Dada/Surrealism was the sole academic journal to devote itself to the study of these two related currents in the U.S. The scholarly study of Surrealism emerged here just slightly later than it did in France, with the publication of Anna Balakian’s Literary Origins of Surrealism in 1947. Dada/Surrealism‘s first issue appeared in 1971 and it […]
Category Archives: Passing References
In his book C.L.R. James: the Artist as Revolutionary, Paul Buhle refers in several places to a manuscript of an abortive attempt at an autobiography by James. Buhle describes the project, undertaken in the last period of James’s life with the assistance of Anna Grimshaw, as one that simply did not jell the way one […]
Daniel Bell, 1919-2011 Now largely forgotten, Bell was once an influential intellectual and sociologist from the milieu of those who have come to be known as the New York Intellectuals. He edited The New Leader, the organ of the right-wing of American social democracy, during World War II and went on to receive a PhD […]
The New York Times Saturday Profile of December 3 features an interesting look at former Communist (PCI) and current president of Italy Giorgio Napolitano (“From Ceremonial Figure to Italy’s Quiet Power Broker“). While it may not be necessary to be reminded that Eurocommunism was essentially an euphemism for class collaboration, it is striking the degree […]
The Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library has opened the C.L.R. James Papers to researchers. The acquisition of this material was announced in 2007 (although the exact provenance of the collection is not clear from the press release). A detailed finding aid on the collection is available online. Of particular interest is a manuscript […]
Historian Paul Buhle reminisces about the 1960s in the latest issue of Against the Current (“Memories of [my] Syndicalism“). Buhle, author of C.L.R. James: the Artist as Revolutionary, describes his entry into the New Left via the oldest of the Old Left, the Socialist Labor Party. Buhle elsewhere (for example, in A Dreamer’s Paradise Lost, […]
David Black, author of Helen Macfarlane: a Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist and Philosopher in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England, has written a comment (“‘No Justice, No Peace’ and Blood and Flames on England’s Streets: 1981, 1985, and 2011)” on the recent urban unrest in Britain.
• Dick Howard, author of The Specter of Democracy, has a chapter titled, “In Search of a New Left” in a new book called Promises of 1968: Crisis, Illusion and Utopia. • Paresh Chattopadhyay has a review of a book titled The Seductions of Karl Marx by Murzban Jal in the April 30-May 6 2011 […]
Surrealist Leonora Carrington, an accomplished painter and writer, passed away in Mexico City on May 25. She was the author of (among other books) The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. The New York Times ran an obituary on May 26, describing her as “one of the last living links to the world of […]
The Marxists Internet Archive has made available a 1958 piece by Raya Dunayevskaya called “Colonial Revolts and the Creativity of People.” ••• The editors of the journal Revolutionary History have released a new issue on the Iranian revolutionary movement, “The Left in Iran: 1941-1957” (Vol. 10, No. 3). Unfortunately, this valuable resource for the history […]
Criticism &c. 