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Marc James Léger

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Marc James Léger is an independent scholar living in Montreal. He blogs at https://legermj.typepad.com/blog/. His essays in cultural theory have been published in such places as Afterimage, Art Journal, Art Papers, C Magazine, Esse, Etc, FUSE, Inter, Parachute, Public, Creative Industries Journal, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Left Curve, Monthly Review, Reviews in Cultural Theory, Topia, RACAR, Radical Criminology and Third Text. He is author of Brave New Avant Garde (Zero Books, 2012), The Neoliberal Undead (Zero Books, 2013), Drive In Cinema: Essays on Film, Theory and Politics (Intellect, 2015), Don't Network: The Avant Garde after Networks (Minor Compositions, 2018), Vanguardia: Socially Engaged Art and Theory (Manchester UP, 2019); editor of Bruce Barber's collected essays and interviews in Performance, [Performance] and Performers (YYZBOOKS, 2007) and in Littoral Art and Communicative Action (Common Ground, 2013); editor of Culture and Contestation in the New Century (Intellect, 2011). The Idea of the Avant Garde - And What It Means Today (Manchester University Press and Left Curve, 2014), The Idea of the Avant Garde - And What It Means Today, Volume 2 (Intellect, 2019); co-author with David Tomas and Rosika Desnoyers of Millet Matrix: Contemporary Art, Collaboration, Curatorial Praxis (On Curating, 2015), and co-editor with David Tomas of Zapantera Negra: An Artistic Encounter Between Black Panthers and Zapatistas (Common Notions, 2016). His recent books are Bernie Bros Gone Woke: Class, Identity, Neoliberalism (Brill, 2022) and Too Black to Fail: The Obama Portraits and the Politics of Post-Representation (Red Quill, 2022).

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Papers by Marc James Léger

Touring the Ideological Landscape: Ottawa's Peacekeeping Monument

Written for an undergraduate course given by David Tomas and published in 1995 in the catalogue f... more

Introduction to Class Struggle and Identity Politics: A Guide

Editorial: The Struggle Before Us

Introduction to Special Issue of the journal Art & the Public Sphere, 'The Struggle Before Us', ... more

The grey matter of decolonial activism, or, socially engaged art as professional-managerial class

Written for the FEINARTS research project in 2022 and published in the 2024 special issue of Art ... more

Lenin in Bakhmut

Contribution to the anthology 'The Heritage We (Don't) Renounce,' produced on the anniversary of ... more Contribution to the anthology 'The Heritage We (Don't) Renounce,' produced on the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin. Although a valuable and important compendium, there are some entries of a dubious quality. The book review in Review of African Political Economy is ant-Trotskyist without rationale.

Political Pragmatists

Contribution to Afterimage 50th anniversary issue (2023) on "Afterimage essays that influenced yo... more

The Use and Abuse of Class Reductionism for the Left

Published in Cultural Logic (Vol.25, 2021) in January 2023. Also included in Léger, ed. Identity ... more

Welcome to the Cultural Goodwill Revolution: On Class Composition in the Age of Classless Struggle

2009 class analysis of culture that focuses on the petty-bourgeoisie and PMC a few years before i... more

Introduction to Identity Trumps Socialism: The Class and Identity Debate after Neoliberalism

Essays by Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Zizek, Bruno Bosteels, Vivek Chibber, Barbara Fo... more

Unknown Knowledge: Richard Hamilton's Last Works

Published in Culture Matters, June 2016

Ecce Homo! Occupy God?

