Robert Latham - Challenging the Right, Augmenting the Left - Recasting Leftist Imagination

Copyright 2020 authors

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Editing: Jenn Harris
Cover design: Evan Marnoch
Printed and bound in Canada

Published by Fernwood Publishing
32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0
and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3

www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Challenging the right, augmenting the left : recasting leftist imagination / edited by

Robert Latham, A.T. Kingsmith, Julian von Bargen and Niko Block.

Names: Latham, Robert, 1956- editor. | Kingsmith, A. T., 1989- editor. | Bargen, Julian von, 1982

editor. | Block, Niko, 1988- editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200163582 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200163612 | ISBN 9781773632292

(softcover) | ISBN 9781773632308 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773632315 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Right and left (Political science)

Classification: LCC JA83 .C37 2020 | DDC 320.5dc23

Contents

Contributors

Augmenting the Left:

Challenging the Right, Reimagining Transformation

Niko Block

Section 1 Engaging the Working Class

From a Struggle With to a Struggle Against Capitalism

Robert Latham

Jordan House

Bertell Ollman

Section 2 Organizing Class and Identity

Paul Kellogg

Beyond Northern Left Perspectives

Sedef Arat-Ko and Aparna Sundar

zgn E. Topak

Class Composition and Social Reproduction

Elise Thorburn and Gary Kinsman

Assya Moustaqim-Barrette

Section 3 Building Parties or Movements?

Herman Rosenfeld

Bruce Curtis and Justin Paulson

Lina Nasr El Hag Ali

Toward a Leftist Framework of Civil Liberties

Julian von Bargen

Section 4 Advancing Eco-socialism

David Ravensbergen

The Need for an Eco-socialist Paradigm on the Brazilian Left

Sabrina Fernandes

A Red-Green-Culturalist Approach

Javier Cuestas-Caza, Rickard Lalander, and Magnus Lembke

Section 5 Generating Cultural Interventions

Walter Benjamin and Operational Politics

AK Thompson

Terry Maley

William S. Jaques

Culture Jamming in the Age of General Anxiety

A.T. Kingsmith

Max Haiven

Augmenting the Left or Rethinking Progressive Politics?

Ronaldo Munck

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the various faculty and staff at the Ontario College of Art and Design University ( ocadu ) who helped facilitate and organize the workshop in Toronto, Augmenting the Left, that was the starting point for this volume. Special thanks go to b.h. Yael, who advanced the project at ocadu in its early stages and was an insightful participant at the workshop. We also recognize the insightful contributions of presenters at the workshop who do not appear in the volume, including Raju Das, Tim McCaskell, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Svitlana Matviyenko, Steve Maher, Karen Murray, Roni Gechtman, James Beirne, Tyler Chartrand, Scott Forsythe, Niloofar Golkar, and Karl Gardner.

Without the substantial support of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York, this project would not have been possible; we extend our gratitude to the staff and relevant committees that made that possible. We also received general support from the York Department of Politics and extend special thanks to its chair, David Mutimer, and administrative assistant, Margo Barreto. A number of other programs and departments at York also offered funding including: Social Science, Humanities, Social and Political Thought, Geography, and Sociology. The efforts of the staff and program directors from those units to extend such help is greatly appreciated.

At Fernwood Publishing, we thank Errol Sharpe, who early saw the worth of this project. It has been a great pleasure to get to know him and finally work directly with him.

Contributors

Sedef Arat-Ko is associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University.

Niko Block is a doctoral student in political science at York University. His writings have appeared in The Guardian , Canadian Dimension , New Internationalist , and Jacobin .

Javier Cuestas-Caza has a PhD in local development from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Organizational Studies and Human Development, Escuela Politcnica Nacional, Ecuador.

Bruce Curtis is professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University.

Sabrina Fernandes has a PhD in sociology from Carleton University and is currently a full collaborating researcher at the University of Braslia. She studies leftist organizing and revolutionary ecologies in Latin America. Her book on the fragmentation of the left has recently come out in Brazil.

Max Haiven is the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay where he co-directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab. His latest book, published in 2018, is Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization .

Jordan House is a PhD candidate in political science at York University and an instructor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University. His research interests include the political economy of prison and prison labour, non-union workers organizations, and labour movement renewal and strategy.

William S. Jaques is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University and an adjunct professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Humber College.

Paul Kellogg teaches in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University and is chair of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies.

A.T. Kingsmith is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University and a mental health researcher at the University of British Columbia Urban Studies Lab. He teaches at Ryerson University and has written widely on digital networks, anxiety capitalism, and the political economy of mental health.

Gary Kinsman is a long-time queer liberation, anti-poverty, and anti-capitalist activist in solidarity with Indigenous struggles. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers . He is professor emeritus at Laurentian University.

Rickard Lalander is an associate professor in Latin American studies, Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki. He also teaches in global development studies at Sdertrn University, Stockholm.