History of Dissent

"SHORT VERSION:

Revolution is brewing, and the radical left is gaining recognition through increased access to the media. The internet has provided an international platform to expose corporate-government corruption and publicize events, demos, and post-action communiqués. The government has historically taken extreme measures to fragment, silence, and even murder activists within radical left movements. Today’s edition of this systematic repression has been called the “Green Scare.” This year began with the exposure of three key government-hired infiltrators that had been deceiving anarchist, earth liberationists, and animal advocates for years. All three had engaged in sexual relationships with the very activists they were building a case against. During this session we will examine the performance of power between the radical left and the corporate-government industrial complex. Specifically, we will examine various forms of political repression and the ways in which infiltrators use their sexuality to deceive.

LONG VERSION:

In this panel, we will explore the relationship between capitalism, the green scare, and political repression. Bringing together a quantitative analysis of direct action activism and a theoretical analysis of performative power, the panel will shed light on a larger discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change. These analyses defend the earth and animal liberation movements (AELM), utilizing a Marxist-Anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-State actors provide powerful critiques of the State-Corporate Industrial Complex. Specifically, the panelists examine how State-sanctioned violence against the AELM represents a return to what Foucault refers to as Monarchical power. The qualitative analysis begins with the movement's history of largely avoiding violence against human life. This history will be used to argue that the movement does not qualify as "terrorist," and will allow for a discussion of the Statecraft concerning the defaming and disruption of these groups.
Paying particular attention to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the rhetoric of the "green scare" has been used to redefine the criminality of actions as "terrorism". This year began with the exposure of three key government-hired infiltrators that had been deceiving earth and animal advocates for years. All three had engaged in sexual relationships with the very activists they were building a case against. The latter half of the panel discussion will focus on the performance of power between the radical left and the corporate-government industrial complex. Specifically, the various forms of political repression, including: the use of grand juries, CMU’s, terrorism enhancements, and the ways in which infiltrators use sexuality. We argue that these repressions represent not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of desperation. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures because they actually fear the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology."

This issue focues on teaching and the Other. It features articles on comic books and gender, underground club culture, vampires, conspiracy theories, A.S. Byatt's stories, and computer games. There is a section of poetry and several review essays and a strong cohort of reviews.

"Does anti-Communism imply rightwing views? Not necessarily, although such an oversimplified judgment is popular. This article looks at three generations of Polish Left (socialist and liberal) intellectuals, and their ideational trajectories towards and away from Soviet Communism. The first generation is that of pre-War leftists, symbolized by the poet Czesław Miłosz. The key to understanding this generation's initial fascination and, later,
disillusionment with Communism is his political/philosophical essay "The Captive Mind". The second generation, which grew up on the wave of the early post-war enthusiasm, is symbolized by the pedagogue and oppositionist Jacek Kuroń. The key book is his The Evil I cause, a re-evaluation of leftist idealism in a Communist reality. The third generation is one who, from the beginning, were influenced by forms of political opposition and who soon became the leaders of anti-Communist (yet still leftwing) dissent, exemplified by Adam Michnik‟s essays. Such a history of "heresy" within the Left is therefore an attempt to
problematize the notion of anti-Communism as the "cardinal folly of our time" and as a reactionary and predominantly conservative ideational standpoint. It also gives a brief overview of the evolution of Polish dissidence."

By using parody and Aesopian strategies of textual resistance, 1950s comic strip writers such as Walt Kelly and Al Capp offered hidden transcripts and built-in alibis for the expression of dissent while other intellectuals and policy makers within the public forum could not. Comic strips inherently question authority. At a historical moment when the public forum was rightfully afraid to air arguments, comic strip artists and writers operated in a subterranean area of the public sphere resilient against the apparatus of the state. During a time when First Amendment rights were questioned, comic strips allowed its writers political cover to make arguments against the establishment, giving Americans a unique chance to examine their fears by re-enforcing rather than tearing apart 1950s values, symbolic patterns, and beliefs. The newspaper comics escaped the worst of the comics book investigations because newspaper comic strips had long since observed their own codes which consisted of several layers of censorship. Censorship, even self-censorship, becomes productive if it gives rise to forms of resistance, which develops out of the censorship practices. This is largely due to the pressure of the censor on the author to develop Aesopean coding in her work.

Encuentro de investigadores destinado al estudio de la teoría de la censura en el siglo XVI. El workshop se propone el análisis del discurso del censor y de su influencia en la teoría poética y en la concepción de la lectura y del libro en la Europa contrarreformista. Las ponencias y debates se ordenan en torno a dos temas capitales: (I) La descripción, catalogación y análisis de los tratados dedicados a la legitimación jurídica, moral, teológica y política de la necesidad de intervenir y controlar la textualidad y la ficción; (II) el estudio del lenguaje y de las metáforas de la censura, así como de su perduración en la cultura europea.

Contributions by Emily Butterworth, Emilio Blanco, Robert Archer, Julian Weiss, Donatella Gagliardi, Giorgio Caravale, Gigliola Fragnito, Marie-Luce Demonet, Roger Chartier, Rosa Navarro, José Augusto Cardoso. Now online in  Depósito Digital de Documents de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

The creation of Kennington Park more than a simple public works project. In fact, it was much more. It was one of many similar efforts in the name of improvement that radically altered the structure of working-class society and politics in Britain. It represents an instance in history when calls for the enhancement of public space functioned as a way to suppress popular dissent. Nineteenth-century struggles over the creation of Kennington Park parallel many of the twenty-first century discussions taking place over the Occupy movements in the United States and Britain. The lessons from the 1800s should resonate with activists and their supporters alike.

Concentrating upon Dennis Cooper’s latest work, The Marbled Swarm: A Novel, a fiendishly complex, experimental tale of murder and cannibalism in Cooper’s adopted home city of Paris, I show that both the subject of the text and its formal architecture are suspended between twin principles of secrecy and concealment. I argue that a consideration of these secret strategies allows us to perceive the implicit connections between Cooper’s writing and communities of queer dissidents and anarchist dissenters who used similar covert techniques in earlier centuries in order to persist in the face of public prosecution. Following an in-depth historical appraisal of these modes of communication, and their provenance in the back-streets of Paris, London and New York, I conclude by considering the contemporary significance of Cooper’s most recent novel.