NLR 103•Jan/Feb 2017

Opening an NLR symposium on the US transition, Mike Davis argues the vote was not a critical realignment but a razor-thin margin for the Republican, mobilizing rustbelt discontent while locking in the Christian right.

Exploration of the fractured subjectivity, racialized legacies and multiple, entwined insecurities of the American working class—the millions taken for granted by Clinton, relentlessly wooed by her opponent.

The electoral watersheds of 2016 signalled a rejection of the global-neoliberal formula of rule, but no viable establishment alternative exists. In its absence, Riley argues, Trump may offer a neo-Bonapartist substitute for a coherent hegemonic project.

The electoral appeal of protectionism to exploited subjects of a superannuated empire, pinched by overseas competition: for Trump, read Joseph Chamberlain, monocled rabble-rouser of 1905 and scandalizer of liberal England’s free-trade consensus?

Leaving the White House with record ratings, why couldn’t Obama’s efforts secure it for his former Secretary of State? The legacy that helped Trump into office—and prospects for America’s newest left.

Behind the political upsets in the Atlantic world lie far-reaching shifts in the distribution of global wealth. Göran Therborn assesses the path-breaking research of Branko Milanovic on world income trends.

From Mallarmé to Valéry, Benjamin to El Lissitsky and Moholy-Nagy, theorizations of the challenge posed to Gutenberg’s medium by the relentless typographical innovations of the new mass media.

Have algorithms and data-farming short-circuited relations between computers, games and the economy, to create a world of involuntary play—and can critical art practice suggest ways to turn the tables?

Hailed for bucking the trend of electoral collapse for the neoliberal centre left, Matteo Renzi’s PD suffered an ignominous defeat in his December 2016 referendum. Cinzia Arruzza explains why.