"Historicizing the Spontaneous Revolution:

Anarchism
and the Spatial Politics of Postmodernism"

Nicholas Spencer, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Wendell V. Harris, Jeffrey T. Nealon, Colin Falck,
Camille Paglia, Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Donald Morton --
these are just some of the many writers who have
pronounced the demise of postmodern and/or
poststructuralist thought. It seems that the regime of
the sign and discourse analysis has given way to
materialist critique and cultural studies, and while
some people may not perceive any essential antinomy
between discourse and materialism, many others welcome
these developments as finally exposing the faddish and
pretentious nature of postmodernism. As the heady
self-referentialism of postmodern culture continues, a
cooling of academic interest may enable scholars to
examine the traditions and influences relevant to
postmodernism's career more clearly.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"The Eros Effect"

An Interview with George Katsiaficas

George Katsaficas is a professor of Humanities and Social Studies at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. In 2001 he spent time reasearching the Kwangju uprising in South Korea. He is the editor of New Political Science and the author of several books including The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life and Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968. He has also edited several books, most recently The Battle for Seattle. A close friend of Herbert Marcuse, Katsiaficas runs the website ErosEffect.com.

RAAN came into contact with Katsiaficas mostly because of his book The Subversion of Politics, which dealt in part with the German Autonomen and Italian Autonomia. After a few exchanges of dialogue, RAAN was able to conduct this interview, in which they have tried to hit on some practical solutions to common problems within the anti-authoritarian movement. This interview originally appeared in the first issue of Praxis, journal of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (Summer, 2003).

anonymous kumquat submits:

Some of the Necon media are getting mighty nervous about the recent outing of their main man...

"What Hath Strauss Wrought?"

Peter Berkowitz, Weekly Standard

The New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Boston Globe, among others, have sounded the alarm: The Bush administration, particularly its foreign policy team, is in the grip of a coterie of neoconservative intellectuals who are themselves in the grip of the antidemocratic and illiberal teachings of Leo Strauss, a political philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago in the '50s and '60s and who died in 1973.

On its face, this scenario is wildly implausible. It supposes that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Rice, non-Straussians by all accounts, are stooges and dupes. It insinuates that neoconservative intellectuals--Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is at the top of everybody's list--have craftily ascended to positions of power in the federal government from which they aim to implement Strauss's teachings. And it invests Strauss, a student of political philosophy whose life's work consisted in writing learnedly about thinkers from Plato to Heidegger, and sharing his discoveries with students, with almost superhuman powers: Through the force of his ideas, we are told, this scholar and teacher is able, a generation and a half after his death, to command the respect and loyalty--and indeed, to compel the actions--of highly successful and well-placed individuals not only in politics but in the media and the academy.

(Link above will get you full story, if you've got the stomach for it.)