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Lived in Bars

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 18:56:09 GMT

Since the seafood place in the piazzetta must not be making much money now that it can’t serve dinner, the family that owns it rented out the restaurant, its vibe, and its tough-looking old-town-feel to a film crew. To be fair, they’ve been doing this for years, since the little square feels remote, eternal, neorealist—qualities that productions often long to capture in their exteriors. This time, though, it seems clear that it’s a fundraising arrangement.

The Bioeconomics of Covid-19

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 18:48:52 GMT

Biopower and necropolitics In Discipline & Punish Michel Foucault describes the measures taken, as per magisterial edict, in a plague-ridden French city sometime in the late seventeenth century. On the first day of quarantine, everyone is ordered to stay indoors; the doors are locked from the outside. Sentinels are posted at the city gates. Armed […]

Orpheus Revolving

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 19:26:45 GMT

In late April I called my son Zach who said to me candidly within a minute of answering the phone that he was prey to feelings of emptiness—that he still felt waves of stress and depression, “a weird, hard feeling that comes and goes.” He had taken off work for the past few days, but […]

On a Seaside Bench

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 18:21:26 GMT

Since the start of the pandemic, the seaside bench has temporarily replaced the pub as a location for all kinds of social intercourse. Old friends sit at opposite corners of a bench conversing with each other. They bring a bottle of wine each, together with their own glass. If a third person joins them, they stand at a social distance but close enough for the three of them to feel like they’re buddies. The scene is reminiscent of Moscow alcoholics congregating around a park bench to share a bottle of vodka.

Incubated Futures

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 22:59:32 GMT

Kentucky Fried Chicken wants to move into Addis Ababa. Among the last of African countries to be colonized by fast food, Ethiopia just received their first multinational fast food chain in 2018, when two Pizza Huts opened in Addis. More international chains want to open in the capital, though their efforts are stymied by Ethiopia’s […]

Working the Polls

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 16:00:06 GMT

An elder gentleman in a camel-hair overcoat and a perfectly askew black beret accosts our coordinator while trying to vote. He comes over to the scanners, still miffed. After his vote is cast, he turns to Lois and me. His issue, generally: “IT SAYS FILL THE BUBBLE TO THE LEFT. BUT THE BUBBLES ARE ABOVE THE CANDIDATES NAMES!!!”

The Politics Trump Made: A Reading List

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 18:16:40 GMT

On Election Day, a look back at n+1’s coverage of the Trump years. Consequences of Deferred Maintenance by The Editors (Issue 38) Trump has returned to the topic of deregulation again and again, always with great fervor. “Regulations, ohhhh boy,” he said in 2017, with Dangerfieldian mock-exhaustion. “It’s a lot of regulations.” This summer, standing outside […]

Consequences of Deferred Maintenance

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:43:24 GMT

What the deregulatory and deconstructive impulse share is a distinctly temporal quality, instilling the slow seep of future degradation even as immediate consequences are typically nonexistent. Killing long days by walking across New York’s many structurally deficient bridges, it occurred to us that this is how Covid has felt, too, even if deregulation is only one of a litany of factors that led to the US’s inability to respond to the pandemic in a responsible or even minimally humane way. The slow creep of emergency that attended the pandemic’s arrival in February and March—and the halting, dreadful recognition that its sped-down time would persist for weeks, then months, then years longer than we’d ever imagined—has as its echo the relative imperceptibility of deregulation’s extended-release effects.

The Militia Question

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 16:29:23 GMT

The idea of white supremacist militias teaming up with federal and state governments for the sake of maintaining “law and order” seems less a radical rupture than the next link in a very bloody chain. The situation, in short, is even worse than liberal anxieties about a possible civil war suggest. It turns out that a certain type of white supremacist vigilantism is wholly compatible with the continued functioning of the American state. The specter of civil war that liberals fear is none other than the same modes of violence that have long been turned against BIPOC communities in this country without at all undermining the state.

