Orwell as Propagandist  

At present I’m just an orange that’s been trodden on by a very dirty boot.” “[The BBC’s] atmosphere is something halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly …





South Africa and the American South  

According to a new public opinion poll conducted for the Sunday Times of London, “South African whites are increasingly unhappy with the apartheid system and a majority want the nationalist leader Nelson Mandela freed from prison.” Even as the sound …



A Sharp Critique of Jesse Jackson  

Jesse Jackson is an important figure in American politics and a 1984 presidential candidate who stands ready to repeat that race in 1988. Nonetheless, Jackson is not a credible, legitimate, or desirable leader for black America, argues black Yale political …



An Opera Based on Malcolm X  

When compared to men like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X seems no more than a thorned bud standing in the shadow of sequoias. Given national recognition by television in 1959, Malcolm X was just  beginning to realize …





The War Against Porn–Again  

Having failed at reducing unemployment, reviving the Middle East peace process, stopping the burgeoning national debt and controlling the arms race, the Reagan administration has evidently decided to take on something it can handle: pornography. Last summer, to much fanfare, …



A Critic’s Authority  

Lionel Trilling wrote with a remarkable assurance. Too much assumption of authority can make a critic seem remote or bullying, but Trilling’s essays were never so. His attitude towards his reader was always a genial one, to use a word …







Class & the Culture of Consumption  

Cultural historians, like other historians, are forever in search of transitional periods, moments when historical change occurs so dramatically that long-term developments are encapsulated in almost self-explanatory words and images. U.S. cultural historians locate one such period somewhere in the …



Argentina Today: The Cultural Mood  

Democracy has returned to Argentina against a backdrop of profound changes in international and national life. To cite but a few: the intensification of power-bloc rivalry; revolutionary changes in the technology of information; the realignment of world views; high-tech militarization; …