NLR 62

articles
Tony WoodGood Riddance to New Labour

As the British general election approaches, a balance-sheet of New Labour’s thirteen years in office. The record of Blair and Brown—imperial wars abroad, subservience to the City at home—as so many reasons to cheer their downfall.

Eric HazanFaces of Paris

The changing face of Paris, seen through the eyes of its leading radical publisher. Geographies of growth and resistance, from medieval walled city to alienated banlieue, via German occupation and végétalisation.

Zhang YongleThe Future of the Past

Assessment of Wang Hui’s landmark Rise of Modern Chinese Thought. Can the seeds of an alternative, non-Western modernity be located in the worldviews of earlier thinkers? Zhang Yongle observes constellations within a millennial philosophical firmament.

Malcolm BullGreen Cabinet, White Cube

The necessity of Arcadia, as fabular vantage-point for clear vision of the world we inhabit. Malcolm Bull follows a wooded path leading from the mythological parallels of Renaissance art to the modern gallery space.

Zeev SternhellIn Defence of Liberal Zionism

In a critical engagement with Gabriel Piterberg’s Returns of Zionism, Zeev Sternhell questions its account of Jewish nationalism’s origins and trajectory, offering a different picture rooted in the turbulent contingencies of 19th-century Europe and the war of 1947–49.

Gabriel PiterbergSettlers and their States

Responding to Sternhell, Gabriel Piterberg insists on Israel’s comparability to other settler-colonial projects—as well as on the specificities, historical and ideological, of the Zionist enterprise.

Rob LucasDreaming in Code

The working life of a web developer, between the contending pressures of capital’s needs and the programmer’s craft ethic. What forms of solidarity are available within the horizons of ‘immaterial labour’?

Immanuel WallersteinStructural Crises

A world-systems perspective on the post-2008 crash, seeing in present imbalances a conjunction of cyclical downturn and secular trends, and highlighting the nature of coming struggles for another, better order.

reviews
Development by Numbers

Peter Lawrence on Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion and War, Guns and Votes. Number-crunching solutions for global poverty from a former World Bank denizen.

Democracy on the Cross

Paolo Flores d’Arcais on Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion. The philosopher of communicative action attempts to reconcile democratic principles with faith-based reason.