Join John Patrick Leary & Greg Grandin on the evasions, neologisms, and half-truths used to disguise the horrors of our political system.
From "liberal" to "the economy" the terms used by "pundits" and politicians to explain our civic structures tend to obscure as much as they reveal about the reality they ostensibly describe. Yet the enduring vocabulary of radical movement-building can be equally opaque when filtered through both the distortions of the status quo and the partisan interests of the activist left. How do we make sense of terms like "socialism" and "intersectional" that are so routinely used and abused by such a wide array of commentators from across the political spectrum?
In his new book, Keywords for Capitalism, John Patrick Leary offers a probing and insightful guide designed to equip readers with the tools to do just that. Leary takes a wit-sharpened scalpel to the evasions, neologisms, and half-truths that crowd ‘the discourse’ and reveals the ideology of the mainstream political media that lies just below the surface.
Leary will be joined for this launch event by Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin. Together they will masterfully dress down and dissect the froth of corporate media jargon that we may not even know we’re forced to swim through on a daily basis.
Get Keywords for Capitalism from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1886-keywords-for-capitalism
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Speakers:
John Patrick Leary is the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism and A Cultural History of Underdevelopment: Latin America in the US Imagination. He teaches social studies in the Philadelphia public schools.
Greg Grandin is the author of The Pulitzer Prize winning The End of the Myth, Empire’s Workshop, The Empire of Necessity, and is currently the C Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/6C_AoUzEviw
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Aug 18, 2021
What's Happening in Cuba?
Join a panel of analysts to discuss the recent protests in Cuba and how they relate to solidarity, anti-imperialism, and socialism.
Recent protests in Cuba have generated debate on the international Left. What were the protests about and how should progressives make sense of them? What do the protests mean for debates about anti-imperialism, socialism, solidarity and internationalism? Join us for this important discussion with three Cuban leftist intellectuals and activists.
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Speakers:
Alina Bárbara López Hernández is a Cuban intellectual and writer based in Matanzas, Cuba. She is a longtime contributor to the influential Cuban publication La Joven Cuba and is the author of several books, including Segundas lecturas: intelectualidad, política y cultura en la república burguesa, El (des)conocido Juan Marinello: estudio de su pensamiento político, and En tiempos de blogosfera.
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros is a Cuban-born scholar and writer. She is associate professor of Latin American cultural studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Centered on Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx experiences, her current academic, fiction and nonfiction works examine self-identification processes and the production of counter-hegemonic knowledge in the global African diaspora. She is the author of Utopia, Dystopia and Ethical Weightlessness: Cosmological Reconfigurations in post-Soviet Cuban Fiction (in Spanish) and is currently writing “On Being Blacks: Self-Identification Processes and Counter-Hegemonic Knowledge in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production.”
Samuel Farber was born and raised in Marianao, Cuba. He was active in the Cuban high school student movement against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, and has been involved in socialist politics for more than fifty years. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the author of several books on Cuba, including Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959 and The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice (both published by Haymarket) and The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. He is a frequent contributor to New Politics magazine and is a member of Internationalism from Below.
Moderator:
Natalia Tylim is active in the NYC-DSA labor branch. She’s a restaurant worker and a founding member of DSA’s Restaurant Organizing Project.
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This event is co-sponsored by Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/VkngZbCywqY
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Aug 26, 2021
What's Happening in Iran?
Join a panel of analysts to discuss the current protests and class struggle in Iran and the political dynamics of the region.
Please join Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics Magazine for this forum on the current protests rocking the Islamic Republic, class and labor politics in Iran, gender and ethnic minorities in the country, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary dynamics in the Middle East, the myth of the “Axis of Resistance” — and how progressives and internationalists should make sense of these critical developments.
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Speakers:
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator, and activist. She produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and writes about the Middle East and the politics of solidarity for a variety of publications, including New Politics magazine. Her essay “The Iranian Uprising of 2019-2020” appeared in the recent book A Region in Revolt: Mapping the Recent Uprisings in North Africa and West Asia, edited by Jade Saab and published by Daraja Press.
Latest article:
“Iran: A New Wave of Mass Protests and Strikes” (New Politics): https://newpol.org/iran-a-new-wave-of-mass-protests-and-strikes/
Kaveh Ehsani is associate professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His books include Social History of Oil in Iran (in Persian) and Working for Oil: Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry. He has worked as a regional planner at the World Bank and the UNDP. As a development planner in Iran he worked on water resources planning, drought, urban governance, and post-war reconstruction in Khuzestan Province. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and is a contributing editor of the journals Goftogu (based in Tehran), Middle East Report, and Iranian Studies.
Latest article:
“The Moral Economy of the Iranian Protests” (Jacobin): https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/iranian-protests-revolution-rouhani-ahmadinejad
Danny Postel is Assistant Director of the Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a member of Internationalism from Below. He is co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future, The Syria Dilemma, and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East. Formerly Senior Editor of openDemocracy magazine, he has written for Boston Review, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Democratic Left, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times, Middle East Report (MERIP), The Nation, New Politics, and The Progressive, among other publications.
Latest article:
"The Other Regional Counter-Revolution: Iran’s Role in the Shifting Political Landscape of the Middle East" (New Politics): https://newpol.org/the-other-regional-counter-revolution-irans-role-in-the-shifting-political-landscape-of-the-middle-east/
Moderator
Sam Salour is a member of the Tempest Collective and a sociology PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.
