric Jameson: Marx and Montage The author of Archaeologies of the Future unearths fragments from ‘ideological antiquity’ in Alexander Kluge’s recent film on Capital. Encounters with Eisenstein’s unrealized equivalent, seeking a cinematic transposition of the commodity fetish.

BOOK REVIEWS

  1. Peter Thomas on Cristina Corradi, Storia dei marxismi in Italia. Multiple inheritances of Labriola, Gramsci, operaismo and other currents. Can a pluralized theoretical tradition aspire to outrun reverses in praxis?
  2. Tony Wood on Michael Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul. A revised neoliberal gospel for the region, courtesy of the Economist.
  3. Max Gasner on Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The 21st century as re-run of the 19th, shaped by the ambitions of ascendant autocratic powers.
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Articles:

  3. Fredric Jameson,
    ‘Filming Capital’ The author of Archaeologies of the Future unearths fragments from ‘ideological antiquity’ in Alexander Kluge’s recent film on Capital. Encounters with Eisenstein’s unrealized equivalent, seeking a cinematic transposition of the commodity fetish.
  4. Tony Wood,
    ‘Latin America Tamed?’ Tony Wood on Michael Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul. A revised neoliberal gospel for the region, courtesy of the Economist.
  5. Perry Anderson,
    ‘A New Germany?’ What have been the outcomes of reunification in the Federal Republic? Perry Anderson charts contradictory cross-currents within its polity, economy, culture and society, gauging the impact of a contested neoliberal offensive on the ‘Modell Deutschland’ and its intellectual life.
  6. Slavoj Žižek,
    ‘Class and Commons’ Mountaineering lessons from the Bolsheviks’ master strategist provide a metaphor for regroupment in hard times. Slavoj Žižek identifies the principal antagonisms within contemporary capitalism, as the basis for positing anew the ‘communist hypothesis’.

Editorials:

  1. Susan Watkins,
    ‘Lulling Nuclear Protest’ What are the geopolitical origins of the NPT, and what are its actual effects? Non-proliferation as nuclear privilege of the few, weapon of intimidation of the one, submission of the many—and its impact on the peace movement.
  2. Perry Anderson,
    ‘On the Conjuncture’ A reckoning of global shifts in political and economic relations, with China emerging as new workshop of the world and US power, rationally applied elsewhere, skewed by Israeli interests in the Middle East. Oppositions to it gauged, along with theoretical visions that offer exits from the perpetual free-market present.
  3. Afghanistan, Reasons for the West’s stalemate in Afghanistan sought neither in lack of troops and imperial treasure, nor in Pakistani obstruction, but in the very nature of the occupation regime. Tariq Ali on the actual results of ‘state-building’ in the Hindu Kush, as a broken country is subjected to the combined predations of NGOs and NATO.
  4. New Labour, Causes and consequences of Britain’s distinctive contribution to the repertoire of latter-day neoliberalism. The domestic and foreign record of the Blair regime, and its hybrid role in a shifting Atlantic order.
  5. Middle East, As fears are voiced within the US establishment of impending debacle in Iraq, a survey of the embattled landscape from Baghdad, Ramallah and Tehran to Beirut and Damascus. American control is slipping, Ali argues—but it is too soon to count on imperial defeat.
  6. Iraq, With the now unanimous support of the ‘international community’, can Washington hope to recoup its gamble in Iraq? Prospects for the resistance and the Occupation, as the UN-approved government is hoisted into place.
  7. Chechnya, Eager to embrace Putin, Western rulers and pundits continue to connive at the Russian occupation of Chechnya, as Moscow’s second murderous war in the Caucasus enters its sixth year. Traditions of resistance, popular demands for sovereignty and Russia’s brutal military response, in Europe’s forgotten colony.
  8. Europe, Europe’s political landscape, revealed by the protest votes in France and the Netherlands. Mutation and dilation of the EU in the age of liberal hegemony, and lessons to be drawn from the unprecedented irruptions of discontent against it.
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