hydrarchist writes:

"From the Barcelona Review on the great spanish noir writer, recently deceased."

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

The Man and His Work: A Retrospective

Jill Adams

Reviewing: An Olympic Death and The Buenos Aires Quintet

When Manuel Vázquez Montalbán died suddenly last October, the city of
Barcelona went into serious mourning. Hours and hours of television were devoted to his
memory. Many of Spain’s most important literary figures, politicians and journalists
spoke movingly of the man and his work. Montalbán was a highly respected social critic
and political commentator, giving articulate and intelligent voice to the left. He wrote a
weekly column for El Pais and his byline was sought after by the major newspapers
in Europe; his frequent speaking engagements drew large audiences. He was equally well
known for his poetry, plays, essays and articles on food and culture, humorist pieces, and
numerous novels and short stories.

"Call's Postmodern Anarchism"

Edward J. Martin

Reviewing Lewis Call, Postmodern Anarchism

Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 159 pp., $60.00, ISBN 0-7391-0522-1, Publication Date: February 2003

Postmodern Anarchism, by Lewis Call, draws on the
works of several theorists in an attempt to connect
anarchism with postmodernism. Call uses anarchism to
critique liberal notions of language, consciousness,
and rationality, which are inherent in economic and
political power within the capitalist state
organization. Call uses postmodern methods rooted in
anarchist tradition to deconstruct hegemonies of all
sorts, predominantly Marxist and capitalist in nature.
Yet his sharpest attack is leveled against bourgeois
liberalism manifested in "late capitalism," or as
Veblen describes it, "conspicuous consumption."

"Postface to the Complete Text of the Journal Futur Antérieur (1989-98)

Toni Negri

[On 4 November 2003 the following text was published in Italian and French
on the Multitudes website, as a preface to the e-published archive of the
journal Futur Antérieur. The original text of this article can be found at
Multitudes. Translated by Ed Emery.]

What was Futur Antérieur? A major undertaking, ten years of hard work every
week in order to produce four issues per year, along with occasional
supplements. An expansive undertaking. An expansivity that was not only
quantitative but also qualitative. A good journal is like an octopus,
continually reaching out and pulling in the theoretical and historical
happenings in the environment in which it lives. This journal had a soul -- a
passionate soul which tried to absorb everything in the world around it
which offered theoretical interest, a political choice, an ethical
dimension, or simply a joy of life. The soul of a journal is its radical
determination to give meaning to everything it touches, to build it into a
theoretical tendency, to embrace it within a mechanism of practical
activity. Futur Antérieur definitely had a soul. Or rather, many souls.

"NAFTA's Knife: Class Warfare Across the U.S.-Mexico
Border"

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Reviewing David Bacon, The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 348 pages, cloth $27.50.

I once heard a discussion about the first sentences of
books and those sentences that were among the most
famous and most powerful. The opening of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was among the
most popular. David Bacon's first sentence in chapter
one of his book must now rank among the most gripping:
'NAFTA repeatedly plunged a knife into José Castillo's
heart.'

"Twilight of the Neocons:

Richard Perle Has Begun to Panic"

Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke

Reviewing An End to Evil by David Frum and Richard Perle, Random House, $25.95

Since 9/11 a cascade of books purveying instant analysis on the ramifications has hit the bookstores. A deep fault line runs between them. Those with "evil" or "jihad" in the title lie on one side of the divide; those with "empire" or "lies" are found on the other. Their mutually antagonistic readerships snarl at each other across the chasm. So it is with David Frum and Richard Perle's new book An End to Evil: What's Next in the War on Terrorism, in which they reinforce the thesis -- now usually described as neoconservative -- that American interests and values are best pursued with a maximum of military stick and minimum of negotiating carrot. It makes little difference whether the issue is Libya, Iran, or North Korea. The authors believe market-democracy is best delivered on the back of a Tomahawk missile.

Here Now Next: Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt
Therapy

Taylor Stoehr

Reviewed by William Hoynes

The libertarian impetus in modern times has often
taken somewhat peculiar ways of resisting and
countering domination and exploitation.
Psychotherapies provide some interesting examples,
often with striking parallels to earlier heresies
within mainstream religious contexts. Among the
dominant psychologies in mid-twentieth century America
were various behavior controls, usually of reductive
positivist cast and medical dressing, in which
authority figures psychomedically defined and
manipulatively treated "abnormalities" and other
deviations which included much primarily tabooed and
dissident. Leaving aside therapists as associate
jailers for psychiatric wards and military and other
totalitarian institutions, and "crisis" coping and
more overt psychopathologies which therapists mostly
tried to restrain, they were, in the language of half
a century ago, insistently enforcing "conformity" by
inculcating "adjustment." Therapy was often lessons in
subordination.

An anonymous coward writes:

"Open Marxism?"

Tadzio Mueller

Reviewing Holloway, J., Change the World Without Taking Power,
London: Pluto Press 2002.

A spectre is haunting Marxism: the spectre of
anarchism. Anarchists, whether self-described or
called thus by the media, have been reaping most of
the publicity that the radical wing of the
globalisation-critical movement has been able to
generate, and Marxists are both excited and dismayed
by this. Excited, because for the first time in many
years there is a recognisable anti-capitalist protest
movement on the streets of advanced capitalist
countries; dismayed, because this relative resurgence
of anti-capitalist radicalism has not been accompanied
by a resurgence of Marxism.

"Did Somebody Say Slavoj?"

Carlos Pessoa

Reviewing Slavoj Zizek, Did somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion. London: Verso, 2002.

Slavoj Zizek has become known for writing on the 'postmodern condition' and its implication for a radical political project. Although Zizek's Lacanian analysis (with a Hegelian impulse) can intimidate certain readers, his comical and entertaining writing enables a reading of key contemporary political issues. Although taking a critical stand to postmodern thought, I would argue there are postmodern aspects in Zizek's work that in the end make it postmodern radical chic.

"Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory"

John-Michael Bodi, H-Net

Reviewing Marxism against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, Dave Hill, Peter McLaren, Mike Cole, and Glenn Rikowski, eds.
Revised
edition. Lanham and New York: Lexington Books, 2002. x + 341 pp.
Notes, bibliography, index. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-7391-0345-8;
$34.95 (paper), ISBN 0-7391-0346-6.

It is always a uniquely rewarding experience to read current ideas
about philosophy and the human condition especially as they relate
to education as it is affected by capitalism. Most readers will
appreciate this book for its attempts to shed light on the evolution
of thought past postmodernism although the connections to education
are few.

O.K. writes

"A Surrealist Phone Book"

Oliver Katz

Reviewing Franklin Rosemont's

An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers

Chicago: Black Swan Press, 2003. Illustrated with drawings by Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas. Available through Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1740 West Greenleaf Avenue, Chicago, IL 60626.

In the seldom-seen late-Cold War thriller "Miracle Mile," (1989), a young man in Los Angeles answers a ringing telephone in a booth out of pure serendipity on an empty street at 3 AM. The call turns out to be from a frantic USAF technician employed at some remote Midwestern missile silo. The caller announces that he’s just launched his thermonuclear payload at an enemy state, and that an apocalyptic retaliatory missile strike directed at the US will come with full force in about an hour. If I remember correctly, the young man who answered the phone responds to this awful news by taking his girlfriend on a late-night date to the La Brea tar pits.