Recent calls to bring back asylums suggest that confinement can be benevolent, even rehabilitative—but, in reality, “a prison is a prison is a prison.”
Politics
Editors: Ivan Ascher & Joanne Randa Nucho
Iran’s Social Revolution: The Heartbeat Continues
What to do with the affective legacies of the Iranian left?
Weaving a Feminist Cyberlaw
Women invented cyberspace. Yet today’s internet rewards misogyny with fame, wealth, and power. Could it be otherwise?
What Really Makes Cities Global?
To ask what kind of city Los Angeles is today is, also, to wonder what kind of city it could be tomorrow.
The Protest Is Over—But Its Politics Remain
Ten years later, the Gezi Park protests continue to shape Turkish politics.
The Seduction of Desert Spectacles: Talking “Arid Empire” with Natalie Koch and Andrew Curley
“You cannot divorce domestic empire from international empire. Those histories created one another.”
Filling in Time Reading Vasily Grossman While Waiting for S
Public Books and the Sydney Review of Books have partnered to exchange a series of articles with international concerns.
Socialist Nostalgia, Cuban State Power
Is it ever possible to reconcile clashing visions of national memory?
Don’t Save Yourself, Save the World: A Dialogue with Vincent Lloyd
“I’m very skeptical about the ability of people in positions of power and privilege—including intellectuals—to name truths about the world.”
Chains of Domination, Chains of Solidarity: Benjamin L. McKean on Justice, Solidarity, Supply Chains
“For good or ill, freedom and solidarity and social justice are not things we can get quickly.”
What the 1990s Did to America
The 1990s are usually seen as a moment of tranquility. Cold War won, business booming, history at an end. Nothing could be further from the truth.
5 Books on the Politics of Indonesian Labor
People are familiar with how big the Japanese and South Korean economies are, but Indonesia is a rising power in Asia with a large labor force, and it’s very rarely being talked about.
When Journalists Lose Public Support, Violence Abounds
2022 was the deadliest year on record for Mexican journalists. And this, in turn, portends dark days for journalists the world over.
Milwaukee Socialists’ Triumph & Global Impact
In 1910, the new mayor didn’t promise speed, but pledged “to do all our limited means permit to make Milwaukee a better place for every citizen.”
More Than Hearts and Minds?
Armageddon Time is undercut by the very forces it hopes to expose: white complicity, forged through the exploitation of Black life.
Protesters of the World, Unite
Individual protests, like those in Hong Kong, may be defeated. But the global protest movement is only beginning.
Armenia: Another Century, Another Genocide?
From the start of Armenia’s independence in 1991, Turkey took a hostile position toward its erstwhile victim of genocide. That hostility remains.
Armenia and Azerbaijan: That Other War
The radical simplifications that flow from nationalism shrink the possibilities to understand the other.
Homeland Security Theater
These new DHS-funded graphic novels want to train citizens to be critical readers of all kinds of information, except their own propaganda.
What Future for Health Activism?
A more critical consciousness of the connections between family, health, race, and gender was brewing among food allergy advocates in the exceptionally catastrophic summer of 2020.