Theme: Politics

One year ago, on the day of François Hollande’s inauguration as the seventh President of the French Fifth Republic, May 15th, 2012, it poured with rain all day long. Inexplicably, no one offered him a raincoat or the protection of an umbrella. He spent the day’s ceremony drenched to the bone, his glasses steamed up, his sopping wet suit and shirt flattened against him. It was a sign. It has been raining ever since.Read more

A lecture by Chantal Mouffe on democratic politics.Read more

The Knife definitely employs the shock-value of an incestuous theme to further strengthen their mission in creating powerful work. The music duo is comprised of Swedish siblings Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson. They produce and release their music through their own label, Rabid Records, and therefore are in complete creative control of their artistic product.Read more

Any identity, even a Latina identity, can be very limiting. When I speak on panels with other women, you wouldn’t believe how much slut-shaming there is, which is why this work is so important to me. I think it’s ignorance and a lack of understanding. Read more

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When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring – I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?Read more

From Voina to Bykov, Pussy Riot to Moscow hipsterism, culture seems to be playing a very political game in Russia. How can we explain this? Is this something that Russia has seen before? Are we witnessing this Russia’s ‘1968’ moment? And if so, is accompanied by the same kind of generational and political splits that we saw in Europe’s rebellion? Or is it something completely different? Read more

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With the death of Hugo Chávez last week, the battle for the interpretation of his legacy has begun. On the one hand, his followers will spare no effort in depicting him not only as a saviour of the nation, but also as a role model for the left in Latin America and elsewhere. On the other, his detractors will portray him as an authoritarian leader, who was able to win elections thanks to the development of extensive networks of clientelism and the closure of independent media.Read more

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"Together, we might be able to do dangerous subversive things, mischievous things."1 Such is Andy Merrifield’s opening promise in his recent book Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination. Merrifield situates the work between two poles of people: those who are more or less orthodox Marxists and those who are Marxists but don’t know it.Read more

From its very first issue in 1986, Spy Magazine was a radical project. It was not the product of celebrities and their PR teams, nor did it aim to please those in the public sphere. Voicing the frustrations of intelligent journalists in a sardonic way, it acquired a thinking following that hungered for the esoteric references that abounded in its pages.Read more

Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement has often been called a shake-up for Italian politics. But what if 'M5S' really obeyed an established paradigm that is far from the revolutionary ideas it claims to convey?Read more

The weather changed Sunday and became clear and perfect, in the 70’s, as if it knew people would need to call upon their highest potential of energy. Throughout the week, the weather would hold this way—truly beautiful, unusual in Chicago—weather where you can feel yourself spun with the sight of your eyes up, up, up into the sky.Read more

Homeland is an inside look into who is keeping America safe from terrorist attacks. Answer: it’s a 33 year-old woman named Carrie, whose sex life is under surveillance. Carrie, played by Claire Danes, was 21 when 9/11 happened. For some inexplicable reason, she can’t forgive herself for not preventing the attacks.Read more

Helprin’s latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow, can be read as an elegy for the American Century. Helprin’s emphasis on invidividual responsibility, as well as his backwards-lookingness, over-the-topness, and magical thinking, give us a window into the Republican Party he supports.Read more

Naira Gelashvili is in her own right one of the leading Georgian writers and literary critics of last 40 years or so. Her writings have been very popular and controversial through the last 25 years when she came out as one of the leaders of Georgia's Green movement and at the same time defending rights of minorities through the Caucasus.Read more

Last week, the Labour leader Ed Miliband made a much-hyped speech about ‘cultural integration’. He faced the usual problem: how to placate that section of Labour’s traditional, white working class constituency which opposes immigration, without at the same time alienating minorities and the anti-racist Left. And he reached for what has recently become the usual solution: restating that least contentious of propositions about ‘integration’, that everyone in Britain should speak English.Read more

The stunning spectacle of mass hero-worship in the Third Reich is compelling, in particular, the sight of unbridled joy at these mass rallies. This is even more so given that we – unlike those smiling faces - know what happened next, the nightmare of World War II and the deaths of countless millions.Read more

One of the first things to happen after the Occupy Wall Street protestors were evicted from Zuccotti Park was the caging of Arthur Di Modica’s sculpture, the charging bull that has become synonymous with Wall Street. According to the New York Post: “Law-enforcement sources say the cops are keeping the barriers up to protect the sculpture from protesters who could vandalize the symbol of wealth and prosperity.”Read more