Mark Greif is a founder and Editor of the journal n+1. He lives and works in New York, where he is Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the New School.
His latest book, Against Everything: On Dishonest Times (40% off until October 30th) dissects everyday life under twenty-first-century capitalism. In a series of coruscating essays Greif asks why we put ourselves through the pains of exercise, what our concerns about diet or sex does for our fundamental worth, what political identity the hipster might possess, and what happens to us when we listen to Radiohead or hip-hop.
Mark Greif picks his favourite essay collections, from Virginia Woolf to Susan Sontag, for the latest Five Book Plan.
- Susan Sontag
You've probably heard a lot about the Bolivarian regimes in Latin America by now - but have you heard about Venezuela's 1,500 grassroots-lead communes which have been their driving force? In this article, originally published in ROAR magazine's first issue, George Cicciarello-Maher guides you through the political mobilisations of contemporary Venezuela.
George's new book, Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, is out now and 40% off until Sunday 30th October. Click here to activate the discount.
George Ciccariello-Maher is a writer, organizer, and professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University. He is the author most recently of Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Instituted for Social Research at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) where he is researching popular self-defense movements. Here he picks 5 essential book for rethinking the history of communal power in Latin America and beyond.
The Latin American commune dates to long before the events of Paris 1871. Never emerging fully-formed—why would we expect it to?—the history of the commune cuts into and across much broader struggles for popular self-government that began before colonization. Just as the Spanish comuna can encompass everything from a local community to a fully-fledged collectivist society, so too do we need to excavate the real, living history of the commune in a nuanced way that does not sacrifice social content to any predetermined form.