NLR 110 will be mailed out to subscribers on 16 May
CONTENTS
- Stathis Kouvelakis: Borderland Against panegyrics to a frictionless, post-national EU polity, evidence from Europe’s multiple borders. Greece as gauge of an emerging order, in which interior and exterior tangle in overlapping jurisdictions and enforcement zones, ultimately dependent on Libyan warlords, Turkish prisons and the mass graves of the Mediterranean.
- Beatriz García, Nuria Alabao, Marisa Pérez: Spain’s Feminist Strike What led millions to participate in Spain’s nationwide women’s strike—a stoppage of care work as well as wage labour? Assessment of the forces at play—movement organizing, the media, unions, parties—and the potential of 8M to tilt the political balance of forces.
- Francis Mulhern: Critical Revolutions In response to a bold reconstruction of Anglophone literary studies challenging the political self-understanding of the reigning historicism and looking to a new, interventionist departure on the left, some critical considerations on disciplinary history, the place of ‘knowledge’ in the fictional order, as well as the discourses that address it, and the precedent of Leavis and his followers.
- Fernando Martínez Heredia: Thinking for Ourselves Leading Cuban intellectual and militant of the revolutionary generation discusses his path through the 26 July Movement to Batista’s overthrow and founding Pensamiento Crítico, a beacon of critical Marxist thought throughout Latin America.
- Mike Davis: Taking the Temperature of History From Vichy-era rural conservatism, via communism and Furet, to a grand synthesis in ecological history, culminating decades of empirical research. Portrait of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, historical materialist and quasi-reactionary, founder of historical climatology and last outpost of Annales-school historiography.
- Juliana Neuenschwander, Marcus Giraldes: Marielle Franco: 1979–2018 Life and death of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor who battled the military lockdown of the favelas, in the context of the restoration to office of Brazil’s traditional ruling caste.
- Marielle Franco: After the Take-Over In the wake of Temer’s take-over, Brazil’s crisis viewed from the perspective of the favelas. Analysis of the gendered conditions in the peripheries—now under redoubled assault—and their potential for mobilization against the conservative wave.
- Wolfgang Streeck: The Fourth Power? Wolfgang Streeck on Joseph Vogl, The Ascendancy of Finance. The historic interpenetration of government and haute finance, epitomized in the secrecy of the Federal Reserve and ECB.
- Philip Derbyshire: Vicissitudes of Psychoanalysis Philip Derbyshire on Dagmar Herzog, Cold War Freud. Episodes from the psychoanalytical movement’s turbulent post-war career, as seen by a historian of sex.
Articles:
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Mike Davis,
‘Taking the Temperature of History’ From Vichy-era rural conservatism, via communism and Furet, to a grand synthesis in ecological history, culminating decades of empirical research. Portrait of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, historical materialist and quasi-reactionary, founder of historical climatology and last outpost of Annales-school historiography. -
Marielle Franco,
‘After the Take-Over’ In the wake of Temer’s take-over, Brazil’s crisis viewed from the perspective of the favelas. Analysis of the gendered conditions in the peripheries—now under redoubled assault—and their potential for mobilization against the conservative wave. -
Juliana Neuenschwander & Marcus Giraldes,
‘Marielle Franco’ Life and death of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor who battled the military lockdown of the favelas, in the context of the restoration to office of Brazil’s traditional ruling caste.
Editorials:
- Which Feminisms?, The American anti-discrimination paradigm, generated in the 1960s to neutralize the threat of radical black protests, has provided the palimpsest for global feminism for the past twenty years. How will it be challenged by the eruption of new gender protests, from Buenos Aires to Warsaw, Washington to Rome?
- Erdoğan’s Cesspit, As the AKP’s crackdown on political dissent continues and Erdoğan’s autocratic ambitions become ever more apparent, his Western apologists lament the fall from grace of a man—moderate and liberal-minded—who never existed.
