Rashid Khalidi and Tariq Ali discuss the political and intellectual history of the Palestinian national movement, its fraught entanglement with neighbouring Arab regimes, the realities of the ‘peace process’, Israel’s grip on the Biden Administration and the strategic calculations—or miscalculations—of Hamas.
Against the rightward trend of the Old World, countries in Latin America continue to favour governments of the left. The resounding mandate for Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico’s presidential election confirms Morena’s hegemony within the new party system. Where exactly on the political map should its project be placed?
A critical engagement with the work of Brett Christophers, whose books—The New Enclosure, Rentier Capitalism, Our Lives in Their Portfolios and The Price Is Wrong—unfold a novel critique of the ‘rentier stage’ of contemporary capitalism, in the tradition of radical historical geography developed by Lefebvre, Harvey and Davis.
As Modi’s BJP loses its overall majority, Radhika Desai examines the part played by India’s capitalist conglomerates in his rise—and the contradictions on which their strategy has foundered. The economic crisis of the parched countryside as brake on Hindutva’s forward march.
Resisting the erasure of working-class life in the American rust belt, the critical photography of LaToya Ruby Frazier combines intimate portraiture with representations of capital’s flight. Rebecca Lossin reflects on MoMA’s recent retrospective of her work—and on the cultural politics of documentary image-making in an age saturated with the visual.
Grey Anderson on Tom Stevenson, Someone Else’s Empire. Lucid anatomization of the American imperium, with a devastating assessment of the UK’s equerry role.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Vinayak Chaturvedi, Hindutva and Violence and Janaki Bakhle, Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva. Intellectual biographies of Hindu nationalism’s Mazzini-inspired theoretician.
Owen Hatherley on Andy Beckett, The Searchers. Interlinked portraits of the Labour Party’s Bennite bloc, from 1968 to the Corbyn leadership.