nonsite.org

06/06/2024

New to nonsite: Issue #46: The Nineteenth Century (Pt. 4)

In this issue we feature new scholarship on nineteenth-century European art, including Michael Fried on Géricault, Balzac, and “the limit case of absorption”; Laura Kalba on Rossetti, Ruskin, and political economy; Claire Moran on Morisot and the plein-air interior; Stephanie O’Rourke on John Martin and infrastructure; and Harmon Siegel on subjectivity and style. Also featured is the first English-language version of Fritz Novotny’s essay “Das Problem des Menschen Cézanne im Verhältnis zu seiner Kunst” (1932), translated by Carmen Rosenberg-Miller as “The Problem of Cézanne the Person in Relation to His Art.”

In this issue, part of an ongoing series co-edited by Bridget Alsdorf and Marnin Young, we feature new scholarship on nineteenth-century European art, including Michael Fried on Géricault, Balzac, …

15/02/2024

New to nonsite, issue #45(!): Derrida’s “Signature Event Context”: The Next Fifty Years?

https://nonsite.org/issues/issue-45-derridas-signature-event-context-the-next-fifty-years/

“Signature Event Context” has proved to be Derrida’s most enduring essay. New fields have been founded on its basis, and it is his only work to address at length a text by a philosopher not from the Continental tradition. With the passing of “Signature’s” 50th anniversary, this issue edited by Joshua Kates includes essays from scholars with a range of sympathies to Derrida’s project. Their articles focus less on purely scholarly concerns and instead on the truth about questions raised by Derrida’s essay: of textual identity, the role of intention and citation, the status of fictional and historical discourses, and the work of interpretation. Included as well are a series of interchanges between Michaels, Henry Staten, and Joshua Kates on Derrida.

“Signature Event Context” has proved to be Derrida’s most enduring essay. New fields have been founded on its basis, and it is his only work to address at length a text by a philosopher not from th…

24/10/2023

New to nonsite, issue #44: Toward a Critique of Possibilism

In this issue we feature a series of interlocking essays on the self-imposed limitations on political thinking by Sam Gindin, Mike Macnair, Adolph Reed with an introduction by John-Baptiste Oduor. In addition is a feature on the Shards by Willard Boepple with an essay by Michael Fried as well as two essays on problems in contemporary art theory by Ian Verstegen—on aesthetic ideologies of “vibrant matter”—and Diarmuid Costello on Thierry de Duve’s Kant.

In this issue we feature a series of interlocking essays on the self-imposed limitations on political thinking by Sam Gindin, Mike Macnair, Adolph Reed with an introduction by John-Baptiste Oduor. …

20/10/2023

Fair Play is the perfected expression of neoliberalism, where all harms are harms of discrimination and high finance is as natural as the air we breathe.

The new corporate thriller Fair Play depicts an intra-office relationship gone sour — but asks audiences to relate to the relationship struggles of the 0.1%.

11/08/2023

A new piece over at The Nation (picking up on the arguments at nonsite).

Behind the scenes at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

30/06/2023

Walter Benn Michaels responding to critics on the nature of AI.

Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels 30 June 2023 In “Against Theory,” after the second wave has washed up and left behind what looks like the second stanza of “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” we a…

23/06/2023

New to nonsite, issue 43: Architecture and Politics at Mid-Century. Essays on race and labor, then and now, by Adolph Reed, Thomas J. Mann and Oliver C. Cox as well as a series of ongoing studies of Modern Architecture in California by Alex Ross, Christopher Long and Pierluigi Serraino.

Essays on race and labor, then and now, by Adolph Reed, Thomas J. Mann and Oliver Cox as well as a series of ongoing studies of Modern Architecture in California by Alex Ross, Christopher Long and …

01/06/2023

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/a-response-to-clover-and-singh

Joshua Clover and Nikhil Pal Singh imagine that the “occasion” for our book No Politics but Class Politics is “the George Floyd Uprising” in the summer of 2020. As it happens, this isn’t true but the more relevant fact is its importance for them, since they understand the Uprising (and sim...

