Commentary archive

Commentary The significance of the twentieth century Fred halliday The politics of the twentieth century have been marked by three great processes: war, revolution and democratization. The first half of the century was dominated by two world wars – conflicts which engulfed almost all of Europe, and much of the Middle and Far East, and […]

Commentary Backwoods musicology Roger Scruton’s aesthetics of music Ben watson Roger Scruton is a right-wing pundit regularly rolled out by the British media to voice ʻbravely unfashionableʼ points of view. After the march against New Labour organized by the Countryside Alliance, he published a book in defence of fox-hunting. However, unlike most backwoods right-wingers, Scruton […]

Commentary On minorities: cultural rights Homi K. Bhabha After the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we still need to ask: what is the human ʻthing itselfʼ? Who is ʻone of usʼ in the midst of the jurisdictional unsettlements of migration, minoriti-zation, the clamour of multiculturalism? To whom do we turn in […]

Commentary Third Way or Réalisme de Gauche? The new social democracy in France Ben clift The ʻThird Wayʼ remains nebulous and ill-defined, yet advocates argue that it stands for ʻmodernizedʼ social democracy – a vision around which the European Left must cohere. However, not all subscribe to Blairʼs singular reading of the modernization of European […]

Commentary Philosophy on television Ben watson Marx remarks somewhere that all true philosophy begins with the criticism of religion. If he had lived through the postwar era, he would have added: and the religion of a triumphant capitalism is television. Just as the medieval cathedral was the apotheosis of feudalism, television is the techno-exemplification of […]

Commentary New Labour versus Horny Catbabe Julian petley It is often forgotten that the first attempt to introduce video censorship in the UK was actually undertaken by a Labour backbencher. This was Gareth Wardell, the MP for Gower, who, in December 1982, introduced a ten-minute-rule bill ʻto prohibit the rental of video cassettes of adult […]

Commentary Dictators and democrats in Latin America But can the poor tell the difference? Madeleine davis The recent Chilean Supreme Court decision to strip General Augusto Pinochet of his self-granted immunity from criminal prosecution has been widely welcomed, not only because it keeps alive the possibility that Pinochet, having escaped Spanish justice, may yet face […]

Commentary NewLiberalSpeak Notes on the new planetary vulgate Pierre bourdieu and loïc wacquant Within a matter of a few years, in all the advanced societies, employers, international officials, high-ranking civil servants, media intellectuals and high-flying journalists have all started to voice a strange Newspeak. Its vocabulary, which seems to have sprung out of nowhere, is […]

Commentary Art, politics and provincialism John roberts The Sunday afternoon I visited the recent ʻProtest & Surviveʼ exhibition at Londonʼs Whitechapel Gallery, I was witness within a period of twenty minutes to four different demonstrations outside the gallery. A single demonstration outside a gallery these days is pretty rare; four is a miracle. That they […]

Commentary Two views on recent anti-capitalist protests Nationalize this! What next for anti-globalization protests? At a recent London meeting of the World Development Movement, a group campaigning for reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the state of things a year after the ʻanti-globalizationʼ protests in Seattle was summarized for the packed audience by Naomi […]

Out of Japan The New Associationist Movement Harry harootunian If the news from Japan during the last decade has concentrated on the depressing symptoms of decline of what once had been hailed as a miracle model of capitalist development, the announcement last year of the establishment of the New Associationist Movement in Osaka and Tokyo […]

Commentary Tate Modern A year of sweet success Esther leslie One room in Tate Modern is often passed through very quickly. An installation by Zurich artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss re-creates a room where redecorators are at work. Each item – buckets, brushes, a can of fizzy drink, a video cassette, palettes, a saucer […]

Commentary No to Kyoto Chris wilbert Much has been made of the Bush administrationʼs withdrawal from negotiations on, and refusal to complete ratification of, the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. Yet more bile has been raised by the subsequent announcement of new energy policies to address Americaʼs supposed ʻenergy crisisʼ, policies which involve further […]

power, or by the view that market mechanisms and profit are the solutions to environmental problems, to gather together, to reject Kyoto, to tell the world why this system is no good, and to force real changes based on social justice, leading to wider economic transformation. Sources World Bank carbon website: www.prototypecarbonfund.org/. [archive]Equity Watch, Centre […]

Commentary A global public sphere? Susan Buck-Morss When the multitude ceases to fear, it becomes fearful. Benedict Spinoza* This is the text of a talk to the Radical Philosophy Conference, Look No Hands! Political Forms of Global Modernity, Birkbeck College, London, 27 October 2001. September 11 has ruptured irrevocably the context in which we as […]

Ten challenges for ‘anti-war’ politics Martin shaw It is said that generals always fight yesterdayʼs war, but this is even truer of antiwar movements. Although the ʻwar against terrorismʼ is billed as a ʻnew kind of warʼ, the anti-war rhetoric has seemed even more familiar than the military practice. In this piece I bring my […]

Emergent fronts of the global anti-war movement Mike marqusee It has been widely observed that the US-led global alliance against terrorism is a motley assemblage, bound together by expedience rather than principle. Some would say the same about the global anti-war alliance now being constructed to oppose it. Diversity is certainly the hallmark of this […]

Commentary Blair’s jihad, Blunkett’s crusade The battle for the hearts and minds of Britain’s Muslims Gita sahgal As the city blazes, the watchman Sleeps happily, thinkingMy house is secure. Let the town burn, as long as my thingsAre saved. During the air strikes in Afghanistan, I was reminded of these words of the fifteenth-century poet […]

Commentary Oppositional mentalities Intellectuals, protest and the Left Martin ryle‘t he “oppositional” mentality of the British Leftʼ, wrote E.P. Thompson in 1965, ʻis certainly a limiting outlook; but it has grown up simply because our Left has had so bloody much to oppose … The British Left … has been immersed in ineluctable political contexts […]

Grief work in a war economy Andrea brady The World Trade Center site has become, says a psychologist who has volunteered to counsel workers there, a ʻsacred burial groundʼ. [1] But as a focus for community memory and regeneration, a ritualized space, and an assertion of the religious character of American social life, the site […]

Commentary A grin without a cat The French Right returns to office Jim wolfreys One of the many peculiarities of May 1968 was the sudden return to normality apparently indicated by the electoral victory for the Right which followed in June. The recent spate of elections in France seems at first glance to have followed […]