Archive for category: Features

The Failures of Atmospheric Commodification

The Failures of Atmospheric Commodification

“The rush to make profits out of carbon-fixing engenders another kind of colonialism.” Introduction We’re all familiar with the ongoing planetary biocrisis. Global temperatures are predicted to rise by 4°C by 2100, with recent research warning of a 6°C rise by 2100, a far cry from the 2°C target deemed […]

Gendered Antagonisms

Gendered Antagonisms

All expressions of gender non-conformity are antagonistic, especially trans femininity. Gender antagonisms aren’t always brash. It’s defiant to take up physical space as a woman or a femme; it’s confrontational to wear nail polish as a man or a masc. Daily antagonisms are both empowering and tend to increase vulnerability. […]

We Don’t Share Anything

We Don’t Share Anything

Critiquing Corbyn: capitalism isn’t about sharing There was much hype over Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign to lead the Labour Party. What has been largely absent from the debate is an evaluation of Corbyn’s economic ideas and assumptions. In The Economy in 2020, Corbyn set out what his economic policies will […]

Education Not Surveillance

Education Not Surveillance

New duties, flawed concepts On 1 July 2015, a new legal duty was placed on schools and early years and childcare providers to have ‘due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. The revised statutory guidance stipulates that ‘being drawn into terrorism includes not just […]

Reparatory Justice

Reparatory Justice

PARCOE is a grassroots alliance working in Europe to amplify the voices of Afrikan Communities of Reparations Interest all over the world. For us in PARCOE, there are spatial dimensions to reparatory justice for people of Afrikan heritage. According to political geographer Edward Soja, ‘spatial (in)justice refers to an intentional […]

The Lure of ‘Frozen’ Racism

The Lure of ‘Frozen’ Racism

“I know the whole House will want to join me in marking Holocaust Memorial Day. It is right our whole country should stand together to remember the darkest hour of humanity. Last year, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I said we would build a striking national […]

Afro-pessimism & the End of Redemption

Afro-pessimism & the End of Redemption

The expanding field of Afro-pessimism theorises the structural relation between Blackness and Humanity as an irreconcilable encounter, an antagonism. One cannot know Blackness as distinct from slavery, for there is no Black temporality which is antecedent to the temporality of the Black slave. Civil society has a perverse and parasitic […]

Fighting Fascism in Florence

Fighting Fascism in Florence

The radical left in Italy is currently finding its feet after waves of mobilisation followed by harsh police and judicial repression. Having given birth after fascism to the largest Communist Party in postwar Western Europe, and in parallel the greatest repression of communists during the so-called strategia della tensione (strategy […]

On Campaign Zero

On Campaign Zero

In August 2015, National Public Radio (NPR) – a partially state-funded national American broadcaster – anointed a handful of activists to speak as leaders of #BlackLivesMatter, and offered them a platform to release a set of policy recommendations that claim to address the issue of police violence. The stated goals […]

PROVO, 1965-1967

PROVO, 1965-1967

The Amsterdam-based counterculture movement, Provo, first emerged in the city’s Spui square in 1965 where artist and magician Robert Jasper Grootveld held his ritualistic “happenings” in, as always, a pro-pot, anti-tobacco and advertising-free setting. Provo began in Amsterdam but it later spread to other cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, […]