12/04/2023

New to nonsite, issue #42 dedicated to the work of literary critic Hugh Kenner. New essays on Kenner by Megan Quigley, Oren Izenberg, Joseph Staten, Paul Grimstad, Joshua Kotin, Todd Cronan and Walter Benn Michaels.

In this issue scholars address the underexamined writings of literary critic Hugh Kenner.

22/02/2023

First installment of Adolph Reed’s new column in The Nation:

Some personal and theoretical reflections on intersectionality and its discontents.

09/01/2023

New to nonsite: Issue 41, Socialism or Moralism on the work of Bayard Rustin.

Here we present four little-known essays by Rustin: "Firebombs or a Freedom Budget?," "Socialism or Moralism?," "What About Black Capitalism?," and "Education?" as well as C. Vann Woodward's incisive introduction to Rustin's Down the Line and a new essay by Adolph Reed, Jr., "Bayard Rustin: The Panthers Couldn't Save Us Then Either." Also included is a new essay by Preston Smith II on "Black Political Incorporation under Neoliberalization," and a Tank feature on Todd Cronan's Red Aesthetics with responses by Iva Glisic, Gabriel Rockhill, Asma Abbas, Sean Carney, Luka Arsenjuk and a response to the responses by the author.

03/10/2022

Nonsite Poetry is back with sonnets by Rodrigo Toscano!

And suddenly, the words are gone again

29/09/2022

Issue #40 is here: New Views on Modern Architecture at Mid-Century. This issue is devoted to new approaches to lesser-known architecture and design at mid-century. Examining a range of practices at mid-century, all of them within a highly politicized landscape, these essays explore Otto Neurath’s studies in scientific management, Bruno Mathsson’s Solar Architecture, reconceptions of building art for the uninhabited wilderness, the incredible story of the intersection of the work of Alden B. Dow and Dow Chemical, and a study of the contrasting approaches to architectural photography in the work of Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller. Finally, Adolph Reed cuts through the ideological jargon of Afropessimism.

31/08/2022

New to nonsite, Adolph Reed on Afropessimism.

https://nonsite.org/afropessimism-or-black-studies-as-a-class-project/

The close parallel between fin-de-siècle racist ideologues’ assertions of the primordial and immutable nature of white supremacy and contemporary race reductionists’ can provide perspective helpful for ascertaining what lies behind the impulse to insist, in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that nothing has changed for black Americans and, yet more strikingly, Hartman’s dismissal of Emancipation as a “nonevent.”

The close parallel between fin-de-siècle racist ideologues’ assertions of the primordial and immutable nature of white supremacy and contemporary race reductionists’ can provide perspective helpful…

03/07/2022

New to nonsite, Jenny Breen on Delegitimizing the Administrative State.

https://nonsite.org/delegitimizing-the-administrative-state/

Despite the glaring irony, Gorsuch is not talking about judges when he discusses “unaccountable ‘ministers.’” He is instead talking about civil servants in government agencies. In Gorsuch’s view, government agencies pose unique dangers to the American republic. Accordingly, it is essential that courts—and only courts—be tasked with reining in the power of agencies lest the power they wield—to regulate power plants emissions, to establish health and safety standards during a pandemic—destroy the lives of individual Americans.

Despite the glaring irony, Gorsuch is not talking about judges when he discusses “unaccountable ‘ministers.’” He is instead talking about civil servants in government agencies. In Gorsuch’s view, g…

20/06/2022

Today in LARB, Todd Cronan's essay on Zadie Smith's recent writings and how class plays an increasingly important role in her thinking. It's about her turn from empathy, to stoicism, and finally, and surprisingly, to class politics.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/zadie-smith-finds-her-way-to-class/

20/05/2022

New to nonsite, Issue #39, Art/Race/Theory/Practice, including Zine Magubane's "Contemporary Race Theory and the Problem of History," Eric Michaud's "Cézanne's Sensations," Chris Gortmaker on Mary Ellen Solt and "Concretizing 1968," Jan Sowa on Right-wing Populism, Adolph Reed on "The Clientelist Foundation of Contemporary Antiracist Politics," and Molly Warnock enters The Tank with responses by Harry Cooper, Matthew Bowman, Gordon Hughes and Warnock responds.

https://nonsite.org/issues/issue-39-art-race-theory-practice/

Inside the issue Articles Issue #39 Contemporary Race Theory and the Problem of History: A Critique The blinkered vision of the leading voices in contemporary race theory when it comes to the polit…

12/05/2022

New from issue 39, Zine Magubane, "Contemporary Race Theory and the Problem of History: A Critique."

https://nonsite.org/contemporary-race-theory-and-the-problem-of-history-a-critique/

The blinkered vision of the leading voices in contemporary race theory when it comes to the politics of the present is also linked to how they misunderstand the past. Because their analyses are primed to search for continuities in anti-Black racism over time, they tend to ignore an equally pernicious and consistent factor in American history—the assault on organized efforts by working people of all races to challenge the power of capital, to evade or undermine the power of the wage relationship and market compulsion, and to harness the power of the state to put the needs of working people above the pursuit of capitalist profits.

The blinkered vision of the leading voices in contemporary race theory when it comes to the politics of the present is also linked to how they misunderstand the past. Because their analyses are pri…

26/04/2022

New to nonsite, a major new essay by Adolph Reed, "'Let Me Go Get My Big White Man': The Clientelist Foundation of Contemporary Antiracist Politics."

https://nonsite.org/let-me-go-get-my-big-white-man/

All this makes crystal clear why proponents of race-reductionist politics are so unmoved by criticism based on effectiveness for generating a popular politics or for winning egalitarian reforms at all. Just as with the Bookerite progenitor, developing and advancing a popular politics is not the point at all. It is a politics geared toward bending ears of and currying favor from elements of the ruling class and their gatekeeping minions. The real constituency race-reductionism seeks to address are the “big white men (and women)” who have the power to validate Voices and agendas geared to advance black investor class interests as representing the unproblematic good of the race and thereby use race to do the same thing the ruling class ideologues of militant white supremacy used it to do at the end of the nineteenth century.

All this makes crystal clear why proponents of race-reductionist politics are so unmoved by criticism based on effectiveness for generating a popular politics or for winning egalitarian reforms at …

15/04/2022

Ken Warren on "The Poetics and Politics of Black Lives Matter":

Blackness, then, is a claim of exceptionalism masquerading as radicalism. This exceptionalism is derivative of a belief that the U.S. and the West, even without recourse to discredited theories of social Darwinism, have fully realized Madison Grant’s dream of making race the prime mover of history and social reality such that white supremacy has become the hooded ghost in every imaginable social machine. Ostensibly indicating a concern with those most victimized, those whose voices and needs have been ignored, “Blackness” substitutes claims of shared experience for structures and practices of democratic governance and accountability. Personal feelings confer authority on anyone who can attest to certain experiences to speak on behalf of a collectivity presumed to feel exactly the same way. And those who speak the loudest are those for whom commentary on matters of race is a part of their job description.

https://nonsite.org/the-poetics-and-politics-of-black-lives-matter/

In order to show that race—which is to say, the confrontation with blackness—and not something else prompts the interaction, the poem’s early scenes happen within the domain of the professional man…

01/03/2022

New to nonsite, Issue #38, "Contemporary Art and the PMC II," featuring new scholarship and essays on contemporary art, a professional-managerial enterprise including

Megan Sullivan on Lygia Clark
Daniel Sánchez Bataller on Santiago Sierra
Walter Benn Michaels on James Welling and Yvonne Rainer
AnnMarie Perl on Art & Language and October

https://nonsite.org/issues/issue-38-contemporary-art-and-the-pmc-part-two/

The second in a pair of issues featuring new scholarship and essays on contemporary art, a professional-managerial enterprise. Edited by Elise Archias.

07/01/2022

Introducing the new Class Matters Podcast, "What Would our Country Look Like If It Were Governed By and For the Working Class?" First episode, "Have the Workers Lost Faith in Government?," features Adolph Reed, Gordon Lafer, and Samir Sonti.

https://classmatterspodcast.org/

20/12/2021

nonsite in the news, Parenti on The Hill. A succinct discussion of his essay on the history of the privilege walk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOf-5iGXmFQ

Associate professor, Christian Parenti, breaks down the 'privilege walk.'About RisingAbout Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts tha...

