Culture - Dissent Magazine

What’s Left of Macondo?

Ericka Beckman ▪ April 23, 2014

Shaped by Latin America’s uneven and wildly unequal incorporation into the global market, Gabriel García Márquez’s literary project retains an eerie sense of foreboding today.

Poetry and Action: Octavio Paz at 100

Joel Whitney ▪ March 25, 2014

Octavio Paz spoke out against American imperialism in Latin America throughout his career, but his outspoken opposition to Stalinism and revolutionary violence got him smeared as a Reaganite. On the poet’s centenary, a look at his politics and his most comprehensive collection in English.

On Stuart Hall (1932–2014)

Bruce Robbins ▪ February 16, 2014

As Stuart Hall told the story, the New Left began in 1956. In the course of a few early November days, British, French, and Israeli forces responded to Nasser’s closing of the Suez Canal by bombing Cairo and invading Egypt …

The Voice of a Generation Yawns

Rob Horning ▪ Winter 2014

The Another Self Portrait reissue comes as a vindication of the appropriateness of a “great artist” throwing off as much “product” as the market can bear. No longer a cynic for churning out releases, Bob Dylan is widely seen as wise and generous for sharing more.

The Art of Gentrification

Madeleine Schwartz ▪ Winter 2014

When the artist Donald Judd bought his loft at 101 Spring Street in the late 1960s, SoHo was beginning to transform from a “blighted” industrial area to a luxury neighborhood. Today, Judd’s loft is a time capsule of SoHo’s transformation, which has become a model for gentrification around the country.

Over Our Dead Bodies

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen ▪ Winter 2014

What intellectual obituaries reveal about our times. “When the attention to intellectual production goes, so too does our ability to understand the equally fraught process of intellectual reception. And what goes missing is the story of intellectual labor as labor and how that labor has been a force in history.”

A Turbulent Life: On Amiri Baraka

Scott Sherman ▪ Spring 2002

In 2002, Scott Sherman published this essay on Amiri Baraka. “Yet Baraka still has the power to surprise us.”

The Socialite Network

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian ▪ Fall 2013

A Small World is a self-consciously exclusive social network aimed at a certain class of internationals—referred to interchangeably as “global nomads,” “citizens of the world,” or, more frequently, the “global elite.” The site reveals that modern cosmopolitanism has been a largely market-driven phenomenon, designed for capital, not citizens, to become “of the world.”

Hollywood in Revolt?

Willie Osterweil ▪ Fall 2013

As revolt continues to shake the globe, as images of mass protest and riot become the norm on the evening news, they become a part of the global consciousness and, as such, produce a new series of images for Hollywood to attempt to capture. But in putting a flaming White House in every subway station in America, not to mention in dozens of nations abroad, what desires could Hollywood unleash?

Cockblocked by Redistribution: A Pick-up Artist in Denmark

Katie J.M. Baker ▪ Fall 2013

As infamous pick-up artist Roosh himself admits in “Don’t Bang Denmark,” Nordic social democracy doesn’t support his kind.

Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow ▪ Summer 2013

Perhaps climate change had once seemed too large-scale, or too abstract, for the minutely human landscape of fiction. But the threat seems to have become too pressing to ignore, and less abstract, thanks to a nonstop succession of mega-storms and record-shattering temperatures. Several new novels make climate change central to their plot and setting, appropriating time-honored narratives to accord with our new knowledge and fears.