NLR 25

articles
Susan WatkinsA Weightless Hegemony

Causes and consequences of Britain’s distinctive contribution to the repertoire of latter-day neoliberalism. The domestic and foreign record of the Blair regime, and its hybrid role in a shifting Atlantic order.

Fredric JamesonThe Politics of Utopia

Between the dizzying technologies of the First World, and social disintegrations of the Third, does the concept of utopia still possess a meaning? Fredric Jameson on the resistant negations of fantasy-based systemic critique.

Robert BrennerNew Boom or New Bubble?

The shape of the US economy as it emerges from recession, in election year. With the giant manufacturing sector still crippled by over-capacity, can the take-off be sustained by bubble-driven finance, retail and construction booms?

Sven LüttickenPlanet of the Remakes

From Hollywood retreads to avatars of Dr Mabuse and re-creations of Solaris, the mimetic planet. Dialectic of repetition and historicity in the remake, reviled mainstay of the culture industry—and manifesto for a radical reappropriation of the form.

Slavoj ZizekThe Parallax View

The philosophical basis for social action, as recast in Kojin Karatani’s striking Transcritique. On Kant and Marx. Slavoj Žižek investigates the irreducible antinomies of production and circulation—or economics and politics—as envisioned from the gap in between.

reviews
Resituating the Postmodern?

Peter Dews on Peter Bürger, Ursprung des postmodernen Denkens. The origins of postmodern thought relocated from the era of late capitalism to the civilizational collapse of the First World War, and its crisis for modernity.

The Ringmaster of Doha

Robert Wade on Michael Moore, A World Without Walls. The road from Seattle to Cancún. Back-room politics of the global trade agenda in the account of an ex-Director General of the WTO.

Mizrahi Wanderings

Nancy Hawker on Samir Naqqash, Shlomo Alkurdi wa ana wa alzaman. Conditions of exile, from Sablakh, Baghdad and Tehran to Tel Aviv, in the latest fiction from one of Israel’s foremost Arab-language novelists.