Tag Archives: Politics & Society

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Madon pekar på det bisarra att inte så få som kallar sig antirasister gör en halsbrytande manöver när de faktiskt förespråkar ökad rassegregation. Man vill ha särskilda ”rum” dit bara de med rätt etnicitet har tillträde, man vill att svarta patienter bara skall vårdas av svarta läkare och sjuksköterskor, man vill att bara svarta musiker skall få spela ”svart” musik, enbart en transsexuell skådespelare kan få en roll som transperson, enbart ”rasifierade” journalister skall få...

Göran Perssons hjältesaga — en farlig lögn Göran Perssons ord från mitten av 1990-talet ekar fortfarande genom svensk politik. Varje politiskt förslag som kan höja statsskulden bemöts av varningar om hur Sverige på den tiden stod på ruinens brant. Perssons resa till New York, där han enligt egen utsago tvingades gå med mössan i hand till Wall Streets lånehajar och utlova nedskärningar, har blivit en svensk lägereldsberättelse, en hjältesaga där resan och...

Foucault — the faux radical Ptolemy constructed an inordinately complex model of the universe in order to make all of the empirical data conform to a central, organizing false assumption, namely, that the earth was at the center. Michel Foucault, as we shall see, made a similar contribution to contemporary social science … Given Foucault’s general dismissal of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles, as well as his reputation … of supporting de Gaulle...

Slavoj Žižek — discursive sausage for the uneducated ​ As a young philosophy student in the United States in the early 1990s, I must admit that I was hoodwinked by this huckster and the system that promoted him … I devoured each book when it came out in the 1990s and early 21st century. I also followed on his heels by pursuing a Ph.D. under the direction of his intellectual father figure in Paris: Alain Badiou. However, as I continued to educate myself, I...

Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who after experiencing a sobbing antiwar epiphany on a bathroom floor made the momentous decision in 1971 to disclose a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at his home in Kensington, Calif., in the Bay Area. He was 92 … The disclosure of the Pentagon Papers plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy. It...

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Almost anyone can see what a reductive view this is of modern society, even without having read their Rousseau or Rawls. We must not be taken in by the fact that this is called “critical,” that it’s about race, and that it’s titled a “theory.” It is a fragile, performative ideology, one that goes beyond the passages above to explicitly reject linear reasoning, traditional legal theorizing, and even Enlightenment rationalism. We are to favor an idea that an oppressed race’s...

The problem with Foucault My problem with Michel Foucault, then, is not that he seeks to “move beyond” the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment. His objective was not to move towards “socialism,” but to be rid of it … In addition to the “dependency” it supposedly creates, Foucault believes that social security ultimately serves...

It is not difficult to discern Foucault’s animosity toward the post-war left project. Obviously he was very hostile to Marxism … For Foucault in 1977, “the return of the revolution, that’s our problem (…) You know it very well: it’s the desire itself of the revolution that is a problem” … Foucault’s non-vote for Mitterrand in 1981 was about more than just a vote; it revealed his deep suspicion of the whole project of the left after 1945, with its strong state, universal...