Category Archives: Commentary

Amador Fernández-Savater: Brutalism, the highest stage of neoliberalism

From Lobo Suelto (09/03/2025) What is significant is not what ends and consecrates, but what initiates, announces and prefigures. Achille Mbembe What time are we living in? How can we describe our time? For critical thinking, something decisive is at … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Government by executive order: A lesson in contemporary authoritarianism

If Trump’s electoral success is due in part to the far right’s ability to create a lifeworld shaped around his persona, the left must pursue a countervailing project. Its aim should be to transform the world people organically experience through … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Giorgio Agamben: Only a god can save us now

Heidegger’s abrupt statement in the 1976 “Spiegel” interview: “Only a God can save us” has always been perplexing. To understand it, we must first put it into context. Heidegger had just spoken of the planetary domination of technology, which nothing … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Giorgio Agamben: A political allegory

We are all in hell, but some seem to think that there is nothing to do here but to study and describe in detail the demons, their horrible appearance, their ferocious behaviour, their infamous machinations. Perhaps they delude themselves into … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

Ursula k. Le Guin: A War Without End

From Jacobin Magazine (26/01/2018) Some thoughts, written down at intervals, about oppression, revolution, and imagination. Slavery My country came together in one revolution and was nearly broken by another. The first revolution was a protest against galling, stupid, but relatively mild social … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

Ursula K. Le Guin: Is Gender Necessary? Redux

“Is Gender Necessary?” first appeared in Aurora, that splendid first anthology of science fiction written by women, edited by Susan Anderson and Vonda N. McIntyre. It was later included in The Language of the Night. Even then I was getting uncomfortable with some of … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A brief update on capital

We publish below a text from the Temps critiques collective, the English translation of which was generally shared with us. The essay is available in the original French, as well as Spanish and English, on the collective’s website. The essay … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Leave a comment

Ursula K. Le Guin: A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be

A reflection on the desire for utopia, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Introduction to “A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place To Be” John Clark Fifth Estate # 382, Spring, 2010 Ursula Le Guin’s works typically recount the story … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

T. J. Clark: For a left with no future

The British art historian and writer Timothy James Clark published an essay in 2012 with the New Left Review (74, March/April, 2012) that we believe remains as relevant today as it did then. Writing in the wake of the 2008 … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Against the behemoth

The scandal that is Donald Trump’s administration – from the gutting and/or paralysing of federal government agencies, justified in the name of eliminating and controlling government waste of public monies due to indulgent, corrupt government workers and government policies, to … Continue reading

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment