NLR 64

article
Gavan McCormackObama vs Okinawa

Practical lessons in world hegemony, as Japan’s attempt to strike an independent course is cut down by the Obama Administration. For the islanders of Okinawa, another chapter in a centuries-old tale of military occupation.

interview
Adolfo Gilly'What exists cannot be true'

The Argentinian historian of the Mexican Revolution recalls his life as a roving agitator. Worlds of rebel workers, from the barrios of Buenos Aires to the Bolivian altiplano and Guatemalan jungle, Lecumberri Prison to the streets of Paris and Rome.

articles
Sabry HafezThe New Egyptian Novel

The slums of Cairo find their homology in a new genre of narrative fiction, argues Sabry Hafez. Striking formal innovations of a generation raised under the asphyxiating rule of the Mubarak dictatorship.

Mark ElvinConcepts of Nature

Landscapes of Ausonius, mountain retreats of Xie Tiao, mediaeval paradise-gardens: can underlying similarities of deep structure and social function be traced in the work of classical European and Chinese writers? A panoramic cross-cultural comparison of approaches to the natural world.

Slavoj ZizekA Permanent Economic Emergency

As the Eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis deepens, Slavoj Žižek calls for an internationalist response that would transcend the defence of a failing status quo, to invent new transitional strategies.

Peter Nolan & Jin ZhangGlobal Competition After the Financial Crisis

China’s largest firms remain small fry by comparison to Western MNCs. As the tectonic plates of the world economy shift, a sober assessment of its persistent asymmetries.

Fredric JamesonRegieoper, or Eurotrash?

Opera has been globalized, and big-bang productions of Wagner’s music-dramas now outnumber those of all other works. How to frame an aesthetics for this cultural-historical phenomenon—allegorical ideogram strings, or Gesamtkunstwerk as vaudeville?

reviews
Link Arms!

Jacob Collins on Régis Debray, Le moment fraternité. Reimagining the third figure of the republican trinity in the age of the videosphere.

Mr Love and Justice

Gregor McLennan on Terry Eagleton, Trouble with Strangers and Reason, Faith, and Revolution. Lacan enlisted on the side of Jesus, for an ethics of revolutionary goodness.

Militant Life

Michael Hardt on Michel Foucault, Le gouvernement de soi et des autres and Le courage de la vérité. Parting words from the Collège de France on life as the scandal of truth.