Against the Grain – January 13, 2025
Lawrence Grossberg discusses his new book “On the Way to Theory.”
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Against the Grain
12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays - Wednesdays
Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
It was the first of its kind program of mass surveillance: the surreal, and initially-secret, deployment of an unmanned plane flying in circles over the city of Baltimore. Sociologist Benjamin Snyder discusses the Baltimore Police Department’s short-lived experiment in spying on the city’s residents. He considers how technologies like the spy plane are both embraced … Continued
Classrooms are places where teaching happens. What if they were also places of healing and justice-seeking? Tessa Hicks Peterson describes educational approaches that foster well-being, empowerment, and critical thinking. She also emphasizes the need for trauma-informed pedagogical practices. Tessa Hicks Peterson, Liberating the Classroom: Healing and Justice in Higher Education Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025
It’s indisputably one of the most important works in history. Karl Marx’s Capital has been perennially embraced by those trying to understand and move beyond the capitalist system—and reviled in equal measure by those defending the established order. Yet, until now, English readers of the first volume of Marx’s magnum opus have not had access … Continued
In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes … Continued
In a California women’s prison, domestic violence survivors who killed their abusers in self-defense came together to practice a politics of mutual care, solidarity, and resistance. Rachel Leah Klein details the origins, efforts, and achievements of Convicted Women Against Abuse, situating their activities within the charged political context of the tough-on-crime 1990s. (Encore presentation.) Rachel Leah … Continued
Why has the term complicity become so ubiquitous in recent years? Are we all complicit in the system that we live under? What use, or uses, does the notion serve? These are questions that legal scholar Francine Banner poses. She makes the argument that the term bears different meanings, sometimes holding the powerful to account … Continued
Is there such a thing as core gender identity? Are queer and trans people born that way? And what role does trauma play in shaping gender? Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and practice as well as queer and trans studies, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, each a clinician and NYU-based scholar, contest the notion that gender is fixed and … Continued
Jewish opposition to Israel, so visible recently through the spectacular actions of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, is not a recent phenomenon. Historian Marjorie Feld argues that what may seem like unprecedented criticism of Israel by U.S. Jews is part of a long tradition of dissent, which has been repressed by establishment Jewish organizations … Continued
How did residents of shack settlements in South African cities like Durban become a formidable political force? Yousuf Al-Bulushi lays out the operating principles, goals, and methods of Abahlali, one of the most well-known radical formations in all of Africa. (Encore presentation.) Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City Palgrave Macmillan, 2024 (Image on main … Continued
Commodifying Water
Over the last forty years, bottled water consumption has exploded. Once a rarefied item, global sales of bottled water dwarf every other beverage — totaling $300 billion a year. Environmental sociologist Daniel Jaffee argues that packaged water doesn’t only imperil our oceans and bodies with plastic waste, but undermines safe public water even more than … Continued