KPFA - Against the Grain

In his new book, Lawrence Grossberg describes ways of thinking that have laid the foundation for the development of contemporary Western theory. Two of the thinkers he writes about are Friedrich Nietzsche, who “rejected the enlightenments,” and Stuart Hall, a pioneer in the field of cultural studies. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 (Image on main page by Nick Youngson/Alpha Stock Images.) The post Nietzsche, Hall, and “Theory” appeared first on KPFA.

It was the first of its kind program of mass surveillance: the surreal, and initially-secret, deployment of an unmanned plane flying in circles over the city of Baltimore. Sociologist Benjamin Snyder discusses the Baltimore Police Department’s short-lived experiment in spying on the city’s residents. He reflects on how technologies like the spy plane are both embraced and feared by the public –- without a deeper awareness of how flawed they often are. Resources: Benjamin H. Snyder, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment UC Press, 2024 The post Baltimore’s Spy Plane appeared first on KPFA.

Classrooms are places where teaching happens. What if they were also places of healing and justice-seeking? Tessa Hicks Peterson describes educational approaches that foster well-being, empowerment, and critical thinking. She also emphasizes the need for trauma-informed pedagogical practices. Tessa Hicks Peterson, Liberating the Classroom: Healing and Justice in Higher Education Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025 The post Healing Higher Ed appeared first on KPFA.

It’s indisputably one of the most important works in history. Karl Marx’s Capital has been perennially embraced by those trying to understand and move beyond the capitalist system—and reviled in equal measure by those defending the established order. Yet, until now, English readers of the first volume of Marx’s magnum opus have not had access to the authoritative final version edited and approved by Marx himself. Paul Reitter and Paul North discuss their new translation, based on the last German edition of Capital. (Full-length presentation.) Resources: Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 Princeton University Press, 2024 The post Marx’s Capital appeared first on KPFA.

In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes gave rise to the gender surveillance that characterizes contemporary sports to this day. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024 The post The Nazi Origins of Gender Surveillance in Sports appeared first on KPFA.

In a California women’s prison, domestic violence survivors who killed their abusers in self-defense came together to practice a politics of mutual care, solidarity, and resistance. Rachel Leah Klein details the origins, efforts, and achievements of Convicted Women Against Abuse, situating their activities within the charged political context of the tough-on-crime 1990s. (Encore presentation.) Rachel Leah Klein, “Surviving domestic and state violence: Women’s prison organising and the gendered politics of solidarity” Gender & History (open-access through August 2024) (Image on main page by Ryan McGrady.) The post Criminalized Survivors Mobilize appeared first on KPFA.

Why has the term complicity become so ubiquitous in recent years? Are we all complicit in the system that we live under? What use, or uses, does the notion serve? These are questions that legal scholar Francine Banner poses. She makes the argument that the term bears different meanings, sometimes holding the powerful to account and other times looking for someone to blame, rather than focusing on systemic change. She considers the shifting modern use of complicity — shaped in part by problematic scholarship on the uncaring bystander — and sees parallels in how the legal system severely penalizes those for even peripheral involvement in crimes. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Francine Banner, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems UC Press, 2024 The post Interrogating Complicity appeared first on KPFA.

Is there such a thing as core gender identity? Are queer and trans people born that way? And what role does trauma play in shaping gender? Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and practice as well as queer and trans studies, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, each a clinician and NYU-based scholar, contest the notion that gender is fixed and innate. (Encore presentation.) Avgi Saketopoulou & Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity The Unconscious in Translation, 2023 (use discount code “KPFA” at checkout for 25% off until July 15) (Image on main page by Charles Hutchins.) The post Rethinking Gender appeared first on KPFA.

Jewish opposition to Israel, so visible recently through the spectacular actions of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, is not a recent phenomenon. Historian Marjorie Feld argues that what may seem like unprecedented criticism of Israel by U.S. Jews is part of a long tradition of dissent, which has been repressed by establishment Jewish organizations and frequently erased by historians. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism NYU Press, 2024 Photo credit: Marcy Winograd The post U.S. Jewish Anti-Zionism appeared first on KPFA.

How did residents of shack settlements in South African cities like Durban become a formidable political force? Yousuf Al-Bulushi lays out the operating principles, goals, and methods of Abahlali, one of the most well-known radical formations in all of Africa. Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City Palgrave Macmillan, 2024 (Image on main page by Dexs1991.) The post The Shack Dweller Movement appeared first on KPFA.

Over the last forty years, bottled water consumption has exploded. Once a rarefied item, global sales of bottled water dwarf every other beverage — totaling $300 billion a year. Environmental sociologist Daniel Jaffee argues that packaged water doesn’t only imperil our oceans and bodies with plastic waste, but undermines safe public water even more than water privatization. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Daniel Jaffee, Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice UC Press, 2023 The post Commodifying Water appeared first on KPFA.

In the years following the Russian Revolution, a popular resistance movement sprang up in Ukraine that drew its inspiration from a man named Nestor Makhno. Makhno went on to organize a seven-million-strong anarchist polity amidst the chaos and brutality of the Russian Civil War. Charlie Allison describes Makhno’s appeal, his political beliefs, and his rejection of Bolshevism. (Encore presentation.) Charlie Allison, No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno PM Press, 2023 (Image on main page by Oleh Kushch.) The post Ukrainian Anarchist appeared first on KPFA.

They struggled for public housing, public transport, and to reduce the police force. They fought to have access to public space, so cities were not just the playground of the wealthy. More than a century ago, workers battled for the public infrastructure that we take for granted, as part of a larger struggle for socialism. Historian Shelton Stromquist discusses how we live in those socialist cities today, which elites are struggling to return to private hands. Resources: Shelton Stromquist, Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism Verso, 2023 The post Fighting for Municipal Socialism appeared first on KPFA.

A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – December 11, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

Paul Reitter and Paul North discuss their new translation, based on the last German edition of Capital. The post Fund Drive Special: Marx’s Capital appeared first on KPFA.

Christopher Bache, a professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies, discusses his twenty-year psychedelic journey, which is described and interpreted in his book “LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven.” The post Fund Drive Special appeared first on KPFA.

Economist Rob Larson discusses the power and wealth of the capitalist class, how they rule, and how to fight against them. The post Fund Drive Special – The Ruling Class appeared first on KPFA.

The historian Kevin A. Young, author of “Abolishing Fossil Fuels,” on why the fight for the climate isn’t over. The post Fund Drive Special appeared first on KPFA.

Schools are underfunded. Parents often struggle with long working hours and too little social support. But corporations and tech companies, awash in money and power, promise to entertain and teach children with a near infinite array of devices, apps, and products. Psychologist Susan Linn discusses how those who least care for children have so much influence over their lives: marketing to kids through an avalanche of advertisements, collecting data about their private lives, and replacing their teachers in the classroom. Resources: Susan Linn, Who’s Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children New Press, 2023 Fairplay The post The Monetization of American Childhood appeared first on KPFA.

What if Earth were furious with humanity? What if revolutionaries took their cues from an unruly planet? Anne Stewart examines depictions of terrestrial upheaval and grassroots rebellion in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, and other works. (Encore presentation.) Anne Stewart, Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World University of Minnesota Press, 2022 The post Angry Planet appeared first on KPFA.