17/12/2021

Christian Parenti on Useful Idiots with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper talking about "The First Privilege Walk" (he comes in at around 44 minutes), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwmK6JBJEfM

See the ad-free version here: https://usefulidiots.substack.com/p/ad-free-the-cult-of-the-privilege?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=webJournalist and pr...

09/12/2021

New to nonsite: Issue #37: Contemporary Art and the Professional Managerial Class

The first in a pair of issues featuring new scholarship and essays on contemporary art, a professional-managerial enterprise. Edited by Elise Archias.

https://nonsite.org/issues/issue-37-contemporary-art-and-the-pmc-part-one/

Elise Archias Introduction
Anne Wagner on David Smith
Andrew Hoberek on Pop art
Steve Edwards on Allan Sekula
Chris Reitz on Maurizio Cattelan
Blake Stimson on Contemporary art and "Infantile 'Left-wing' disorder"

The first in a pair of issues featuring new scholarship and essays on contemporary art, a professional-managerial enterprise. Edited by Elise Archias.

07/12/2021

Now available, a new nonsite book on art and politics.

Red Aesthetics offers a new way to think about art and politics, focusing on the revolutionary work of Aleksandr Rodchenko, Bertolt Brecht, and Sergei Eisenstein between the wars. Todd Cronan shows how these three artists’ photographs, dramas, films, and writings—centered on class conflict—differ from current left orthodoxies rooted in empathy. Writing against liberal pieties, Cronan contends, following Brecht, that empathy is not the solution to our problems, but more like the source of them.

Red Aesthetics is a tour de force, and Todd Cronan is a uniquely significant voice writing in contemporary cultural and art theory. He displays a distinctive ability to drive analytically to the heart of the contradictions that undergird, and are easily obscured within, aesthetics and critical theory. This book, as does all of Cronan's work, delivers brilliantly on his objective to refashion art as a practice that helps us to understand "the real social forces of capitalism."

—Adolph Reed Jr

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1538147092/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_CNXC0R0K3ZEVQ665HASS

Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein (Cultural Studies and Marxism)

19/11/2021

New to nonsite, Christian Parenti's "The First Privilege Walk," or "How Herbert Marcuse’s widow used a Scientology-linked cult’s methodology to gamify Identity Politics and thus helped steer the U.S. Left down the dead-end path of identitarian psychobabble."
https://nonsite.org/the-first-privilege-walk/

How Herbert Marcuse’s widow used a Scientology-linked cult’s methodology to gamify Identity Politics and thus helped steer the U.S. Left down the dead-end path of identitarian psychobabble.

24/08/2021

New to nonsite, Adolph Reed, "The Whole Country is the Reichstag."

If neoliberalism has reached such an impasse, I’ve argued, there are only two possible directions forward politically: one is toward social democracy and pursuit of solidaristic, downwardly redistributive policy agendas within a framework of government in the public good; the other is toward authoritarianism that preserves the core neoliberal principle of accumulation by dispossession by suppressing potential opposition.

https://nonsite.org/the-whole-country-is-the-reichstag/

A crucial characteristic of the current situation is that the antagonism between the pragmatic and the visionary that liberals have often used as a cudgel against left aspirations and programs—the …

04/08/2021

New to nonsite, Issue #36: The Legal Issue. In this issue we focus on debates—new and old—in the legal and literary sphere, examining topics ranging from birtherism, plea bargaining, forensic architecture and evidence, and robotic free speech with articles by Mika Turim-Nygren, Simon Stern, Linda Kinstler, Rachel Watson, and Lisa Siraganian.

https://nonsite.org/issues/issue-36-the-legal-issue/

In this issue we focus on debates—new and old—in the legal and literary sphere, examining topics ranging from birtherism, plea bargaining, forensic architecture and evidence, and robotic free speec…

23/07/2021

Blistering new editorial by Adolph Reed.

We absolutely do not need to figure out how to make anti-racism anti-capitalist. We need to figure out how to start trying to build a mass movement around appealing to the material needs of the broad working-class.

https://nonsite.org/why-black-lives-matter-cant-be-co-opted/

We absolutely do not need to figure out how to make anti-racism anti-capitalist. We need to figure out how to start trying to build a mass movement around appealing to the material needs of the bro…