Against Discouragement - HOWARD ZINN Interviewed by David Barsamian
Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, is perhaps this country's premier radical historian. He was born in Brooklyn in 1922. His parents, poor immigrants, were constantly moving to ...
Further Reflections on Violence By Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
When confronted by the usual line of questioning about the ‘totalitarian’ potential of universal truths, I’m often reminded of the following joke: a group of tourists go on holidays ...
Sri Lanka’s Common Future by Pradeep Jeganathan.
“Every prospect pleases, but only man is vile” goes the racist, colonial refrain, which is still the dominant ‘international’ framing of ‘news’ of the coveted pear...
Gayatri Spivak, Interviwed by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera: At this point in your life, in your career, how would you cast yourself? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: I have always had great difficulty casting myself, surely it is ot...
Socialism of the 21st Century
Companeros and Companeras: Permit me to bring you the most affectionate and fraternal greetings from our president Evo Morales. He has followed this continental gathering step by step, has followed yo...
THE LAWYERS AND THE OLD GRANITE BLOCK
First Historical Note by way of Prologue 'Those who sow should eat' [Jo kheray so khai] - this was the slogan upon which the radical and revered Sufi poet Shah Inayat set up, in the 18th cent...
Israel’s Bankrupt Politics
To this historian of empire, the Israeli onslaught on the captive Palestinians of Gaza strikingly recalls the tactics of colonial counterinsurgency, as recent research by Laleh Khalili at SOAS unde...
‘Scoundrel times’: Paris, Baghdad, Lahore...Interview with TARIQ ALI
Qalandar Bux Memon and Jacopo Moroni in conversation with Tariq Ali: Jacopo Moroni – Mr. Ali, we would like to begin by ...
Janam's Commitments
On January 4, 1989, Jana Natya Manch (Janam) convened at Jhandapur village, on the outskirts of Delhi, to complete an interrupted play. Three days before, Janam began to perform thei...
To be or not to be is not the question – On Beckett’s Film
We never know self-realization. We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky. (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet) Samuel Beckett wrote just once for the cinema.&n...
LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT MASTERS.
AN INTERVIEW WITH SLAVOJ zIZEK BY OSCAR GUARDIOLA-RIVERA London, November-December 2007 1. GETTING RID OF THE BIG OTHER. OGR: It seems as if, in the end, your philo...
Human Beings and (Other) Animals
Can philosophy make room for animals? Perhaps that is the only question I want to ask in this paper. My worry is that the language of philosophy has kept us in a cage as far as animals are concerned...
My country, Left or Right (from theSamosa.co.uk)
Political hand-wringing over the ethnicity of Britain’s babies simple reveals the pervasiveness of racist attitudes Good news: the population is stabilising. The people of Britain ar...
The Violent State
Whose headless body is this Whose scarlet shroud Whose torn and wounded cloak Whose broken voice? (1) I Meditations on violence The macho encounte...
Violent Thoughts About Slavoj Zizek
Slavoj Zizek has been telling lies about me. He attacked a recent book of mine, Infinitely Demanding, in the London Review of Books.[1] Since then, things have gone from ba...
Beyond the Page - Hammad Nasar on Contemporary Pakistani Art
Jan. 12, 2008 From issue 10 of Naked Punch Review Juliana Cerqueira Leite: Peter Weibel has described the curator as a 'producer' ...
"Creating Something Artful": Interview with Richard Shusterman
From Naked Punch 05.Tully Rector: Much of your work focuses on the idea of self-fashioning, the creation and shaping of oneself, as askesis. What constitutes askesis for you? Richard Shusterman: It&r...
DREAMING BETWEEN THE FRAMES
From Naked Punch: 04WW: I’ll do my best to answer them. Let’s see… Naked Punch: You've written that "the act of filming is a heroic act", because "the camera is ...
Nostalghia unto Death
FROM NP COMMUNARD: Journal of Critical Globalisation www.criticalglobalisation.com The famous Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky once described the experience of exile for a...
Blinded by race
We imagine our life to be lived through a singular journey in which we are striving for a meaningful existence. The start of this journey is predicated on the foundational idea that there is a basic b...
'Between Art and Life': NP Interview with Arthur Danto
From Naked Punch 03, Summer, 2005. NP: We’re familiar with the discontinuity between art produced before, say, the 14th century, and art produced after that period, w...
