Book Reviews
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Review
Not Just a Smear Tactic
In July of 2006, Bluestockings bookshop in New York City announced it was hosting a workshop for social justice activists on “opposing anti-Semitism in the movement.” The announcement sparked a heated online discussion on New York’s Indymedia website. Some people asked if the workshop was goin…
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Review
Death of a Dichotomy
Tactical Diversity and the Politics of Post-Violence
In a 2001In These Timesarticle on the FTAA demonstrations in Quebec City, Abby Scher, like many others, reflected on the effective interplay between protesters’ violent and non-violent tactics. She ended her discussion with the question: “Is Quebec… a wonderful demonstration of ‘a diversity…
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Review
Black Power From the Inside
Toronto’s Black community has long suffered a crisis of increasing poverty, racism, and violence. This is largely the result of the oppression that African-Canadian people have endured through the implementation of neoliberal policies and the expansion of both the police state and the prison indus…
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Review
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
For years, John Hagedorn has made the honest study of gang culture and its institutionalization the cornerstone of his research and work. With A World of Gangs, he provides a valuable primer on the overall character of major gangs, building upon his previous work, including People and Folks, Female…
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Review
Coming to Terms With Commodity Culture
Stephen Duncombe’s compelling book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, analyzes the ways in which political groups engage the public and communicate their messages. Duncombe is both an activist and a scholar, currently teaching the history and politics of media and cult…
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Review
Motivating the Nihilists
Simon Critchley, a philosopher in the Continental vein, offers us Infinitely Demanding, a brief text in which he aims to explicate a possible movement from ethics to politics, and from commitment to resistance. It serves as an index of what is promising and what is a dead end, both ethically and pol…
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Review
Defending Zizek’s Map
In UTA 6, the editorial collective called for “good maps” and “the ability to think historically…”1 Slavoj Zizek’s In Defense of Lost Causes provides an answer to the call. His capacity for historical thinking – “to think from two points at once” - is at the core of his defense of…
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Review
Highly Mediated
As with all things under the control of capital, the mainstream media aims for profitability. Under the current dominant model, media profitability depends on advertising, which fosters an important relationship between media owners and the rest of Big Business. According to Internal Revenue Service…
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Review
Voices of Freedom
In my office, stuffed in a green hanging file folder on four sheets of yellow legal paper is the original manuscript for “We Will Rise Again,” Alvaro Luna Hernandez’s manifesto on the Chicano Mexicano experience, his case, and the fight against colonialism. When I received “We Will Rise Agai…
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Review
Digging Up Autonomia
The original “movement of movements,” Autonomia grew out of the Italian student and worker mobilizations of 1968. It included migrant workers, feminists, and the unemployed. In 1977, it exploded into open revolt in the industrialized north of Italy. It made important links between theory and act…
