Author: Bruce Robbins

My Dive

My Dive

Posted by | Nov 18, 2022 | |

[What follows is an excerpt from the unpublished memoir of American journalist, translator, and “dispatriate” Frederika Randall (1948-2020). The excerpt is narrated by her Italian husband, Virgilio.] This is a story about Frances, a fascinating and dear American woman, my companion: about how she came to fall three stories from a balcony in Rome and what you might call the collateral damage of empire she sustained during Cold War times. I met her in New York, back in the early Reagan years. Daniela had just packed up all her things and moved back to Italy with the kids, and...

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Stuart Hall and Marxism

Stuart Hall and Marxism

Posted by | Jul 5, 2021 | |

The following was delivered as a talk at a roundtable on June 30, 2021, organized by the Stuart Hall Foundation and Duke University Press, to mark the publication by Duke of Gregor McLennan’s “Stuart Hall: Selected Writings on Marxism.” The event was moderated by Catherine Hall and also featured Brett St Louis and Angela McRobbie as well as Gregor McLennan.   Gregor McLennan describes Stuart Hall as a mediator. Hall “can best be appreciated,” he says, “as a peerless dialectical mediator… He mediated within Marxism—structuralism/ culturalism; economism/ideologism; class/ nonclass social forces—and he mediated between Marxism and various non- and...

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Opt Out

Opt Out

Posted by | May 26, 2021 | |

Call for submissions: send us your take — whether via poetry or prose — on what it means to opt out. To opt out of the cultural moment, the political order, the favored conventions of language … to opt out of a stifling love affair, or a soul-deadening daily routine … or even to opt out of life itself, or of one’s role in creating new life. What does it mean to opt out? Who is allowed to opt out? What does opting allow for? What freedom is on the other...

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Water Wars: a Podcast with Tom Kruse

Water Wars: a Podcast with Tom Kruse

Posted by | Mar 24, 2021 | , |

On March 14, 2021 editors John McClure and Bruce Robbins interviewed Tom Kruse, a participant in and analyst of the Cochabamba Water Wars of 1999-2000 in Bolivia, about his experiences and reflections on the first but certainly not the last epic struggle over water of the 21st century.   This is Part 1 of the interview....

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