On Frantz Fanon
Forward to Black Skin, White Masks By Zia Sardar. Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon, Pluto, London, 2008http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/main.pl I think it would be...
'The Politics of Aesthetics': Jacques Rancière Interviewed by Nicolas Viei...
From issue: 10.Translation by Anna PregerArt and politics N.V.: Your thought mainly revolves around mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, around a great divide defining positions and shares, determi...
Running down the wrong road
Vijay Prashad considers the regional alternative to troop escalation in Afghanistan, and suggests its neighbours are ready to take on the burden of stabilising the country - but only if the US ...
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists?
In Part 1 of this article we argued that Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou's account of the foundation of Communist universalism in the event of Christianity signals a number of in...
Bad Sufi
The Bad Sufi A look at the practise of Contemporary Sufism in Pakistan. It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong. Sufism and Wahhabism, in ...
Vortex in Bengal.
Violence in West Bengal's western districts has reached crisis proportions. Each day, one or more cadre member or sympathizer of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] is killed either by Ma...
Caught in Justin Lieberman’s Web: A critique, or homage, or some other t...
Something strange happened after interviewing artist Justin Lieberman for his latest exhibition, Salto Mortale, at the Bernier Eliades Gallery in Athens, Greece; I suffered a crippling ca...
British terror trial: UK collusion with Musharraf’s dictatorship
The London trial of Baloch human rights activists on trumped up terrorism charges revealed high level collusion between the British government and the dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. Prime Ministe...
Chhattisgarh: The Future of India?
NANDINI SUNDAR Chhattisgarh: The Future of India? Interviewed by David Barsamian New Delhi, India 29 November 2009 Nandini Sundar is a professor of sociology at the Delhi Sch...
Report on the Anti-Cuts Campaign at the University of Sussex
Report on the Anti-Cuts Campaign at the University of Sussex Images: Catarina Neto Carvalho This report is for information. &nbs...
Come back to Pleasure
Despite his image as the sober genius of high modernism, T.S. Eliot often speaks of art as essentially amusement. The poet, says Eliot, "would like to be something of a popul...
The War on Pakistanis
The War on Pakistanisby Qalandar MemonWhen empires move in on a country, they do not aim to salvage peoplefrom oppressive power structures of the native country, but to furthertheir own interests. Pak...
'Islam, Colonialism, and Resistance' - Zia Sardar
Zia Sardar Interviewed by Bux Qalandar Memon (forth-coming in NP 14 - Summer 2010). 1 - In your recent book Balti Britain you recall racist encounters that you had as a child growing...
Naked Punch sponsors Philosophy and Music Festival Of Hay
Naked Punch is a proud sponsor Philosophy and Music Festival Of Hay. 28th May - 6th June The HowTheLightGetsIn Philosophy and Music Festival at Hay program...
The Athens December Events (Ta nea dekembriana or honouring the name)
(PART OF OUR DOSSIER ON GREEK RIOTS OF 2008: FROM NP 12) Few events in recent Greek history have created such an avalanche of hermeneutical ingenuity and analytical perspicacity as ...
The New American Imperialism
Interviewed by David Barsamian MIT, Cambridge, MA 2 April 2010(Article Courtesy of Alternative Radio : www.alternativeradio.org)One of the themes that Howard Zinn tried to addre...
Aid is not a substitute for politics : unmaking Gaza as a humanitarian casu...
“The occupied territories have the dubious distinction of having become a failed state before even becoming a state.” (International Crisis Group, 2007). The international spotlight is ba...
Beirut Diary
Beirut Diary, April 2010 Walking into Beirut this spring was like walking into history. Not ancient history, necessarily, but the history of the city which is the history ...
No Catharsis in Sight: The Greek crisis revisited
Since the beginning of the year, Greeks have been pinching themselves. All of a sudden, Greece became front page news every day, everywhere. Just like 2008 made Lehman Brothers a household name, 201...
Israel’s Disease, and the Rising Kites.
On a feverishly hot day in August 2009, I walked the streets of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem I'd waited so long to see. That day, I met families and people whose lives touched my ow...
Interview with Felix Vogel, curator of the 4th Bucharest Biennale
After a half hour discussion with Felix Vogel, curator of the 4th Bucharest Biennale Handlung: On Producing Possibilities, I quickly forget how old he is – probably a good thing consider...
