NEW LEFTS
My book, New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition, will be released by Princeton University Press on September 7, 2021.
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Insider Intellectual History
Historians have recently revived the sociology of knowledge as a method of analyzing the transatlantic projects of “insider intellectuals” in the middle of the 20th century.
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A Letter from an Anarchist
We call ourselves Anarchists, and in consequence we are sworn foes of government and all its agents. We advocate rebellion in all the ramifications of our economic life.
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Cyborg Scholar
Digital tools and new conditions of knowledge production are making the traditional “sovereign scholar” obsolete. Witness the rise of the cyborg scholar: fully networked, often precarious, and no longer possessing individual control over their scholarship.
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An Empty Gesture of Resistance
An op-ed published in The New York Times by an anonymous official in the Trump Administration makes the extraordinary claim that a resistance group has formed inside the White House. Its author dons the mantle of resistance and draws moral legitimacy from it. Heroic gestures, such as written protests or public demonstrations, seek to change the public narrative somehow. They convey risk, self-sacrifice, and integrity. Gestures of resistance are speech Read More
Assembling a New Left
What social forces exist under neoliberal capitalism that might form the basis for a new left? How should that new left organize itself politically – as a socialist party, one big union, a spontaneous assembly, or all of the above? See my essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Assembly (2017), the most general appraisal yet of post-2008 radical left politics in the Read More
Signs of Subversion
If somebody would’ve told me that in 2018 I’d see a magical realist film comedy about a labor struggle in Oakland, well, I’d say that sounds just about right. Boots Riley’s hot new film Sorry to Bother You exposes the absurdity of America’s racial capitalist regime. It critically portrays the modern workplace, while also giving us a glimpse of what it may take to radically transform it. Check out my Read More