5LL #373: English, Politics, Parties, Lumumba, Assets
The End of Palestine in English
Rawad Z. Wehbe, Protean
While it may seem frivolous to discuss poetics and aesthetics in the time of genocide, the work of literary studies is more urgent than ever before; it is a means of seeing through the extent of institutional violence and complicity.
The Job
T.J. Clark, London Review of Books
Why in particular is Trump so confident that washing his empire’s dirty linen in public, gloating over genocide, widening his eyes at the thrill of mass murder, is now what can be done, and must be done, if power is to preserve itself?
Partyism Without the Party
Chris Maisano, Dissent
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties.
Complicities
Anton Jäger, New Left Review
Who killed Patrice Lumumba? More than six decades after the first prime minister of an independent Congolese state was put to death by a nocturnal firing squad, his ghost continues to haunt Belgian politics.
The Same Stream Twice
Rob Arcand, n+1
Cultural products are more than ever a class of financialized assets, whose owners are even further removed from artmaking.