Rehire Marisa Holmes! Pg

VolumeVolume 29 27 Fall Spring no. 1n. 2017 2 2016 www.GCadvocate.comwww.GCadvocate.com [email protected]@cunydsc.org Free the Media! Rehire Marisa Holmes! pg. 20 Dude, Where’s my Cohort? pg. 26 Why de Blasio’s Commission Reviewing NYC’s Monuments Matters pg. 12 editorial Contents “To Revolution, or not to Revolution” www.GCadvocate.com Bhargav Rani [email protected] EDITORIAL CUNY LIFE “Has not the “world revolution” been reduced to an empty for- mula which can be appropriated pragmatically by the most di- “To Revolution, or not Dude, Where’s my Cohort? verse groups of countries and flogged to death?” to Revolution” Sarah Hildebrand Bhargav Bhargav Rani pg. 26 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Histori- Rani pg. 3 cal Time (1985) PSC Rank-and-File Take Nandini Independent Action for a Ramachandran FEATURES $7k Adjunct Minimum Wage CUNY Struggle evolution is not an easy idea to gating 13 forms of uprisings, and aims to understand Alessandro Why de Blasio’s pg. 30 profess in our time. Once the the possibilities of collective action and individual Zammataro Commission Reviewing utopian promise of freedom and political engagement in this supposedly post-revolu- NYC’s Monuments Matters Practicing Consent in the a call to arms that animated tionary age we live in. Bernard E. Harcourt and Jesûs Anthony Ramos Classroom the struggles and aspirations of R. Velasco, the organizers of the seminar series and pg. 12 Jenn Polish peoples for over two centuries of both professors at Columbia University, initially pro- modernity, revolution is now the pg. 34 posed “Revolution 13/13,” and planned to revisit the Boycott the NFL! Shame on catchword of capitalism that sells gamut of usual suspects—from the French and Amer- Them! everything from Che Guevara t-shirts to toilet clean- ican Revolutions, to the Bolshevik Revolution on its Jeff Suttles Rers on Kickstarter. Hollowed of its vigor and vital- centennial. As Harcourt notes in his prefatory blog REVIEW pg. 16 ity, it now hangs suspended between possibility and post to the first seminar, Up from Below powerlessness, between hope and despair. But the “We had them all, and yet, we were unable to get Review of China Mieville’s romance of revolution is not completely lost. As the past the very word “revolution.” Why? Because of Free the Media! Campaign October: The Story of the precarity of the present and the overwhelming sense the historians, perhaps. The historians who have to Rehire Marisa Holmes Russian Revolution of political impotence that it reproduces press us for spoiled revolution for us in conceptualizing it, in Conor Tomás Reed Erik Wallenberg a need to rethink the modalities of resistance avail- historicizing it, in somehow raising it above all its il- able to us, the promise of revolution resurfaces as a legitimate children—resistance, revolt, insurgency, pg. 20 pg. 39 comforting and inviting proposition to lead us out of disobedience, hacktivism, standing ground. Those the darkness of our times. But the circumstances of peripheral, those ancillary, those sometimes abort- its resurgence hardly make it auspicious, for revolu- ed struggles for social change.” DSC tion is an immensely fraught concept. And this was Harcourt touches here on the crucial historio- DSC Resolution Against exemplified by the theme chosen for the 2017-2018 graphic problem with the very term “revolution.” Executive Decision seminar series of the Columbia Center of Contempo- That is, what are the parameters that impel the cat- to End DACA rary Critical Thought (CCCCT) at Columbia University egorization of certain events in history as “revolu- pg. 46 – “Uprising 13/13.” tion” as opposed to any of its subsidiary cognates “Uprising.” Not “Revolution.” The seminar series like “uprising,” “insurrection,” “rebellion” etc.? And comprises of 13 seminars held over the year investi- what are the implications of such a categorization Front Cover: 1931 propaganda poster that was2 — found in the collection — Fall no. of 1 the2017 Russian Fall no. 1 2017 — — 3 State Library in Moscow – Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images v editorial editorial to both our understanding of past consequences have been mea- sarily doomed to fail? Are revo- events and our visions for the fu- sured, then why even bother with lutions by their very nature so ture? The barrels of ink spilt in the it? And if “revolution,” in the mo- volatile and explosive that they in- historiographic glorification of the ment of its occurrence, phenome- evitably devolve and disintegrate English, French and Russian Revo- nologically feels no different than under the weight of their own con- lutions, by virtue of their classi- an “uprising,” “revolt,” “insurrec- tradictions? Even the ones that fication as “Revolutions” with