In a recent online article written for Roar magazine, the Halifax-based activist and scholar Max ... more In a recent online article written for Roar magazine, the Halifax-based activist and scholar Max Haiven defines the concept of the commons in terms of grassroots democracy, horizontalism, sustainable reciprocity, community-level decision-making and radical autonomy. 1 What is at issue in this article is not so much what he says about the need to replace state sovereignty with commons, but the way that individuals and individualism figure in his discussion. Whereas most Marxists would agree on the question of the withering of the state, and on the socialist critique of bourgeois ideology, not all Marxists would agree with the anti-humanist and postmodern presuppositions that are at play the immanentist critique of concepts like autonomy or sovereignty. Haiven's article is typical of the tendency of social movement activists to dismiss the category of the individual that for previous generations was essential to Freudo-Marxism, but that today, after the influence of discourse theory, has seemingly disappeared, as Michel Foucault once said, like a face in the sand at the edge of the sea. I contrast Haiven's critique of individualism to the ideas of the Not An Alternative collective, an activist group for whom individualism is also a problem, but where, in contrast, psychoanalytic concepts are adopted and made use of in their Occupy strategies. Brushing up against liberal ideology, Haiven's text replaces the notion of "the public" and "counterpublics" with that of the commons. He challenges the idea of the individual as an Enlightenment concept that presupposes the public as its counterpart. The principle of egalitarian reciprocity that underwrites the commons involves, he says, "rich reciprocity, inter-reliance and the connections between communal and individual responsibility and autonomy." 2 He takes this beyond the idea of human rights, made in our capitalist world into a notion of the "irreducible and self-contained, contract-making individual," which he decries as the source of political and economic power-the liberal social contract writ small. 3 We must deconstruct this politics of white, male property owners-a "lethal fantasy," he says, since none of us are self-sufficient monads. 4 Instead, we "rely on community, collaboration, cooperation and commons." 5 He writes: "Our powers have been turned against us, to the point where we are at risk of undermining the network ecology of collaborative life that actually sustains us. Ecce Homo! This is what comes of the fetishization of the individual!" 6 Woe to all would-be saviours! Further, the individual, according to Haiven, "is a dangerous but intoxicating fiction," a "political box" that we must deconstruct so that we can build commons. 7 Since privacy implies private property regimes, as opposed to creative commons, neither are people or even the objects they make fully free, and so we must wake up from the dream of complete liberation from community, responsibility and accountability. Whatever social structures we have, he says, they should be used to build commons-instruggle: human rights beyond human rights transformed into "rights to the commons" of education, health, material abundance, lifeways, migration, and the freedom to "practice one's identity and body and mind and sexuality as one chooses." 8 Haiven's article contrasts interestingly with another text published in Roar magazine: "Occupy the Party: The Sanders Campaign as a Site of Struggle," written by the New York-based art collective Not An Alternative (NAA), a group comprised of core members Beka Economopoulos, Jason Jones and political theorist Jodi Dean. 9 Beka Economopulos was recently depicted on the news show Democracy Now! She was participating in a campaign in which supporters of Democratic Party nominee Bernie Sanders had gathered in Zuccotti Park to telephone voters in the states of Illinois, Florida and Ohio and encourage them to vote for Bernie. 10 I myself endorse the Sanders campaign and encourage people to use the hashtags: #hillarysowallstreet, #killarywarhawk and #bernienumnum.

Exhibition Review: David Tomas, Consigned for Auction

2014 review in Journal of Curatorial Studies

Neocolonial Parapraxis

2012 Interview with David Tomas concerning his exhibition, Live rightly, die, die… based on Josep... more

Name Changer: 2013 Interview with Janez Janša

Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša

Book Review: Petra Rethman et al, eds., Cultural Autonomy

2012 review in TOPIA

Yearbox PDF for Chairman Maciunas

United Colours of the UAAC: More on the Politics of Diversity in Canada

Effects of diversity mandates and trends on research methods, as seen in presentations given at t... more

Introduction to Culture and Contestation in the New Century

This book was intended as a post-postmodern rejoinder to Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic. It expl... more This book was intended as a post-postmodern rejoinder to Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic. It explores questions of cultural production, creative labour, class struggle and oppositionality in the new century. Originally titled "Spleen: Institutions of Cultural Production," it was also meant to identify the role of PMC bourgeois bohemianism in cultural administration. It has chapters by Rosalyn Deutsche, Gregory Sholette, BAVO, Angela McRobbie, Gerald Raunig, Aras Ozgun, Critical Art Ensemble, Mathieu Beauséjour (artwork), David Tomas, Bruce Barber and Slavoj Zizek.

Introduction to Drive in Cinema: Essays on Film, Theory and Politics

Includes chapters on the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, ... more Includes chapters on the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vera Chytilova, Vaclav Vorlicek, Olivier Assayas, Hal Hartley, Oliver Ressler, Vincent Gallo, Harmony Korine and Jim Jarmusch. Includes a Foreword and an interview with Bradley Tuck.