A Cypriot’s Problem, or How Not to Deal with Existential Anxiety
A Cypriot’s Problem, or How Not to Deal with Existential Anxiety What’s our problem? What’s in a problem? There is an old joke ...
Landscapes of the Green Line of Cyprus: Healing the Rift.
Landscapes of the Green Line of Cyprus: Healing the Rift. From a deep wound to a beautiful scar. The UN controlled Gree...
Mujeres Creando: rebellion, it’s your fault i’ll be happy
(from our communards at the Commune: http://thecommune.wordpress.com/) Translation of an article by Helen Álvarez Virreira about the Bolivian anarchist feminis...
Class struggle for Democracy in Thailand
Anyone who supports Democracy or Social Justice would have little difficulty in choosing sides in the current class war being conducted in Thailand. On one side we have th...
The Withered State
Disaster is the only news of the day. It was providential that a sinkhole has opened up in Guatemala. It is 100-feet deep with a circular chasm of 66 feet. An act of nature, it is felt...
Contribute to Naked Punch On-line
'Naked Punch Review is looking for fresh voices in poetry, art and film criticism, philosophy and anything else that you think may interest our readers. We would welcome your submission for ...
Listening To Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial And Celebration
Listening To Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial And Celebration A lecture in Istanbul on January 18, 2008, to commemorate the first anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink, Editor...
The survival of Art in an image-saturated era
The survival of Art in an image-saturated era Introduction The advent of Photography and Film undoubtedly changed our perception of Art forever. What was once static represen...
Those Struggling for a Different Pakistan
I. Prologue Pakistan is in a state of crisis. The history of Pakistan, looked at from a human perspective, has been a perpetual crisis since its birth. The ruling elite have op...
The Trouble with House Arrest
One problem with house arrest is that you never quite know who’s in-charge. Or what you’ve been charged with. Or how the situation will be resolved. Between prisoner and jailor, wh...
Interview with film-maker Michal Kosakowski
Naked Punch Contributing Editor and founder of Shoppinghour magazine Peter Eramian interviews Michal Kosakowski. Peter: Three movies that I’d like to discuss: ...
Arthur Danto - Interviewed by Zoe Sutherland
Zoe: Professor Danto, first of all I would like to say that it is a great pleasure to be here in New York, interviewing you for Naked Punch. I’m happy to see that you have a lot of exc...
Poem: The Steps (Dossier Brighton Poetry)
THE STEPS After Paul Valéry You are not the clutch of silence, placed gently against the blessed, a...
A Persisting Format: Bienials and Bi-annuals
Giancarlo Hannud is an art historian based in São Paulo and part of the curatorial team of the 28th Bienal de São Paulo: In Living Contact. ...
CRUNCH 2010: Line-up Announced
Naked Punch is one of the sponsors of CRUNCH 2010, so we thought we would tell you what is planned for this years Art Festival at Hay. ...
Poem: No ode to door-to-door strategies
No ode to door-to-door strategies The door-to-door salesmen In their cheap suits Their evange...
UK Students Protest: Report 01.
I arrived at the tail end of the ‘peaceful’ part of the demo outside parliament and made my way pretty much immediately down to Millbank. When I got to the Tory HQ, the people who had br...
Naked Punch Statement of Support For Protesters Against 'Austerity Measures...
We stand in firm solidarity with those taking action, both nationally and internationally – students, lecturers, workers and anarchists - in the fight against the so-called &l...
Creative subversions: a politics beyond representation in the UK
Creative subversions: a politics beyond representation in the UK Creative subversions: a politics beyond representation in the UK By Charlotte Lattimer, Christopher Collier, Ja...
Two Poems: Quetzalcoatl Blues; The Enemy Within
Quetzalcoatl blues (Montevideo, Oct 16th, 2010) I´m like Quetzalcoatl without the feathers A snake that bites Nobody but itself Pleasure ...
Two Underdogs and the reconstruction of Gaga
Consuming iconographic material via general media, one is often overwhelmed with the challenge of making meaning within the margins of celebrated personification. Messages are charmingly pac...
