Afro-Latin music is a multimillion-dollar industry, but according to Timothy Brennan, it speaks to a world outside of the relations of the market, and that's what makes it irresistible. Brennan talks about cultural resistance, the Afro-Cuban roots music known as the son, and the pioneering scholarship of Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier.
Vacant structures abound in the bankrupt city of Detroit, and squatters have taken over and occupied many of them. Although squatting is illegal, the practice has achieved a kind of legitimacy and vibrancy as residents yearn for a sense of community among the empty lots and abandoned homes. Claire Herbert has interviewed squatters, long-time residents, city officials, and others.
Christopher Turner, Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
Wilhelm Reich fused Marx with Freud, had an enormous influence on the New Left and the counterculture, and provided the intellectual underpinnings for the sexual revolution. Yet he's almost forgotten today. Writer Christopher Turner discussses the complexities of the psychoanalytic pioneer, who invented the infamous orgone accumulator box -- used by William Burroughs and Norman Mailer amongst others -- and examines his legacy in hindsight.
Dean Spade and Craig Willse, “Marriage Will Never Set Us Free” Organizing Upgrade
Sherry Wolf, Sexuality and Socialism Haymarket, 2009
Not everyone on the Left celebrated the Supreme Court's decision on same-sex marriage. A number of radical thinkers and activists, including Dean Spade and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, have decried the focus on marriage equality. On the other hand, Sherry Wolf viewed same-sex marriage as a key reform worth pursuing.
Barbara Epstein, "On the Disappearance of Socialist Humanism"
Kevin B. Anderson, "Marcuse’s and Fromm’s Correspondence with the Socialist Feminist Raya Dunayevskaya" Logos 2012
Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell (eds), The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence, 1954-1978 Lexington, 2012
Socialist humanist ideas were broadly championed by key thinkers in the mid-20th century, like Fanon, Marcuse, and Fromm, but have now disappeared, seemingly without a trace. Barbara Epstein and Kevin Anderson explore socialist humanism's rise and fall, in part as postmodernism took center stage as an ideological current. They argue that the Left is not better off without it.
John Marsh, In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself Monthly Review Press, 2015
Democracy today is in a sorry state. Can Walt Whitman help us resuscitate it? John Marsh thinks so; he reveals how the thousands of visits Whitman paid to sick and wounded soldiers in Civil War army hospitals restored the poet's faith in ordinary people's ability to fashion a robust democracy. Marsh also shows how Whitman modeled an ethics of comradeship and affection in his poetry.
