Pathologies of American political culture, where—as Engels once put it—two great gangs of political speculators battle for power. Echoing social media’s strange mix of activism and atomization, a fervid hyper-politicization has replaced the quiescence of the Clinton–Bush years, Jäger argues, but the determination of US policies remains beyond popular reach.
NLR 149•
Warm remembrance of a fifty-year relationship, intellectual and personal, with a thinker whose work has been a landmark for NLR. Close bonds of common engagement—continental Marxism, postmodernity, the historical novel—with some contrasts in culture, politics, temperament.
Drafted as the foundational first chapter of Volume One, the last to be written, of Jameson’s monumental Poetics of Social Forms. A richly rewarding study of the Iliad, located within the ‘immense transition’ from the great imperial cities of the Bronze Age. The logic of agon—a multi-sided struggle—as governing principle of the great poem.
The Algerian War of Independence remains a raw nerve for the French state. André reveals how national-security interests have mobilized, under cover of individual rights to privacy, to block access to sensitive dossiers—and what the files themselves disclose of the lives of young militants and police informers.
The counter-cinema of the Algerian-born French director, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, combining a wide range of genres with a commitment to collective work and reflexive elaboration. Images and soundscapes, emanating from the banlieue and maquis, caught with anthropological precision by a filmmaker formed by the world of his subjects.
After neoliberalism and structural adjustment, followed by the long decade of the commodity boom and ‘pink tide’ governments: where now for Latin America? Impacts of the shifting fortunes of the Chinese economy and a US bent on ‘near-shoring’ for a region still trapped in the extractive logic of export dependency.
Emma Fajgenbaum on Clinton Fernandes, Subimperial Power. Australia’s role as adjutant to British and then American power; from Cook to Pine Gap and AUKUS.
Nic Johnson on Guido Alfani, As Gods Among Men. Long-run history of Western wealth since the days of the Italian city-state, drawing on pioneering statistical research.