Barter Economy at Naked Punch: Bater a Chicken for a Subscription
We are starting to barter at Naked Punch. If you want a copy of NP but don't want/have money or care to use money we are now accepting barter. You may consider barte...
Born Here: Interview with Dam (Hip-Hop group)
DAM is a Palestinian hiphop band comprised of a trio from Lod. Lod is a mixed Arab-Jewish town, about 20 km from Jerusalem. The band members come from a neighbourhood that has a history of drug abus...
The Naked Punch Blog
Click here to link to the Naked Punch blog. (the url is: http://thecriticalattitude.wordpress.com/) Titled after Bertolt Brecht's poem: The Critical Attitude. &nb...
Short Story: THE SUITCASE
THE SUITCASE In the course of our relationship we spent three weekends away, burnt down forty-seven aromatic candles, enjoyed sex two hundred and twelve times, failed to enjoy sex...
The Decembrists - On the UK Student Protests
[Tariqali.org] A friend in France, watching the London student demos on an English website, emails ". . . unlike France, there's no tribal, institutionalised memory of stru...
Diary Of An Egyptian Revolutionary
Tuesday, January 25 Unbelievable. Totally peaceful demonstrations, unprecendented and "spontaneous", throughout Cairo,not just in the downtown area, that continued in their various neighb...
Diary Of An Egyptian Revolutionary: Liberated Tahrir is Occupied Again
Liberated Tahrir is Occupied Again Sunday, February 13 What began in Cairo on January 25 after Friday prayers – the liberation and subsequent occupation of Tahrir Square by anti-gove...
“The Oppressed Have No Obligation to Follow the Rules of the Game…”
“The Oppressed Have No Obligation to Follow the Rules of the Game…” Interview with Ashis Nandy. Prof Ashis Nandy is a well known social thinker and soc...
Diary Of An Egyptian Revolutionary: The Counter-Revolution
Sign: “The people who produce half a revolution, dig their own grave” February 24, 2011 Many groups in Egypt are now working for political change – progressive an...
Interview of a Greek Rebel
Anonymous: Philosophy Student, Male, 32 Are you an anarchist? I am not an anarchist, but I am an educated person who won’t take it anymore. The anarchis...
Film Review: Budrus
“We don’t have time for wars. We want to raise our kids in peace” – Ayed Morrar An a...
Javier Sicilia's Open Letter to Mexico's Politicians and Criminals
Translated from Proceso by Narco News April 4, 2011 The brutal assassination of my son, Juan Francisco, of Julio César Romero Jaime, of Luis Antonio Romero Jaime, and of Gab...
United States of the Mind
I wake to the newsof Egyptian unreston calls for freedomand democracy The tid bits of awarenessfall like liesAbout how the American presidentis waking a thin line -to support "our friend...
Palestine in the struggle against Imperialism: An interview with Lisa Tarak...
Lisa Taraki interviewed by Sunaina Maira. Lisa Taraki is a sociologist at Birzeit University in Palestine. In addition to her academic work on aspects of Palestinian society, politics and...
Interview of a Greek Rebel II
Are you an anarchist? No. Don’t be addicted to words; some people have an addiction to words because they need to belong somewhere. Some people see being an anarchist as a “professi...
Socialized Media?
Social networks and online media have become such an integrated part of our existence it is difficult to imagine what the political landscape would look like today in their absence.&nb...
Poem - Untitled
he lik...
Pakistan’s neo-colonial rule in Balochistan
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is urging the complete demilitarisation of occupied Balochistan, as a precondition for a negotiated political settlement to end six decades of ...
Untitled
i know him, almost by heart better than the back of my hand which has never interested me memorised his face, i could carve it into the air, at will but we could not 'se...
Revolution in Egypt: Beyond the ‘Alternative’
Perhaps the most difficult, most nagging question that haunts us at the brink of an uprising, is the question of the alternative. We yearn for an alternative world, yet in the fear of not ha...
Faisalabad Power Loom Workers Case – A Miscarriage of Justice
Over 5000 people attended a jalsa in Faisalabad on Saturday to denounce the judgement by the anti-terrorist court that sentenced six power loom workers to 99 years each for demanding the imple...
Journalism and Occupation in Kashmir
(Article first published by The Kashmir Walla)For obvious reasons freedom of the press in Kashmir is limited and constrained. Military occupation with its attendant curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, s...