Review Essay: Post-Political Post-Aesthetics

Review of Sven Lütticken's 'Cultural Revolution' (2017) and 'Art and Autonomy' (2022).

Touring the Ideological Landscape: Ottawa's Peacekeeping Monument

Written for an undergraduate course given by David Tomas and published in 1995 in the catalogue f... more

Introduction to Class Struggle and Identity Politics: A Guide

Editorial: The Struggle Before Us

Introduction to Special Issue of the journal Art & the Public Sphere, 'The Struggle Before Us', ... more

The grey matter of decolonial activism, or, socially engaged art as professional-managerial class

Written for the FEINARTS research project in 2022 and published in the 2024 special issue of Art ... more

Lenin in Bakhmut

Contribution to the anthology 'The Heritage We (Don't) Renounce,' produced on the anniversary of ... more Contribution to the anthology 'The Heritage We (Don't) Renounce,' produced on the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin. Although a valuable and important compendium, there are some entries of a dubious quality. The book review in Review of African Political Economy is ant-Trotskyist without rationale.

Political Pragmatists

Contribution to Afterimage 50th anniversary issue (2023) on "Afterimage essays that influenced yo... more

The Use and Abuse of Class Reductionism for the Left

Published in Cultural Logic (Vol.25, 2021) in January 2023. Also included in Léger, ed. Identity ... more

Welcome to the Cultural Goodwill Revolution: On Class Composition in the Age of Classless Struggle

2009 class analysis of culture that focuses on the petty-bourgeoisie and PMC a few years before i... more

Introduction to Identity Trumps Socialism: The Class and Identity Debate after Neoliberalism

Essays by Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Zizek, Bruno Bosteels, Vivek Chibber, Barbara Fo... more

Unknown Knowledge: Richard Hamilton's Last Works

Published in Culture Matters, June 2016

Ecce Homo! Occupy God?

In a recent online article written for Roar magazine, the Halifax-based activist and scholar Max ... more In a recent online article written for Roar magazine, the Halifax-based activist and scholar Max Haiven defines the concept of the commons in terms of grassroots democracy, horizontalism, sustainable reciprocity, community-level decision-making and radical autonomy. 1 What is at issue in this article is not so much what he says about the need to replace state sovereignty with commons, but the way that individuals and individualism figure in his discussion. Whereas most Marxists would agree on the question of the withering of the state, and on the socialist critique of bourgeois ideology, not all Marxists would agree with the anti-humanist and postmodern presuppositions that are at play the immanentist critique of concepts like autonomy or sovereignty. Haiven's article is typical of the tendency of social movement activists to dismiss the category of the individual that for previous generations was essential to Freudo-Marxism, but that today, after the influence of discourse theory, has seemingly disappeared, as Michel Foucault once said, like a face in the sand at the edge of the sea. I contrast Haiven's critique of individualism to the ideas of the Not An Alternative collective, an activist group for whom individualism is also a problem, but where, in contrast, psychoanalytic concepts are adopted and made use of in their Occupy strategies. Brushing up against liberal ideology, Haiven's text replaces the notion of "the public" and "counterpublics" with that of the commons. He challenges the idea of the individual as an Enlightenment concept that presupposes the public as its counterpart. The principle of egalitarian reciprocity that underwrites the commons involves, he says, "rich reciprocity, inter-reliance and the connections between communal and individual responsibility and autonomy." 2 He takes this beyond the idea of human rights, made in our capitalist world into a notion of the "irreducible and self-contained, contract-making individual," which he decries as the source of political and economic power-the liberal social contract writ small. 3 We must deconstruct this politics of white, male property owners-a "lethal fantasy," he says, since none of us are self-sufficient monads. 4 Instead, we "rely on community, collaboration, cooperation and commons." 5 He writes: "Our powers have been turned against us, to the point where we are at risk of undermining the network ecology of collaborative life that actually sustains us. Ecce Homo! This is what comes of the fetishization of the individual!" 6 Woe to all would-be saviours! Further, the individual, according to Haiven, "is a dangerous but intoxicating fiction," a "political box" that we must deconstruct so that we can build commons. 7 Since privacy implies private property regimes, as opposed to creative commons, neither are people or even the objects they make fully free, and so we must wake up from the dream of complete liberation from community, responsibility and accountability. Whatever social structures we have, he says, they should be used to build commons-instruggle: human rights beyond human rights transformed into "rights to the commons" of education, health, material abundance, lifeways, migration, and the freedom to "practice one's identity and body and mind and sexuality as one chooses." 8 Haiven's article contrasts interestingly with another text published in Roar magazine: "Occupy the Party: The Sanders Campaign as a Site of Struggle," written by the New York-based art collective Not An Alternative (NAA), a group comprised of core members Beka Economopoulos, Jason Jones and political theorist Jodi Dean. 9 Beka Economopulos was recently depicted on the news show Democracy Now! She was participating in a campaign in which supporters of Democratic Party nominee Bernie Sanders had gathered in Zuccotti Park to telephone voters in the states of Illinois, Florida and Ohio and encourage them to vote for Bernie. 10 I myself endorse the Sanders campaign and encourage people to use the hashtags: #hillarysowallstreet, #killarywarhawk and #bernienumnum.

