Tag: nonviolence
-
#AmericanAutumn
Over at Waging Nonviolence, I’ve been doing a bunch of coverage of some of the big protest actions being planned this fall, efforts to turn people’s attention away from the nonsense straw polls and candidate posturing and onto masses of people in the streets. I’ve been going to planning meetings for both those intending to…
-
The Suspicious Revolution
What does it do to people, and to a society, to suddenly become revolutionary? I recently had the chance to speak with Talal Asad, one of the leading anthropologists alive today, about the experience of being in Cairo earlier this year as the revolution unfolded around him. Our conversation appears this week at The Immanent…
-
Judith Butler on the Blurry Line of Violence
A year since my first interview with her appeared in Guernica, The Immanent Frame asked me to have another exchange with the feminist philosopher Judith Butler. Once again, we talked about violence, nonviolent resistance, power, and the problem of Israel-Palestine. This time, though, the backdrop was different: the Arab Spring, or the Middle East uprisings,…
-
Martyrdom Makeover
New from me at Religion Dispatches: The idea of martyrdom hasn’t been in very good shape lately. One common usage of it—“I’ll not be made a martyr!”—refers to the prospect of somewhat tragic but mostly useless suffering, perhaps in the service of a delusional cause, religious or otherwise. Another appears regularly in the news with…
-
Text Messages Live from Madison
My fellow Killing the Buddha editor?Quince Mountain is, as we blog-speak, in the occupied Capitol building of Madison, Wisconsin. Over the course of yesterday, he and I had an extended text-message exchange, which tells the dramatic story of a rumored crackdown, a victory, celebrations, and preparations for the next crisis. The full account of yesterday…
-
Gene Sharp and the Science of People Power
It’s a happy day when good ideas—and the people who create them—get their due. Today was one of those days. Thanks in large part to The New York Times’s feature on the backdrop of the revolution in Egypt, and then a profile devoted to him (which as I write is still #1 on the most-emailed…
-
The Kabul Scarf
It’s New Year’s Eve, and last night my colleague at Waging Nonviolence, Eric Stoner, returned safely from Afghanistan. He was there as a journalist and activist with an envoy of peacemakers, meeting networks of Afghans and internationals who are working to end the endless war, to which so many young people in that country have…
-
Will Boycotting Mass Spur Reform?
What would happen if, one Sunday morning, the Catholic hordes stayed home from mass in protest? Would the priests listen to the people’s demands? Or would they carry on without us? Over the weekend I had an essay at Religion Dispatches about an elderly Irish woman who proposed just such a protest in order to…
-
Judith Butler’s Carefully Crafted F**k You
In the current issue of the wonderful online magazine Guernica, I’ve got an interview with none other than the critical theorist Judith Butler. Her latest book, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), reflects on the past decade’s saga of needless war, photographed—even fetishized—torture, and routine horror. It treats these practices as issuing from…