Viewpoint Magazine
Organizing in the University
In a moment when the right wing is confident and unionization is at an all-time low, it is important to gather forces that can debate and strategize.
How Do We Write the Intellectual History of the Enlightenment? Spinozism, Radicalism, and Philosophy
The Enlightenment is again the object of debate. We can only rejoice that traditional interpretations have been questioned. Yet it would be regrettable to replace one doxa with another by artificially constructing a homogeneous philosophical tradition and a teleology of philosophical radicalism, linking Spinoza and the French Revolution and, doubtless further, the contemporary radical left.
The Birthmark of Damnation: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Body
Coates’s descriptive language and haunting narrative are not mere metaphors. They act as an ontological pivot, mystifing racism even as it is anchored in its physical effects.
“Communism for Everybody”: An Interview with Bini Adamczak, author of Communism for Kids
“Communism for Kids” was written during the so-called “end of history” — the historical epoch between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Arab Spring. A period of intense fragmentation of the Left, this was when the anti-globalization movement mobilized around the slogan, “another world is possible.”
Cthulhu plays no role for me
Haraway’s former (profoundly system-oriented) Marxian technofeminism has given way, then, to something called multispecies feminism characterized by a barely disavowed willingness to see whole cities and cultures wiped from the planet for the sake of a form of thriving among “companion species” involving relatively few of us.
“Cerrar para abrir”: Puerto Rican Student Struggles and the Crisis of Colonial-Capitalism
The student movement has taken an action that exceeds its character as a narrow, student effort circumscribed to the academic setting. In order to understand how these thousands of students stopped acting “like students” and began deliberating, acting, and demanding in a clear and self-consciously political field of struggle, it is necessary to look at the history of student struggle in Puerto Rico.
Reassessing Foucault: Modern Sexuality and the Transition to Capitalism
Are the premises of queer theory really antithetical to a historical materialist understanding of the origins of capitalism? Considering Foucault’s something of the patron saint of queer theory, we might perhaps discover the error of the whole formation in the thought of its founder.
Viewpoint Magazine at Historical Materialism
Viewpoint Magazine is a proud Co-Sponsor of this year’s Historical Materialism New York Conference on “Resurgent Radicalisms in a Polarizing World.” We hope that the conference can be another platform for urgent discussion and debate posed by social movements and Marxist theory in these turbulent times.
Solidarity and Continued Struggle: International Women’s Strike on May Day
March 8th taught us the power of unified action. We marched, struck work, boycotted and rallied. We will do the same on May Day.
An Arc of Solidarity: Remembering Bob Lee (1942-2017)
It was activists like Black Panther Bob Lee and the original Rainbow Coalition who created change in our nation, by daring to enter distant neighborhoods and forge alliances. As a political symbol, the Rainbow didn’t refer just to a series of colors; it signified an arc of connection between different places and people. For Lee and others who participated with him in struggle, this was the only possible starting point for revolutionary solidarity.