Hopes for Syriza’s negotiations with the banking troika in the EU simmered and even boiled over among elements of the left, especially after the vaunted “No” referendum vote suggested that the Greeks would not succumb to another wave of austerity measures but would instead stand firm, even if this meant potentially leaving the EU. We have seen these hopes dashed by the subsequent “negotiations,” in which Tsipras seemed to have negotiated backwards, arriving at an agreement that was worse than the one rejected by the Greek voters in the referendum vote. This development has been characterized by some on the left as a blow to the working class, and to the leftist, world-historical opposition to neo-liberal capitalism. But the fact of the matter is that Syriza neither represents anti-capitalism, nor the working class.
The problem with identity politics, then, is that it is one-sided and undialectical. It treats identities as static entities, and its methods only serve to further reify those categories. It aims to liberate identity groups (or members thereof) qua identity groups (or individuals), rather than aiming to liberate them from identity itself. Identity politics fails not because it begins with various subaltern groups and aims at their liberation, but because it ends with them and thus cannot deliver their liberation.
[W]hat might be a Marxist perspective with reference to Singulartarianism or Trans-humanism? Contrary to the National Review and The Weekly Standard, such a perspective, while perhaps singular, is by no means scientistic.
Over the past fifty years, postmodern theory—an umbrella term generally used to refer to such diverse theoretical movements and paradigms as post-structuralism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and others—has generally dominated most fields in the humanities and some in the social sciences, while even making forays into the natural sciences. But the economic meltdown in 2008 and the subsequent chronic crisis in capitalism have dealt a fatal theoretical blow to the varied and nearly ineffable assemblage of perspectives that are often grouped under the rubric of “postmodernism.”
Review of Orpheus Emerged by Jack Kerouac. Perhaps it is appropriate that the previously unpublished work of a novelist who wrote a whole book (On the Road) on a continuous roll of paper in a matter of days should be the basis for the first e-text from a new online publisher of electronic books. The hyperlinked experience of the novella accords well with the hyped-up pace of Kerouac's own literary output and the hyperactivity of his characters. Published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 11, 2001. Click here or on title.
Review of Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. Hermione Lee. Virginia Woolf's most recent biographer, has written a distinctively Woolfian biography, treating her subject “not as a solid clock-measured thing but as a blurred centre of innumerable rays,'' much as Woolf herself would have had it. (Originally published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Sunday, August 24, 1997. Click here or on title.)
Review of Milton In America by Peter Ackroyd. In 1660, John Milton was both the poet of “Lycidas,'' “L'Allegro,” and “Il Penseroso” and the well-known Protestant author of controversial tracts condemning the royal government of England and defending the beheading of Charles I… Novelist Peter Ackroyd chooses this moment in Milton's life to set his new novel. We find the blind writer skulking through English backroads in a covered wagon. A young rapscallion, who becomes his guide through the visible world and his amanuensis, hops in. (Originally published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Sunday, July 13, 1997. Click here or on title.)
Review of W.B. Yeats: The Man and The Milieu by Keith Alldritt. Biographer Keith Alldritt resurrects William Butler Yeats as the Jolly Green Giant of Irish authors, who romps the hills and sings immortal tunes, while revolutions, world wars and other apocalyptic events serve as mere backdrops for the illumination of his literary imagination. (Originally published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 8, 1997. Click here or on title.)
In the fall of 1979, I received a missive from Allen Ginsberg, scribbled in typical Ginsbergese, rife with ampersands and dashes, his response to a 19-year-old's small batch of poems. It was as if I awoke to a dream to which I'd suddenly become accustomed, a feeling that came to characterize most of my experience of him. (Originally published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. April 20, 1997. Click here or on title.)