Return of Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager

Sat, 31 Oct 2020 21:00:49 GMT

The most salient factors that we’re dealing with are really difficult to model because we’ve never had an election like this. We’ve never—I’ve never lived through a pandemic like this and so my degree of belief in any of the trades that I have on has to be lower than it would be under other circumstances, right? I can’t rely on looking at historical data to understand the magnitude of the moves that could happen, or the correlation between different assets, because the things that are happening are so unprecedented. When other people say, “What are the markets afraid of?”—the markets aren’t really afraid of more Trump, they’re not afraid of Biden. They are afraid, I think, of a prolonged period where you don’t know who the President is.

Rule That Is No Rule

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:40:52 GMT

In the waning days of Trump’s first term (and possibly the final days of his Presidency) the Senate Republicans have installed yet another radical Justice on the Supreme Court, cementing a 6–3 ultraright majority on the Court. In addition to their ideological kinship, three of these Justices also share a history of having actively worked […]

Guston Can Wait

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 18:58:00 GMT

Not much news from the art world pierces the mediasphere, and if it does, it tends to revolve around money—either ludicrously high auction prices or flashy new erections by starchitects. The Guston kerfuffle, on the other hand, has something for everyone cheesed off by the “Intolerant Left”: the beleaguered white male genius, the specter of cancel culture, mealy-mouthed PR-speak.

But His Emails

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:13:01 GMT

Benghazi, Obamagate, now Hunter Biden—all are examples of the conservative media’s ability to spin a controversy out of the thinnest of pretenses that, against all odds, somehow occasionally persists long enough to actually ensnare its targets.

Watch: Aaron Benanav, Tim Barker, and Katrina Forrester in conversation

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:59:28 GMT

On Thursday, October 15, Aaron Benanav discussed his new book, Automation and the Future of Work, with n+1 contributors Tim Barker and Katrina Forrester. A recording of the conversation is below. The conversation was co-sponsored by Phenomenal World and Dissent Magazine. Automation and the Future of Work is out from Verso in November.

Aaron Benanav and Tim Barker in Conversation

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 14:59:17 GMT

Join n+1 and Phenomenal World for a discussion between economic historian Aaron Benanav and n+1 contributor Tim Barker, moderated by Katrina Forrester. They’ll be discussing Benanav’s new book, Automation and the Future of Work, out next month from Verso. The conversation will be held via Zoom; register here. 3 PM Thursday, October 15 On Zoom

Streaming Diary

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 18:54:01 GMT

This is not the languidity burdened by sameness and doom which we’ve grown accustomed to in the stuffy, unaired bedrooms of quar. Instead, The Portuguese Woman is a mesmerizing historic wormhole into a plein air future: the wind rushes in from a window, dresses ruffle and drag, the sun filters across a maid’s quarters to lift its bleakness.

White Cough Genocide

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 23:07:32 GMT

Sometimes when I dream of my perfect President I think of a good percentage of Trump, ramping things up the way he does, getting good people riled up and awake, because we need them, every last one of these Americans. But I wish there was also a part of this perfect President, haha, that balanced, and that was Pence, especially in emergencies. Because he can be so calm. He can bring people together. We need the rage figure, but we need a seeker. And Mike is a seeker.

Austere Moral Economy

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:21:08 GMT

Mexican critics have raised concerns that AMLO and Morena are little more than a recycled PRI, pointing to AMLO’s formative political years and to Morena’s scale of control. What is different about AMLO, however, is his cult of personality and his distaste for the separation of powers.

It’s German for "The Trump, The”

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 18:43:30 GMT

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These people didn’t know my father

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 20:07:06 GMT

it’s possible all women make up a secret organization working under the guise of an oppressed class the women coerced into prostitution they’re the suicide bombers of our terrorist organization sacrificing themselves for the life of all women and the murder of all men a nice romantic image is coming together here I think I’m one of these women one of the ones engaged in the struggle against all men for all women but I know it’s not true AIDS exists but the struggle doesn’t