Exhibition Review: David Tomas, Consigned for Auction

2014 review in Journal of Curatorial Studies

Neocolonial Parapraxis

2012 Interview with David Tomas concerning his exhibition, Live rightly, die, die… based on Josep... more

Name Changer: 2013 Interview with Janez Janša

Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša

Book Review: Petra Rethman et al, eds., Cultural Autonomy

2012 review in TOPIA

Yearbox PDF for Chairman Maciunas

United Colours of the UAAC: More on the Politics of Diversity in Canada

Effects of diversity mandates and trends on research methods, as seen in presentations given at t... more

Introduction to Culture and Contestation in the New Century

This book was intended as a post-postmodern rejoinder to Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic. It expl... more This book was intended as a post-postmodern rejoinder to Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic. It explores questions of cultural production, creative labour, class struggle and oppositionality in the new century. Originally titled "Spleen: Institutions of Cultural Production," it was also meant to identify the role of PMC bourgeois bohemianism in cultural administration. It has chapters by Rosalyn Deutsche, Gregory Sholette, BAVO, Angela McRobbie, Gerald Raunig, Aras Ozgun, Critical Art Ensemble, Mathieu Beauséjour (artwork), David Tomas, Bruce Barber and Slavoj Zizek.

Introduction to Drive in Cinema: Essays on Film, Theory and Politics

Includes chapters on the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, ... more Includes chapters on the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vera Chytilova, Vaclav Vorlicek, Olivier Assayas, Hal Hartley, Oliver Ressler, Vincent Gallo, Harmony Korine and Jim Jarmusch. Includes a Foreword and an interview with Bradley Tuck.

Review Essay: Post-Political Post-Aesthetics

Review of Sven Lütticken's 'Cultural Revolution' (2017) and 'Art and Autonomy' (2022).

Bernie Bros Gone Woke: Class, Identity, Neoliberalism

Note: This book was tampered with after I signed off on the final design proof. Every print copy,... more Note: This book was tampered with after I signed off on the final design proof. Every print copy, including the Haymarket paperback version, contains four factual errors and several typos. This PDF version, with my errata statement at the start, and dated September 29, 2024, is the only correct version of the book.

Vanguardia: Socially Engaged Art and Theory

Covers leading theories of socially engaged art, Occupy Wall Street and alter-global art activism... more Covers leading theories of socially engaged art, Occupy Wall Street and alter-global art activism, the Quebec Maple Spring protests as psychogeography, the communist critique of ultra-left agonism, a review of the work of the industrial band Test Dept in relation to post-Fordism, and the last chapter is a first published foray into the class viz identity, Marxism viz postmodernism debate.

Léger_Don't_Network.pdf

Don't Network: The Avant Garde after Networks, 2018

This book is open access. This work is not simply an electronic book; it is the open access versi... more

The Neoliberal Undead: Essays on Contemporary Art and Politics

A companion piece to Brave New Avant Garde with an emphasis on art activism and creative industries.

