‘One of the implications of “The Edge of Democracy” is that as Lula and the Workers’ Party lost touch with the mass movement that brought them to power and mastered the levers of the political system, they made themselves vulnerable to popular anger on the right. Corruption and back room dealing were longstanding norms of Brazilian governance that the party didn’t do much to challenge.’
“
Posted in film, hubris, melancholy, Nota Bene, revolt, the Left, tragic politics
Tagged Brazil
‘Hans Werner Henze’s “El Cimarrón” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘
“The exhibition Revolutionary Generation: French Drawings (1770-1815) from the Fabre Museum illustrates how, as the Rococo movement went out of fashion, France’s insurrectionist artists drew on ancient Greek and Roman art for inspiration.”
Posted in fine arts, revolution
Tagged Classicism, David, French Revolution
“how to teach about insurrections and revolution at a time when the world is headed toward an environmental-social catastrophe unless we manage to generate truly revolutionary changes.”
“August 21, 1968 at the Czech Center New York features 20 images of dynamic photo-reportage capturing the first day of the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia.”
The plot of the fiery libretto of the grand opera The Mute Girl of Portici by the French composer Daniel Auber revolves around the Neapolitan revolts of 1647.
Posted in Blog, music, revolution
A documentary film-testimony of struggles for autonomy in Greece, letting those who are directly engaged in these struggles speak for themselves.
Posted in anarchism, Blog, crisis, film, fraternity, resistance, the common
Tagged Greece
“We learn not simply what Trump tells us about Shakespeare but what Shakespeare tells us about Trump. Illuminating scene after scene, Greenblatt is especially fine on the mechanisms of tyranny.”
“This paper explores in what ways creative protest could deepen democracy. I argue that creative political protest nurtures democracy by generating a peaceful culture of resistance and by providing a peaceful way of responding to politics of intolerance and polarization.”
