Walter Benjamin’s Final Prophecy
Walter Benjamin grew up in a secular family, but later combined Jewish messianism with Marxism in order to reignite past hopes in present struggles.
8 Articles by: Hannah Proctor
Hannah Proctor is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, interested in histories and theories of radical psychiatry.
We Can’t Ignore the Difficult Emotions of Political Defeat
The Left’s long history of defeats has produced an equally long history of difficult emotions. Yet left-wing thinkers have often ignored the emotional experience of political defeat in service of an unrealistic ideal of the selfless revolutionary.
Ursula Le Guin Has Given Us a New Posthumous Collection of Writings
Legendary science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin has a new posthumous collection out called Space Crone. Sometimes polemical and often hilarious, it discusses feminism and radical alternatives on an intergalactic scope.
Reading Victor Serge from the Depths of Defeat
Despite isolation, political defeat, and incalculable grief, the Russian revolutionary Victor Serge persisted in writing in collective rather than personal terms.
A Brief History of Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson’s message is simple: “evil” is endemic to humanity, and the domination of some people over others is biologically grounded.
Read Vivian Gornick’s Romance of American Communism
Based on interviews with former Communist Party members, Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism is a book full of emotional people who struggle to talk about their emotions. It shows how Party commitment gave everyday life an epic dimension — and made political defeats into personal traumas.
Agnès Varda (1928–2019)
Agnès Varda’s films evinced a love of, rather than mere fascination with, people.
Revolutionary Romance
Why should extravagant pleasures and intense feelings be reserved for the bourgeoisie?