Zapantera Negra: An Artistic Encounter Between Black Panthers and Zapatistas

A project by EDELO with Emory Douglas and indigenous Zapatista communities. Co-edited with David ... more

The Idea of the Avant Garde - And What It Means Today

Fifty international contributors from various arts fields reflect on the meaning of the avant gar... more

Brave New Avant Garde: Essays on Contemporary Art and Politics

Brave New Avant Garde examines the theoretical premises and the real possibilities for contempora... more Brave New Avant Garde examines the theoretical premises and the real possibilities for contemporary avant-garde practices. Echoing Alain Badiou, it considers whether the 'avant garde hypothesis' must be abandoned. The book stands in opposition to postmodern post-politics and addresses 'sinthomeopathic' practices of over-identification as one possible alternative to the culturalization of politics.

Millet Matrix: Contemporary Art, Collaboration, Curatorial Praxis

How do art exhibitions serve as liminal sites for the investigation of the invisible institutiona... more How do art exhibitions serve as liminal sites for the investigation of the invisible institutional forces and influences that condition contemporary visual art practices? How can an apartment space, as a distinct form of socio-cultural environment, operate differently from public exhibition spaces? How does curatorial praxis provide a framework for making art through an extended, affective bond of commitment and friendship? These are some of the questions that are raised by Millet Matrix.

Millet Matrix is a singular exchange between the Montreal-based artist Rosika Desnoyers, artist, theorist and curator David Tomas and cultural theorist Marc James Léger. The co-authored catalogue archives texts that describe the production and conceptualization of the three post-institutional apartment exhibitions Millet Matrix I (2010), II (2012) and III (2013). It features Tomas' essay on Desnoyers' error-based needlegraph work as a form of conceptual art and programming language as well as interviews with Tomas by Marc James Léger.

The Lesser of Two Genocides

Paper written for the New Taipei City Art Museum journal. Presented at the Universities Art Assoc... more

Gadflies, Gossip and Conspiracy

Jameson obituaries, divisions on the left and the axis of resistance.

Global Capitalist Nostalgia for Identity

Fredric Jameson, 1934-2024

The Children of Gramsci and Pepsi: The Hegemonic Party in Times of Anti-Communism Left, Right and Centre

This is an extended version of the paper I presented at the second annual Rethinking Gramsci: Glo... more

Bugaboos of Baroque Marxism: Class and Identity in Cultural Theory

Theoretical paper and review of Zine Magubane's review of Kenan Malik's 'Not So Black and White' ... more

Working-Class Politics at the Margins: A Critique of Diversity Campaigning

2021 review of the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) report Commonsense Solidarity: How a ... more

The Colonial Copy: Ends of Canadian Art History

The panel proposal read as follows: "The session invites art historians, critics, artists, curato... more The panel proposal read as follows: "The session invites art historians, critics, artists, curators, art teachers, policy makers and art educators to reflect on how their professional expertise has encouraged them to tell distinct stories about art. We may share an uncomfortable relationship with the canon of Canadian art, yet our stories often evolve in isolation from one another. There is little opportunity for collective assessment or analysis. What are the underlying assumptions about artistic merit that shape our storytelling? How do we assess the relevancy for our imagined audiences? How do art stories define communities? A cross-disciplinary dialogue about the forces directing art writing and exhibition in Canada should give us a clearer sense of our diversity and the parameters of our professional practices." This theory of the colonial copy remains unfinished. The question of "whose art stories" asks us to imagine a dialogue among art professionals and to talk about subjects, desires and the proscriptions of the canon. Among the first of these proscriptions is the objective analysis of our labour and a cordon sanitaire designed to separate art from non-art topics. In the words of Erin Manning the category of art is onto-pologized, and our taste for what is outside warned against as pollution.1 This way of looking at things connects the concept of being to categorical and topological classification, with the concept of boundary, or border, rather than limitation, cast in a negative light as a problem of power and authority. It leads Manning to posit post-structuralism as the grounds for what I refer in this essay to a new variant of the "colonial copy." Would this ontologization of professionalism represent a stubborn attachment to our practice and our careers, preventing us from confronting the problems we face as historians, artists and critics? Indeed, what are the structural pretexts , the "tristes tropiques," that define the field of art theory and history? Our narratives and motivations would seem to be confronted in advance by the closures of discipline and canon-formation. We wonder about the relevance of any particular narrative in the context of meta-narrative and audiences. Does art discourse impose and preempt rights of sovereignty on diverse narratives? Do we act like judges when writing and researching for the greater good? What are the alternatives?

