June 4, 2023

Performative Film Practices In Tamil Politics, Part 1 (Giulia Battaglia)

The following is the first of a two-part series. Author’s note: This piece has been written as part of a bibliographic research about documentary filmmaking in South India conducted in London in 2006. This was the first year of my PhD in social anthropology – that is, it was the moment before leaving for fieldwork […]

The Affects Of May 1968 – On Liberal Subjectivity And Its Discontents (Roger Green)

Elliot Neaman closes his book, Free Radicals: Agitators, Hippies, Urban Guerrillas, and Germany’s Youth Revolt of the 1960s and 1970s, stating that the battles of the late 1960s persist today, “not on the streets this time, but rather [in disputes] over who has the power to interpret the past correctly” (212).  He claims that rather […]

The Meaning Of May 1968 – A Sampling Of Reflections Around The Internet

The editors of The New Polis have gathered below excerpts and summaries of some of the most significant reflections and observations that have been published to date on the long-term historical meaning of May 1968.  Per an earlier call, we invite readers to send us their own take, whether it be in the form of […]

Prophets In Spite Of Themselves – Foucault And Baldwin On Truth And Innocence (Corey McCall)

Recently scholars have begun to consider various ways that the work of Michel Foucault and James Baldwin might converge. Typically, comparisons between the two writers have been staged on the field of politics, through considerations of how they thought, for example, about power or identity.(47-64)  Instead this paper proposes to consider Foucault and Baldwin as […]

From The Sexual Revolution To The Politics Of Recognition – The Legacy Of May 1968 (Carl Raschke)

May 1968 was known in France as l’eventement, or “the event.”  It was compared to the French uprisings of 1789, 1830, 1849, and 1871 when governments dissolved and new “republics” were proclaimed.  It was spontaneous, unscripted, and to a certain extent unorganized.   Like so many “spontaneous” insurrections and cultural singularities of that period, there was […]

The Politics Of Dialect In Indian Regionalism (Shivani Bhasin)

A dialect is defined as a particular form of a language which is peculiar to a region or social group. Yet what exactly helps maintain a strict boundary between a dialect and a language? The Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich said that a language essentially is a “dialect with an army and a navy.” Here, it […]