Against the Grain – August 14, 2013
According to Max Haiven, global capitalism turns cooperative and creative activity into calcified narratives, hierarchies, and commodities. Haiven emphasizes the importance of a task he calls “commoning memory.”

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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 produced and hosted by Sasha Lilley.
According to Max Haiven, global capitalism turns cooperative and creative activity into calcified narratives, hierarchies, and commodities. Haiven emphasizes the importance of a task he calls “commoning memory.”
Ann Laura Stoler’s new book focuses on the less perceptible, more protracted, and still-persisting effects of imperial interventions.
Uranium fuels nuclear weapons and controversial power plants. But uranium mineworkers labor in obscurity — and in exceptionally dangerous settings. Gabrielle Hecht has gone to Africa to investigate.
In comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with apartheid-era South Africa’s policies vis-à-vis the Bantustans, Andy Clarno finds both similarities and significant differences.
In a new book, historian Walter Hixson describes how cultural and other factors have affected how we, and how US political and military elites, remember and understand the Vietnam War.
Robin Kelley discusses the ideas and legacy of Aimé Césaire, who took a radical anticolonial stance informed by his engagement with surrealism and Marxism. Césaire also linked colonialism with fascism.
What can we learn from Ralph Waldo Emerson about collectivity and about overcoming social divisions? Eric Keenaghan takes on the conventional notion that Emerson pushed a kind of radical individualism.
Mark Sawyer examines factors that inhibit Latino-Black collaboration, including anti-Black racism among many Latinos, African American parochialism, and narrow visions of racial/ethnic identity. He also identifies points of commonality and convergence.
As part of its effort to build a socialist society, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) has worked to transform education, drawing on the ideas and inspiration of Paulo Freire and of several Soviet-era educational theorists. Rebecca Tarlau explains.
What can environmentalism do? Andrew Ross, Mark Engler, and Charles Callaway addressed this ever more urgent question at Left Forum.