Recording Surface

I’ve uploaded an article I wrote a few months ago on the politics of the 2006 protests in the United States, primarily, after the initial passage of HR 4437, the hardass immigration legislation. It was was not accepted for publication — boo hoo — but reading over it now, I’m not surprised: bad writing and inadequately developed ideas, which befits a piece I basically wrote in a day. But I think I’m interested in reworking it, so any comments or suggestions of outlets that might be interested would be very much appreciated. If you’d rather have a pdf, email me (there’s an address on the right-hand side if you need it) and I’ll happily send you a copy. Again, comments and critiques welcome.

The postwar expansion of the welfare state and of social guarantees — including access to higher education — can no more be ascribed to the era’s high level of taxation than it can to the state’s unilateral beneficence. (more…)

From We Want Everything, a blog of the occupation of the University of California–Santa Cruz: (more…)

Rhizomes has published the essay on The Wire, Omar Little, and neoliberalism . The synopses part at the beginning probably goes on a little long, but it picks up steam after that, methinks.

It’s a little strange to see something you wrote a year ago finally hit print.

Keith Flett, SWPer and advocate for rights for the bearded, in a letter to the Guardian (via):

All those involved in the Baby Peter case were inadequate and unpleasant individuals. None of that, however, really explains why they lived lives of such chaos. The White Hart Lane area, where they lived, has among the highest unemployment rates in London and high rates of poverty and teenage pregnancy. With labour comes dignity and one wonders, if all three had had regular employment, whether the outcome would have been quite the same.

In many ways, The Wire’s Omar Little is a reprise of an old type of movie hero, one from the 1940s, especially noir and detective movies of that era — the silver-tounged and deceptively intelligent characters usually played by actors like Bogart and Mitchum. (more…)

Doesn’t it seem like kids’ movies, or those movies marketed as kids’ movies, are the only ones really interested in depicting and scrutinizing what it means to work? (more…)

It is a well-known fact that the worst victims of the recent exacerbation of the international division of labor are women. They are the true surplus army of labor in the current conjuncture. (more…)