What has the Left been, and what can it yet become?
Today is Sunday, March 14th, 2010
Manan Ahmed
TO QUOTE ALDOUS HUXLEY and to paraphrase Atiya Khan in her Platypus Review article “The poverty of Pakistan’s politics,”[1] I represent “a sad symptom of the failure of the intellectual class in time of crisis.” In Khan’s telling, it is the intellectual Left which failed (in) Pakistan, and under its sad banner now [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 1 comment | Continued
Pakistan and the Crisis of the International Labor Movement
Sunday December 6th at 2pm
International House, University of Chicago 1414 E. 59th Street
A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A bringing together three leading figures of the Pakistani labor movement to talk about workers rights, women’s rights, the struggle to organize in the shadow of the Taliban, and [...]
Atiya Khan
LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY PAKISTAN is marked by a sense of despair and helplessness. A report commissioned by the British Council based on research conducted by the Nielsen Company recently found that only a third of the Pakistanis surveyed thought democracy was the best system for the country, a ratio roughly equal to that preferring [...]
The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century
Toward a Theory of Historical Regression
IT MIGHT SEEM COUNTER-INTUITIVE to approach the date of 1968 through the political thought and self-understanding of Theodor Adorno, who is not only considered the most pessimistic in his critique, but also deemed an opponent of the New Left, especially after he infamously called the police on student demonstrators at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Yet Adorno’s response to the politics of 1968 can help us understand both the roots of New Left politics and its legacy today.
The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century
Toward a Theory of Historical Regression
On April 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive diremption of theory and practice over [...]
Left Forum 2009 “Turning Points”
April 17-19, 2009
Dialectics of Defeat: Towards a Theory of Historical Regression and
Politics of the Contemporary Student Left: Hopes and Failures
A teach-in, panel discussion and moderated audience Q&A on the failure of the Left in Pakistan.
Panelists
-Ayesha Siddiqa (author of Military Inc, Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy) on “Pakistan’s Military Economy”
-Manan Ahmed (University of Chicago) on “The Populism of the Bhuttos”
-Atiya Khan (Platypus, University of Chicago) on “The Vicissitudes of Leftist Politics in Pakistan”
Location
The School of the [...]