Latest article:
“Striking echoes in Iran: A report from the oil and gas strikes”: https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/08/striking-echoes-in-iran/
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This event is co-sponsored by Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/97kbenZHuSU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Sep 2, 2021
White Skin, Black Fuel: Fossil Fascism and Colonialism's Inky Legacy
Join us for an urgent discussion on the rise of the far right and what it means for the battle against climate change.
Fossil-fueled technologies were born in the soot-covered pits of British colonialism and have held onto their racist legacy to this day. As the burning of carbon makes climate related catastrophe a near weekly occurrence, Fossil capital has of late turned to willing accomplices among the growing far-right to displace blame and defend the status quo. In a world of rising sea levels, scorching temperatures, and crippling droughts, the right-wing in country after country has risen to pin the blame on migrants, Muslims, and other scapegoats as they offer their own solutions to a warming world: close the borders and save the nation from climate break down.
In the first study of the far right’s role in the climate crisis, White Skin, Black Fuel presents an eye-opening sweep of this novel political constellation, drawing out its deep historical roots, and arguing that to confront this crisis requires combating the racist forces of reaction who would enable it.
Order a Copy of White Skin, Black Fuel: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3812-white-skin-black-fuel
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Speakers:
Dounia Boukaouit is an Independent researcher, Human Ecology graduate, and ICES Conference Coordinator and Research Assistant at Uppsala University.
Ståle Holgersen is a human geographer at Uppsala University, Sweden. Research interests include political economy and ecology, urban planning and housing, and crises. His forthcoming book Kapitalismens kriser (Daidalos 2021) explores relations between ecological and economic crises.
Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology, and the author of The Progress of this Storm and of Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (moderator) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His forthcoming book Reconsidering Reparations (November 2021, Oxford University Press) explores links between reparations and climate justice.
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This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pspu3GuoFbY
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Sep 3, 2021
Reaction and Revolution: Responses to Domenico Losurdo’s 'Nietzsche'
Join us for a discussion marking the paperback release of Domenico Losurdo’s monumental study of Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Recently translated into English by Gregor Benton, Losurdo’s book is epic in scope, covering a wide range of philosophical and historical issues that not only situate Nietzsche in his 19th century context, but addresses some of the most burning theoretical and political issues of our times. Losurdo’s Nietzsche represents one of the greatest examples of Marxist scholarship and criticism, and we will discuss the book’s significance for not only how we see Nietzsche, but how we understand socialist theory today. Losurdo’s Nietzsche shows us that the problems of the 19th century are not over yet.
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Speakers:
Harrison Fluss received his PhD in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He is a professor at Manhattan College, NYC and wrote the introduction to the English edition of Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel.
Benjamin Noys is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester. He is the author of The Persistence of the Negative, Malign Velocities, and the forthcoming The Matter of Language.
Tijana Okić holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. She is a longstanding activist of the “Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt” (CADTM), and is the editor of “The Lost Revolution: Yugoslav Women’s Antifascist Front between Myth and Forgetting.” Her research includes issues of German Idealism, contemporary French philosophy, feminist philosophy, Marxism, the history of race and ethnicity, and the problems of memory in Yugoslav history.
Daniel Tutt has degrees from American University and the European Graduate School. He is the author of the forthcoming book Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: The Crisis of Initiationwith the Palgrave Lacan Series. His research is concerned with the intersection of contemporary politics, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. You can read his review of Losurdo’s Aristocratic Rebel entitled “Nietzsche in His Time: The Struggle Against Socratism and Socialism” on the Historical Materialism website.
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Order a copy of Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1565-nietzsche-the-aristocratic-rebel
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2sTqD62y2Do
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Sep 6, 2021
Hillbilly Nationalists The Young Patriots & the Rainbow Coalition
Join Young Patriots co-founder Hy Thurman and Amy Sonnie and James Tracy for a book launch discussion of 'Hillbilly Nationalists'.
In 1969, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) emerged out of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to organize poor white people against capitalism and white supremacy. They worked alongside the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Puerto Rican Young Lords in the Original Rainbow Coalitions. The YPO embodied the politics that sought to build multiracial working-class unity while respecting the self-determination and autonomy of their comrades of color.
Join YPO co-founder Hy Thurman, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, co-authors of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing, Expanded Anniversary Edition, (Melville House Publishing) in conversation with Rampant Magazine.
Get the new, expanded Anniversary Edition of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing from Melville House Publishing here: https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/hillbilly-nationalists-urban-race-rebels-and-black-power
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Speakers:
Amy Sonnie is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).
Hy Thurman is a co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization and author of Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes From the Struggle at the Edge of the Rainbow (Regent Press).
James Tracy is co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).
Moderator:
Eric Kerl is a Kentuckian living, working, organizing, and writing in Chicago. He is the author of White Bred: Hillbillies, White Trash, and Rednecks against White Supremacy (forthcoming from Haymarket Books) and is on the editorial collective of Rampant Magazine.
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This event is co-sponsored by Rampant Magazine, Melville House Publishing, Howard Zinn Book Fair, and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/JBL-hyLqjhk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Sep 10, 2021
Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete w/ Geo Maher, Robin DG Kelley, & Alex Vitale
If police are the problem, what’s the solution?
Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. Geo Maher's new book, A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete.
Geo will be joined by Robin D.G. Kelley and Alex Vitale to pick up on these urgent themes and to examine the alternatives to Police and policing.
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Order a Copy of A World Without Police: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3783-a-world-without-police
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Speakers:
Geo Maher has previously taught at Vassar College, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He is the author of five books, including We Created Chavez, Decolonizing Dialectics, Building the Commune, Spirals of Revolt, and A World Without Police.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA and the author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.
Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Shj1A0_r5MQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks