Research
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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Reclaiming Antifascism
Antifascism needs restoration. Layers of additional meanings and intentions have accumulated since its inception in the 1920s and ’30s, obscuring its original character. The first layer formed already during World War II, when the phrase “premature antifascists” entered the American lexicon as a label for those on the left who had actively opposed fascist regimes in Europe well before the United States entered the war against the Nazis. Among other Read More
Going Underground
Lately, the idea of resistance has a renewed urgency and appeal. But we won’t be able to fight a fresh wave of authoritarianism without appreciating the symbols that animated the antifascist imagination of the past – in particular, the underground. That symbol has very deep roots in European and US culture, but over the course of the 20th century it was transformed from a threatening zone of subversion into a Read More
Resistance to Digital Humanities, Rightly Understood
A debate over the politics of digital humanities has broken out in the pages of the Los Angeles Review of Books. The first salvo came on May 1 from Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, and David Golumbia in their co-written article “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives).” The authors charged the emergent field of digital humanities scholarship with complacency and complicity with the privatization of the university. Obsessed with technological wizardry, DH scholars Read More
New Beginning: Sketch for a Conceptual History
The new year inevitably brings with it a spate of new year’s resolutions. While the timing of these life decisions — vowing to exercise more, to spend less money, to find a partner or new job, etc. — is somewhat arbitrary and their results often short-lived, the symbolic importance of the new year and its seemingly infinite possibilities is undeniable. Baby New Year is a common personification of this collective Read More