Trans Liberation Teach-in, Frankfurt

 October 17, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Event Description The political and cultural Left, which have stood for increasing the scope of freedom, have historically shifted positons on issues of gender and sexuality. For instance, where once the Left challenged gender and family norms in society, there has been a turn to advocation participation in predominant institutions, for instance in legal reforms and the medical industry: there has been some conflict in LGBTQ circles over the politcs of the trans identity, whether it should be considered a subjective development or an objective condition, and further if it should be considered at all by the Left. [Read More]
LGBTQ  Transgender  Trans Liberation  identity  identity politics  Capitalism  Gender  Sexuality  Trans 

Five questions to the student Left

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AN INTERVIEW WITH SDS MEMBER Rachel Haut published in the September issue of this publication provoked widespread comment in radical circles.1 We welcome the discussion but worry that it remains ensconced within the sterile jargon and petty antinomies of the actually-existing-Left. More fundamental questions exist than, say, the position of sectarian groups within the SDS – questions that unsettle the comfortable assumptions of radical politics. There’s a temptation to think such of questioning as an irrelevant, academic obstruction to real action. [Read More]
Anti-war  Capitalism  Class  Identity  Ideology  Imperialism  Movement  New SDS  Organization  Politics  Racism  Radicals  Reflections  Society  Students  Transformation 

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

 December 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]
1930s  Anti-globalization  Capitalism  Co-optation  Commodity form  Communist party  Culture  De-radicalization  Democratic  Economics  Emancipation  Emancipatory  Equivalential  Ernesto Laclau  Feminism  Freedom  Hegemony  History  Identity  Industrial  Institutionalization  Italy  Labor  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Movements  Participation  Particularity  Plurality  Politics  Popular  Production  Progressive  Proletarian  Radical  Reification  Revolution  Surplus value  Theory  Union  Universality  Workers  Working class  WWII 

Taking issue with identity

The politics of anti-gentrification

 November 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

The perception of gentrification in Chicago mirrors would-be progressive groups’ social imaginations and the heterogeneity of their goals. Gentrification is the reconstitution of a neighborhood which occurs when lower-income areas with lower land value are re-developed with higher-value housing into a decidedly wealthier neighborhood. During this process the class-composition and character of the neighborhood is changed; those already living in the neighborhood cannot sustain the rise in property taxes and must move elsewhere. [Read More]
Anti-gentrification  Artists  Capitalism  Chicago  Class  Community  Emancipation  Gentrification  Housing  Identity  Income  Movements  Neighborhood  Political  Politics  Poverty  Progressive  Race  Reform  Social  Socioeconomic  Urban renewal  Value