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War of Nerves

Columns

Witch Kids of Instagram
December 13, 2017
To say that none of our new, digitally-enabled witchery “works” is missing the point—and misunderstanding the theater of magic.

Non-Compete Clause
October 12, 2017
Female competition is the sharp edge of internalized sexism and the death of solidarity---and it’s utterly, irredeemably neoliberal. 

You Are Not a Rebel
September 11, 2017
The new far right has recognized the enduring appeal of adventurism and appropriated its rhetoric for reactionary ends. 

A Letter to my Liberal Friends
August 15, 2017
It should not have taken this long. Right now, there are a lot of well-meaning people, people who desperately want to believe in their own goodness, who only opened their eyes to the reality of modern fascism when the world woke up to Nurembergian images of screaming white boys ...

Fighting Words
June 02, 2017
Understand the difference between speaking truth to power and screaming for power in the face of truth.

Zero Gravity
April 11, 2017
Water, whiskey, and bodily fluids of various hues glide in perfect jewel-like constellations through the thinning air.

Brexit, Pursued by Despair
March 29, 2017
The referendum was the flame; Article 50 is the fuse. Today, after months of recrimination and fear, the deed was finally done. Britain’s unelected Prime Minister triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting the legal machine of international relations on an unstoppable ...

The Slow Confiscation of Everything
February 17, 2017
There will be no definite moment can say that yes, today we are fucked, and yesterday we were unfucked. Instead the fuckery increases incrementally year on year, until this is the way the world ends: not with a bang, not with a bonfire, but with the slow and savage confiscation ...

Meltdown of the Phantom Snowflakes
January 04, 2017
“Are you a strong woman?” The camera crew wanted a snappy answer. We were filming a short news segment on the beach in Brighton, with a frigid wind gusting around the boom mic and seagulls circling overhead, screaming for chips. I didn’t know how to reply. The issue of ...

Against Bargaining
November 18, 2016
What does it mean to be mentally healthy in a world gone mad? Sirens are blaring, lights are flashing, and we have been whisked out of the territory of metaphor onto the hard ground of fact. The rise to power and election of Donald J. Trump is the sick recrimination of a society ...

Fear of a Feminist Future
October 17, 2016
To imagine the future is a political practice, which means that it’s both strangely awful and awfully strange. In 1990, a team of scientists and researchers was given the task of mapping far-future scenarios for the disposal of nuclear waste. Their dilemma: how to design a ...