In How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle, Jonas Čeika rescues Nietzsche and Marx from their undeserved fates as caricatures and examines how their ideas are more compatible than have often been depicted. Čeika's new book unearths dormant values in each figure’s thought that are useful to a modern emancipatory politics.
Read more“We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up”: The Legacy of the L.A. Uprising
The mass demonstrations that have erupted since the police murdered George Floyd echo back to the fierce militancy and revolutionary art of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising. While the rebellion was quickly suppressed, its legacy offers lessons and hope for the present wave of protests that are fighting back against police violence.
Read moreA Fight on Two Fronts: On Jean-Luc Godard’s “La Chinoise”
Godard's La Chinoise follows a group of communist students as they plan for revolutionary action and create a “socialist theater.” Godard drew heavily from German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s theory of “dialectical theater,” a method of political theater that forces the audience to engage with the ideas presented to them. At the same time, Godard drew upon the teachings of Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, whose ideas were discussed closely among French intellectuals during the 1960s. By merging Brechtian concepts with Maoist ideas, Godard sought to turn film into a revolutionary art form, and this goal is most fully realized in La Chinoise.
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