Jajuna

My review of Loic Wacquant’s book is now available at Book-Smarts

Since my first post on Commonwealth, my friend Paul and I have decided to launch a small intra-blog project. We will first continue to write up a set of notes for the book and to cross-post them on our blogs as well as to another public theory blog belonging to a friend of ours. This is in the interest and spirit of generating critical conversation. Next, we are going to co-write a book review. Unlike, these basic notes we hope to accomplish two things in the review (1) excavate some productive criticisms/limitations of Hardt and Negri’s project (2) create something new by thinking with and against Hardt and Negri in the context of our respective intellectual interests. For me, this means thinking about what productive insights Commonwealth might contribute to discussions of educational policy, security, and insecurity, and for Paul, it means thinking about online communities, internet surveillance, and theories of gifting and exchange. Of course, we hope to also think critically about how these fields speak to one another, the common, and possibilities for social transformation. This underscores a larger project we are working on that seeks to problematize issues of internet surveillance within the neoliberal University by looking at issues of campus-based corporate anti-piracy campaigns and questions of security and governmentality.

Blowback Effect: The World in 2020

by Michael T. Klare

As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all.  If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain fundamental respects:  the United States remained the world’s paramount military power, the dollar remained the world’s dominant currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three.

By the end of the second decade of this century, however, our world is likely to have a genuinely different look to it.  Momentous shifts in global power relations and a changing of the imperial guard, just now becoming apparent, will be far more pronounced by 2020 as new actors, new trends, new concerns, and new institutions dominate the global space.  Nonetheless, all of this is the norm of history, no matter how dramatic it may seem to us.

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