She should be remembered for the sharp clarity of her social vision, as well as for her gorgeous words.
The tremendous literary achievement of our friend Toni Morrison has rightly been the focus of most of the commentary since her passing. However, her political vision — using language to (...)
One of Sweden’s most important and controversial postwar writers who aimed his fire at European imperialism.
The Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist, who has died aged 87, argued that the racist brutality of European imperialism led to the horrors of the 20th century and survived into the 21st. “We (...)
A Heated Discussion at the GoEast Film Festival
If I could summarize the discussion titled “What Went Wrong in the Nineties” held at the GoEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany, in April, I would draw on the name of the festival itself to call it: “Go West!” Bringing together an eclectic mix (...)
While there have been strides to widen discussions in art history to include issues like gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, the corporate marketing of pricey art-history textbooks to American college students produces materials that glaringly omit and/or deemphasize Marxism as an (...)
The term “critical irrealism,” though present and well-known in the spheres of literary and arts scholarship, is unfamiliar to most. But then, so is living in the world of 2018. It is also alienating and in constant violent flux. Which means perhaps there is something for this critical irrealism (...)
You can find Aretha Franklin’s teenage church recordings online. She was a star if not the main attraction at her father’s Detroit church, where there were plenty of great singers including the pastor himself. We know in hindsight that she would develop her raw talent to become a music icon. What (...)
Filmmaker Ken Loach on populism, the gig economy, and the importance of transnational solidarity in his movies and beyond.
The British film director Ken Loach is one of the most celebrated cinematic voices of our time. A deeply engaged artist and one of a handful of directors to have been (...)
Review of “May the Court Consider Delivering a Guilty Verdict in Accordance with the Dogs’ Law ขอศาลได้พิจารณาพิพากษาลงโทษตามกฎหมา
The missing y
The felicitous treachery of the Thai language makes the word for “law” ever precarious: if kotmaay loses its last letter yo yak, it becomes kotmaa—the rule of dogs. (...)
When Bertolt Brecht died 62 years ago on August 14, the world hardly knew it was witnessing the passing of one of 20th century’s great poets.
Bertolt Brecht the playwright appears to have overshadowed his other artistic identities nearly completely, though, in truth, Brecht wore more creative (...)
Much analysis of modern music focuses on lyrical content, but how can we understand modern musical forms? What relation do they have to the capitalist world in which they’ve developed? To answer these questions Kate Bradley interviewed Mark Abel, author of Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time. (...)
By and large the film industry everywhere is a dedicated supporter of the political establishment; Bollywood, more than a manifestation of the pan-Indian cultural industry, takes the cake.
This has been the case since India’s independence and is not something new. Watch any of Raj Kapoor and (...)
It is rare for a translated work to survive the legacy and celebration of the original work. Yet in the case of the twentieth century Indian subcontinent, such is the case with a celebrated novel, namely Abdullah Hussein’s Udas Naslein, published in 1963. The novel, perhaps for reasons of (...)
The British post Benjamin Zephaniah speaks to Anu Shukla about poetry, policing, the ongoing fight against racism.
Benjamin Zephaniah is still angry. The legendary novelist, actor, playwright, poet and musician has spent a career raging against the racist machine – and he’s not about to stop any (...)
Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen on the self-serving stories the US state tells about the Vietnam War.
“I come here mindful of the past, mindful of our difficult history,” Barack Obama said during a May 2016 visit to Vietnam, “but focused on the future — the prosperity, security, (...)
“The Smiths” singer Morrissey was once a radical icon, but now he’s a mouthpiece for racism and nationalism. Time to get off the stage!
Let me start with a confession – my admiration for Morrissey has at times bordered on the obsessive. For me, growing up in the Thatcher years in the de-industrialising North West go, The Smiths’ frontman was peerless as a male role model – confronting the usual moronic laddishness with a working class intelligence, humour, sensitivity and audacious flair, he was (...)
Colin Revolting recalls how he became a revolutionary in 1980s Britain, and the role in the process played by the music of the Redskins, a band who gained a notable amount of popularity in the 1980s for their blistering, punked-up version of unabashedly radical soul music.
If you type ‘Neither (...)
John Berger’s revolutionary insistence was that our reality could be seen differently, and altered by our intervention.
John Berger by John Christie
John Berger powerfully examined the way we view the world. But as for many people of my generation, who were captivated by his epoch-making (...)
Artist and author John Berger died on January 2, 2017 at his home in Paris. John was one of TNI’s first fellows. We remember him fondly as a kind man with a singular perspective on the world and the presence of a natural performer.
John was best known for his series Ways of Seeing for the BBC, (...)
Andy Merrifield pays tribute to John Berger, who passed away aged 90 on 2 January 2017.
John died yesterday. I’ll remember his voice, his laugh, his charm and generosity. His words. Stripped-down words, mystical and carefully chosen words, earthy words, fierce words. They’ll always grab us, make (...)
Dario Fo died on October 13th, 2016. The playwright, actor artist and all-round provocateur was 90.
THE stone lions that guard the Romanesque cathedral at Modena, in northern Italy, were doubly dear to Dario Fo. As a lover of medieval architecture, he studied and revered the old beasts as art. (...)
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