News Whose war? George Bush called it an act of war. He has rarely been good with words, but this time he was quite right. And an astonishingly brutal and vicious act of war it was. Nevertheless, the stunning violence of the attacks of 11 September does not by itself signal the beginning of a […]
A global public sphere?
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
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
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 […]
Grief work in a war economy
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 […]
Eclipse: The Anti-war Review
News Eclipse: The Anti-war ReviewAfter the attacks of September 11th the US administration moved with unnerving speed to produce a simple narrative to explain what had happened, and to justify a war in response to it. According to this narrative, the attacks had been organized by an international network of terrroists led by Osama bin […]
Interpreting the world
Commentary Interpreting the world September 11, cultural criticism and the intellectual Left Peter osborne‘p hilosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.ʼ How many times during the heyday of socialist activism in the 1970s was Marxʼs eleventh thesis on Feuerbach rolled out to put overly reflective comrades back […]
War and democracy
Commentary War and democracy Kate soper Whether they welcomed the prospect of the ʻnewʼ world order it would supposedly inaugurate, or were appalled by its imperial ambitions and the disasters it would unleash, few can have doubted the historic import of the decision to go to war with Iraq. Those who have committed the globe […]
Counterterrorism legislation and the US state form
Counterterrorism legislation and the US state form Authoritarian statism, phase 3 Christos boukalas The counterterrorism legislation introduced in the USA after 11 September 2001 (hereafter S11) has been mainly conceptualized – by both critics and supporters – as an ‘internal’ legal development. Seen as an ‘encroachment on liberty’, as part of a ‘state of emergency’, […]