Pieces by Jon Beasley-Murray

Augusto Pinochetʼs defenders are not entirely wrong. They realized what was at stake in the judicial battle over the ex-dictatorʼs extradition to Spain, and as such they have been often less distracted than his accusers. At stake was not so much the guilt or innocence of one individual as, rather, the very constitution of Chilean […]

Conference report Rearguard actionImmanent Choreographies: Deleuze and Neo-aesthetics,Tate Modern, 21–22 September 2001 This conference, organized by Tate Modern and Staffordshire University, brought together an impressive array of speakers from the UK (Alexander García Düttmann and Peter Hallward), Europe (Robert Fleck and Pascale Criton), the USA (Dorothea Olkowski and John Rajchman), and Australia (Ian Buchanan), including […]

In his introduction to Latin American Philosophy, Eduardo Mendieta complains that ʻone of the most amazing things about the bibliographical work on philosophy in English over the last decade or so is its utter silence about Latin American philosophy and philosophersʼ. Surveying the encyclopaedias and dictionaries of the discipline, he suggests that ʻas if by […]

Commentary England, whose England? Jon Beasley-Murray By their fear you shall know them. The USA responded to al-Qaedaʼs September 2001 attacks with a proliferation of flags reaffirming national pride and widespread support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmed by George W. Bushʼs 2004 re-election. Spain reacted to the Madrid train explosions of March […]

Reviews Critique of loveWendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005. x + 159 pp., £35.95 hb., £14.95 pb., 0 691 12360 8 hb., 0 691 12361 6 pb. At the beginning of a new millennium this is a book full of melancholy. Written between 1998 and […]

Commentary Fear of heights Bolivia’s constituent process Jon Beasley-murray La Paz is the world’s highest capital city, at 3,636 metres above sea level. So it is all the more surprising that to get there, you have to descend: it is located in what the locals call a hueco, a hole or a hollow. When I […]

Reviews Laboratory Latin AmericaPatrick Barrett, Daniel Chavez and César Rodríguez-Garavito, eds, The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn, Pluto Press, London, 2008. 320 pp., £19.99 pb., 978 0 745 32677 1. There is widespread agreement that Latin America is currently the site of the most promising experiments in political organization and creativity to be found […]