- Portugal, How and why has Portugal differed from Spain since the downfall of their respective dictatorships in the mid 70s? The course of political and economic development since the Revolution of 1974 was contained, and its current discrepant outcome: a conventional social-democratic government obliged to break with Euro-austerity under the pressure of a pact with the radical left.
- The French Spring, How did Emmanuel Macron become President of France virtually overnight? What are the likely consequences of his rule? The long epoch of collusive alternation between Centre-Left and Centre-Right, and its abrupt ending; the realities of Le Pen’s Front National, and the riposte of Mélenchon’s La France insoumise. Has neo-liberalism finally arrived in force in Paris, and if so what are the implications for Europe?
- Casting Off, How to assess the latest set-back for the European Union: the vote to leave by its second-largest state? Complex determinants of the Brexit protest—party-political contingencies played out against topographies of class and sub-national disaffection—met by single-minded condemnation of it by the global elite.
- Oppositions, After years of economic crisis and social protest, the cartel parties of the extreme centre now face a challenge to their dominance from outside-left forces in a number of Western countries. Contours of the emergent left oppositions, their platforms and figureheads, from Tsipras to Corbyn, Sanders to Mélenchon, Grillo to Iglesias.
- Europe, Debt, deflation and stagnation have now become the familiar economic stigmata of the EU. But what of its political distortions? A survey of the three principal—and steadily worsening—imbalances in the outcome of European integration: the oligarchic cast of its governors, the lop-sided rise of Germany, and the declining autonomy of the Union as a whole in the North Atlantic universe.
- Annexations, After decades of connivance with territorial seizures from Palestine to East Timor, the West rediscovers the principle of state sovereignty in Crimea. The actual record of 20th-century land grabs, and the cross-cutting geopolitical pressures bearing down on Ukraine.
- 2011, Echoes of past rebellions in 2011’s global upsurge of protest. Against a backdrop of world economic slump, what forces will shape the outcome of contests between a raddled system and its emergent challengers?
- Arab Concatenation, From Tunis to Manama, 2011 has brought a chain-reaction of popular upheavals, in a region where imperial domination and domestic despotism have long been entwined. A call for political liberty to reconnect with social equality and Arab fraternity, in a radical new internationalism.
- Wall Street Crisis, Against mainstream accounts, Peter Gowan argues that the origins of the global financial crisis lie in the dynamics of the New Wall Street System that has emerged since the 1980s. Contours of the Atlantic model, and implications—geopolitical, ideological, economic—of its blow-out.
Articles:
-
Francis Mulhern,
‘Critical Revolutions’ In response to a bold reconstruction of Anglophone literary studies challenging the political self-understanding of the reigning historicism and looking to a new, interventionist departure on the left, some critical considerations on disciplinary history, the place of ‘knowledge’ in the fictional order, as well as the discourses that address it, and the precedent of Leavis and his followers. -
Garcia et al.,
‘Spain’s Feminist Strike’ What led millions to participate in Spain’s nationwide women’s strike—a stoppage of care work as well as wage labour? Assessment of the forces at play—movement organizing, the media, unions, parties—and the potential of 8M to tilt the political balance of forces. -
Fernando Martínez,
‘Thinking for Ourselves’ Leading Cuban intellectual and militant of the revolutionary generation discusses his path through the 26 July Movement to Batista’s overthrow and founding Pensamiento Crítico, a beacon of critical Marxist thought throughout Latin America. -
Wolfgang Streeck,
‘The Fourth Power?’ Wolfgang Streeck on Joseph Vogl, The Ascendancy of Finance. The historic interpenetration of government and haute finance, epitomized in the secrecy of the Federal Reserve and ECB. -
Philip Derbyshire,
‘Vicissitudes of Psychoanalysis’ Philip Derbyshire on Dagmar Herzog, Cold War Freud. Episodes from the psychoanalytical movement’s turbulent post-war career, as seen by a historian of sex.