Just Stop Žižek: Gabriel Rockhill's Rant

stop-zizek.html. Gabriel Rockhill, a philosopher and cultural critic who teaches at Villanova Uni... more stop-zizek.html. Gabriel Rockhill, a philosopher and cultural critic who teaches at Villanova University, wrote a hit piece on Slavoj Žižek that was published in January 2023 on the website CounterPunch. The article is more smear than scholarship, not unlike Michael Eric Dyson's article against Cornel West, but with more insults and less concern for plausibility. The justification for it seems to be beyond Žižek, in Rockhill's stated activism and among his activist peers, who encouraged Rockhill to publish his perception of Žižek as a Dr. Zhivago traitor of the revolution. For what

Woke Antiracism: It's a Gospel According to John McWhorter

Book review of John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America

The Politics of Woke Aesthetics in Canada and Abroad

, article published in Hyperallergic by Elisha Lim, a Toronto-based graphic novelist and illustra... more , article published in Hyperallergic by Elisha Lim, a Toronto-based graphic novelist and illustrator, and anti-racism activist who promotes queer and trans people of colour, comes across as another one of those "Dear white people" shots across the bow. The article is titled "How BIPOC Artists Fight Canada's Biased Art Scene," with the sub-header, "Since 1949 a combination of colonial government, the rich, and viral trends have decided how Canadian art is made. The results are unspectacular."1 The article compels me revisit two of my previous articles to consider what if anything has changed in the last decade in terms of how Canadian identitarians approach culture and politics: "The Colonial Copy: Ends of Canadian Art History" and "Art World as Zombie Culture: Excellence, Exodus and Ideology." I add to this some suggestions on how it is that the art world's failure to challenge the capitalist orientation of neoliberal institutions has contributed to the elevation of some of the more reactionary tendencies in postmodern culture. Dear BIPOC and LGBTQIA2+ People The very short article by Elisha Lim in Hyperallergic, the main news source for all things woke in the contemporary art world, is more self-promoting than anything else. It begins with the assertion: "Canadian art has a reputation for being White bland, and that might be because it's controlled by government grants and the tastes of wealthy white patrons."2 That is a shame, they go on to say, since Canada is a diverse country, as evidenced by the author's reference to the festival they and their Qouleur collective started for bi-spiritual-2-spirited-queer-trans-POC but had to abandon due to lack of funds. The article deplores the lack of government arts funding targeted specifically for Indigenous, diverse, deaf, disabled and minority language citizens. The Canada Council for the Arts is then defined in relation to its origins with the 1949 Massey Commission as an effort, simply put, to distinguish Canadian culture from British and American imperialism, and to discourage socialism. Citing the racial equity specialist, Andrea Fatona, Lim suggests that the Council intentionally privileged white artists at the expense of racialized and Indigenous art, favouring European forms, like Shakespearean theatre. Lim's anti-racist sensibility is captured by artwork that was presented in Hyperallergic at the same time as their article: an unannounced Illuminator-style light projection by Bay Area artist Christy Chan onto an office building, which reads: "White supremacy is the Original Cancel Culture."3 Such works are presumed to correct mistakes made in the past. More pragmatically minded, Lim recommends three strategies for change: 1) recognition of the fact that Indigenous artists do not seek equity but sovereignty, 2) financial redress from the Association of National Non-Profit Artists Centres for its history of classism and racism, which led to the collapse of ANNPAC after artist-run centres and associations withdrew and joined the Artist-Run Network instead, 3) rejection of a pending shift from a biased grant system to one that is based on market demand and promotion instead of a basic income for artists, as suggested by MP Leah Gazan. In conclusion, Lim suggests a path away from colonial arts administration by the wealthy and trendy, which has led, they assert without further argument, to unspectacular art. One would presume that in order to be exciting, art has to be made by people who are Indigenous, black, queer, trans, etc.

