Or, why is there still socialism in the United States? Why, then, would we look for evidence of socialism only where a state seized by radicals of the Left inaugurates a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or, to lower the rhetorical volume and evidentiary stakes, why would we expect to find socialism only where avowed socialists or labor parties contend for state power? We should instead assume that socialism, like capitalism, is a cross-class cultural construction, to which even the bourgeoisie has already made significant contributions – just as the proletariat has long made significant contributions to the cross-class construction we know as capitalism. What follows?
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Feb 13, 2013 -
46 comments
Right now Baltimore, MD plays host to
FemmeCon, a biannual gathering for those who "seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support
Queer Femme as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities". Some of the issues faced by queer femme culture include
femme invisibility in larger queer culture, the
lack of non-stereotypical role models,
being classed 'femme' by default, dismissal as
"too much", as well as intersectional issues of femme with
race,
gender, and
disability. In the meantime, femme subcultures such as
tomboy femme,
hard femme, and
FEMME SHARKS as well as
femmes in specific regions come together for
inspiration,
expression,
power,
creativity and support from each other - as well as from
appreciative butches.
posted by divabat
on Aug 18, 2012 -
111 comments
"As a career patient, I’ve learned one thing at least: the importance of clinging to the rag-end of your sense of self, however you define it—intellect, sense of humor, generosity of spirit, a stoicism worthy of Seneca or Mr. Spock, or, in a writer’s case, the mind that makes sense of itself as a reflection in the mirror of language. In the M.A.S.H.-unit chaos of the E.R.; in the nowhere, notime of the hospital room; in the O.R., where the euphoria of oncoming anesthesia and the doting attentions of apparitions in scrubs make you understand, in an instant, the perverse seductions of Munchausen’s Syndrome as you ride into the stage-light radiance on your gurney like the Son of Heaven in his sedan chair, feeling for all the world like a pathological celebrity—in these moments of inescapable embodiment, I’ve learned to float free in my head, a thought balloon untethered from the body on the sickbed or the operating table."
-
A Season in Hell by (
Mefite)
Mark Dery [
Previously]
posted by lemuring
on Apr 13, 2012 -
10 comments
We think it’s normal to work all day every day at a dead-end job. It’s normal to fight with our spouses and our children. It’s normal to eat and drink and drug ourselves to escape, to veg out and stare at a screen for hours a day just to dull the pain. It’s normal to hate our lives and be miserable, it’s normal to be lonely, it’s normal to feel hollow. The Freak Revolution Manifesto.
posted by fiercecupcake
on Oct 2, 2009 -
97 comments
Marguerite Young - whom Kurt Vonnegut called "unquestionably a genius" - first achieved success with a study of the utopian commune at
New Harmony, Indiana called
Angel in the Forest. She then spent 18 years writing
Miss Macintosh, My Darling - a
1,198 page novel that William Goyen praised in
The New York Times Book Review as "a masterwork". She spent the last 30 years of her life writing an unfinished biography of
Eugene V. Debs that was posthumously published, in heavily edited form, as
Harp Song for a Radical.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on May 22, 2009 -
4 comments
Something to Hüsker :
Bob Mould,
Grant Hart and
Greg Norton live with
Joan Rivers on the Late Show. Also live versions of the Byrds'
Eight Miles High,
The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill/I Apologize,
Pink Turns to Blue,
Every Everything, Makes no Sense at All, Ticket to Ride,
New Day Rising,
These Important Years, Every Everytime, and a video for
Don't Want to Know if You Are Lonely.
posted by psmealey
on Sep 21, 2007 -
68 comments
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win: SDS is reborn. Founded in 1959 and imploded ten tumultous years later, the Students for Democratic Society was one of the most
dynamic and controversial forces at work in organizing a mass movement against the Vietnam war, particularly among draft-age kids. The group's original manifesto, Tom Hayden's
Port Huron statement, still rings prophetic in
Bush's America.
Now SDS is relaunching and planning its first national convention since 1969, with a new crew of young radicals issuing
calls to action to their own supposedly apathetic generation: "We seek liberation from the dominant business interests that have degraded our cities, paved over our communities, drowned out small business, and commodified our culture... Cooperative self-reliance is the only moral and material salvation of our nation, and the only release from a system that demands each of us be an accomplice to its
heinous crimes."
posted by digaman
on Jan 27, 2006 -
45 comments