a tion,” or “rebellion,” is there per- have been privileged in history as capital R, come at the expense of haps some merit in replacing this “successful” revolutions, such as our understanding of various oth- rather overbearing category with the Bolshevik Revolution or the er critical moments in history that any of the latter ones in thinking Chinese Cultural Revolution, to for some reason or the other don’t through our present modes of col- what extent have they been but make the cut. It is for this rea- lective action? divergent paths to the eventual son that the organizers at CCCCT But these problems at the level globalization of capital? Second, chose to turn their heads to these of historiography are only a pro- do revolutions have within them a “bastards” of history, these “il- logue to deep contradictions in structural tendency towards more legitimate children,” in the hope the content of revolution itself. repressive social formations? That that it would throw new light on The first seminar of the series, is, as Forti frames it, does revolu- the modalities of political engage- held on 14 September was de- tion “hosts in its genetic code the ment and action in this age. voted to unpacking these contra- mark of terror and totalitarian- Moreover, what really is the dictions, and featured a panel dis- ism?” Even as a conceptual cate- point of a category like “revolu- cussion between Étienne Balibar, gory, does the radicality of the cri- tion”? “Revolution” signifies an Simona Forti, and Gayatri Spivak. tique that revolution embodies, in epochal, systemic shift in so- While each differed in their artic- its unconditional rejection of the cial and political structures that ulation of the concept and their status quo, produce a discourse bleeds into the fabric of everyday estimation of its potential in our that is so totalizing as to preclude life. While it might be useful in times, what evinced as a common any negotiation or even room for understanding past ruptures in thread in all their theorizations discussion? And third, as Balibar history, the future is always un- was the immense inertia that the argues, do revolutions only serve predictable, and especially so in concept itself had amassed over to establish a more powerful “pre- the liminal and effervescent mo- time. Haunted by the specters of ventive counter-revolution,” one ments of revolutionary time. If we its past iterations in history and that continuously anticipates can’t designate a state of affairs congealed in all the blood and revolution in order to neutralize as revolutionary until the ground wreckage wrought in its name, it, rendering it virtually impos- palpably shifts beneath our feet, revolution does not easily yield sible to manifest? The various di- then what use is the category in itself up to our aspirations for the mensions of revolution are often understanding and informing our present. so fraught that Harcourt wonders present struggles? If “revolution” Harcourt, the moderator of the “whether our engagement with is nothing but a historiographic panel, lays out the central ques- revolution is not an impediment operation that can only be per- tions that underpin their inter- to social action.” formed a posteriori, if it is but a rogations of the modern concept While not all scholars on the term applied to events only in of revolution in his prefatory blog panel shared Harcourt’s utter hindsight once the weight of their post. First, are revolutions neces- disenchantment with revolu- October Revolution, 1917, Soviet-poster – Source: http://gh2u.tumblr.com/post/53438774055/soviet-posters-october-revolution-1917 4 — — Fall no. 1 2017 Fall no. 1 2017 — — 5 editorial editorial tion, these critical contradictions revolutionary process and its ulti- inaugurated the dictatorship of to, in Balibar’s words, make the fective tension to interrogate the ality latent in revolutionary ac- weighed heavy on their appraisal mate goal: from war to summary Louis Bonaparte in 1851. Marx, program more “sexy,” it none- post-revolutionary pretensions of tion, with “The Declaration of the of the modern concept of revolu- executions, from to [sic] guillotine disillusioned with the outcome of theless entered into productive our own age. Rights of Man and of the Citizen” tion. This sense of disillusionment to concentration camps.” this revolution, famously charac- conversations with Koselleck’s Implicit to the problem of during the French Revolution. if not outright disappointment The second text that the pan- terized it as a farcical iteration of essay in the panelists’ reflections revolution is the equally fraught This bourgeois universalism of with revolution was also reflect- elists were responding to was the tragedy that the French Revo-

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