The Mismeasure of Marx

A critique of critical race theory and pseudo-Marxist uses of the concept of class reductionism.

Theses on Class Struggle and Identity Politics

Racism, sexism and other forms of oppression and discrimination predate capitalism. These forms o... more Racism, sexism and other forms of oppression and discrimination predate capitalism. These forms of oppression have been incorporated, in various ways, into capitalist social relations and ideology. Racism and sexism, however, are not constitutive of capitalism. Despite the real subsumption of labour and alienation of social life in post-Fordist global capitalism, there is no racial capitalism and no patriarchal capitalism. Likewise, there is no black Marxism or socialist feminism. There is capitalism and there is opposition to capitalism. 2. Contemporary neoliberal capitalism makes use of anti-racism, anti-patriarchy and other forms of anti-oppression. Just as capitalism and racism can be two sides of the same coin, so can capitalism and anti-racism. Actually existing patriarchy and racism is used by the ruling capitalist elite to divide and control the masses. In contrast to theories of anti-racism and antipatriarchy, class analysis does not view class differences as the root of capitalist exploitation. Class society is the product of capitalist social relations and the capitalist mode of production. Class is therefore central to class analysis but not exclusive. The contemporary emphasis on identity, like culture, is a measure of the extent to which it is both useful and irrelevant to the circulation of capital. People who are serious about ending oppression are serious about ending class exploitation.

Visual Culture in the Age of Google

A Pervert's Guide to Zizek: Will Self and Slavoj Zizek at the How To Academy

In the last two years or so it has become obvious that not only is Slavoj Žižek having to engage ... more In the last two years or so it has become obvious that not only is Slavoj Žižek having to engage in academic debates with his interlocutors, but that his celebrity as the so-called "Elvis of cultural theory" and "most dangerous philosopher in the West" is beginning to be challenged by liberals and even leftists who are starting to not only be aware of his unusual manners and humour, but what he is actually more or less sayingwhat his political-intellectual stance is and how it disturbs not only status quo liberal-democratic ideology but also postmodern academia. Before the recent media hysteria generated by Žižek's faux-endorsement of Donald Trump as a disaster that could possibly result in a rejuvenated left, willing to go beyond its ideological subjection to the neoliberal consensus, the liberal-left had already awoken to the fact that Žižek represents a challenge to its smug self-image as morally superior to the conservative right. This was seen for instance in Marcus Brown's April 2016 Guardian column, which compared Žižek's high theory critique of political correctness to the knavery of Donald Trump, going so far as to suggest that Žižek may very well be a "cryptofascist." 1 One month later, Žižek was challenged by protesters (fronted by Taryn Fivek) at the Left Forum in New York City, who handed out flyers that "call him out" for making racist and sexist jokes. The problem with this protest is that it failed to demonstrate any understanding of Žižek's work and he more than kindly addressed at the Forum each of the accusations listed on the flyer. 2 Such activists and journalists are not concerned with debating Žižek's philosophy from a leftist perspective, they simply want to diminish its political impact by tarnishing his reputation through meme warfare, a liberal equivalent to Tea Partiers who denounce Obama as a "socialist." Defending himself against more recent criticisms of his theories regarding sexual politics, Žižek commented on how the kind of "tweet culture" that shapes public opinion today is mired in self-righteous political correctness, blending "official tolerance and openness" with "extreme intolerance towards actually different views." 3 In this context, it was a slightly refreshing change of pace from the usual PC attacks when Žižek was invited to share the limelight with the British novelist Will Self. 4 Before this event, which took place on May 18, Self had published in The Guardian a satirical review of Žižek's most recent book, The Courage of Hopelessness. 5 Self in fact wrote the review in anticipation of their planned encounter. It otherwise set the stage for a discussion that could not be anything but lively, if not also preposterous. In his review, subtitled "how the big hairy Marxist would change the world," Self more or less relieves himself from having anything of consequence to say about Žižek's work by declaring that life is too short to be concerned with anything having to do with Marxist and Lacanian