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December 06, 2007

Book review: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

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An Italian translation of the English-language LOGOS review of Danny Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran was published in the Italian magazine RESET: Dialogues on Civilizations. An excerpt:

Il "liberalismo" nell'Iran di oggi è un concetto alquanto rivoluzionario: la lotta per i diritti umani, per i diritti delle donne, per le libertà civili, per il pluralismo, per la tolleranza religiosa, per la libertà di espressione e per una democrazia multipartitica in realtà non sono altro che un tentativo radicale di portare la libertà alla maggioranza degli iraniani che per secoli è stata sottoposta al giogo di varie forme di tirannia. Le forze progressiste, le ong e gli intellettuali possono fare molto di più che limitarsi ad opporsi a un'eventuale guerra in Iran: possono e devono sostenere attivamente il processo riformistico nel paese. L'appello di Postel in questo senso—nel suo ultimo libro Reading Legitimation Crisis in Iran (Prickly Paradigm Press)—è oltremodo utile e persuasivo.

Read the Italian review in RESET: Dialogues on Civilizations

Read the original LOGOS review

Learn more about Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

November 06, 2007

Books in the News: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

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Danny Postel will appear on Chicago's WYCC-TV20 television program "Front & Center with John Callaway" on Friday, November 9th at 4:00pm. He will discuss "Iran: the Next Military Frontier?" as a member of a pre-recorded panel discussion at the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago. An extended 90-minute version of the program can viewed on the Pritzker Military Library website.


The Pritzker Military Library presents Front and Center with John Callaway
Learn more about Danny Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

October 22, 2007

Commentary: Danny Postel

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Danny Postel wrote a hard-hitting editorial this weekend on the blog of fellow Prickly Paradigm author Rick Perlstein: In "Terrorism Awareness Indeed," he discusses the barely acknowledged political partnership between American neoconservatives and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq or MEK, an extremist Iranian political party that has been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department. Postel incisively punctures a hole in American Right's denunciations of "Islamo-fascism", revealing that right-wing conservatives actually are supporting what they claim to fight against:


Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no?

Well, no. At least one of the carnival's acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department's list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. . . .

But the fact that several prominent American conservatives have cozied up to an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam's payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization—this raises serious questions (to put it mildly) about the Right's bedfellows and the calculus that determines them.


Read Danny Postel's full article

Learn more about Danny Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

October 16, 2007

Review: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

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Danny Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran was recently reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Society and Culture:

In Persian there is a piece of proverbial wisdom that praises a statement, a report, an analysis, or even a book, for being brief—and thereby beneficial. To a person who is not getting to the point, Iranians politely plead to be "brief and beneficial." Danny Postel's book, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran, does a good deal of justice to this Persian wisdom by succinctly broaching very important issues about the current political struggle in Iran and the attitude of western progressive forces to it. . . .

This is very timely book that addresses a crucial question in our time, namely, the solidarity and sympathy that the progressive forces in the west and the United States can extend to their counterparts in Iran. The progressive forces, the NGOs, and intellectuals can do much more that just opposing a war in Iran; they can and should actively get involved in supporting the reforms in Iran. Postel's plea in this direction is quite helpful and persuasive. We can fruitfully compare the current situation of Iran to that of the last years of Soviet time and the failure of the progressive forces in the west to support the movement of the people in the Soviet societies and the disastrous consequences thereof. Hence the importance of Postel's warning and plea.

Read the full Logos review
Learn more about Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

September 24, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Danny Postel recently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian imploring readers to consider more nuanced views of Iran's President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University and the U.N than have been discussed in the American media.

Rather than support vitriolic nationalism, Postel, following Foucault and Sartre, suggests that Americans should remember "our real Iranian friends"; that is, the various non-governmental leaders who have been struggling for democracy and rights.

Read Postel's Commentary

Learn More about Postel's Book

Review and Interview: Enemies of Promise

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Antonio Gonçalves Filho recently reviewed Enemies of Promise: Publishing, Perishing, and the Eclipse of Scholarship and interviewed author Lindsay Waters in Estadão, a Brazilian newspaper:

Lindsay Waters, executive editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, has issued a challenge to academics and publishers: to publish less, with more relevance. . . . Waters criticizes the "publish-or-perish" mentality that has produced an avalanche of books of little or no importance.

Read the Review and Interview (in Portuguese)

Learn More about the Book

September 14, 2007

Phantom Calls

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Gelf Magazine recently interviewed Grant Farred, author of Prickly Paradigm's Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA.

Farred discusses the demise of ESPN's "athletic intelligence" and the importance of intelligent sports talk. As Gelf Magazine explains the interview, "Farred . . . speaks with Gelf about how ESPN has devolved over the last seven years, why some of its content is 'just crap,' and how the landscape of sports media has shifted."

Read the Interview in Gelf Magazine

Learn More about the Book

August 15, 2007

Author Event: Prickly Paradigm

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Prickly Paradigm is presenting an author event with four of its authors this Thursday, August 16th, 7:00pm, at the Book Cellar on Lincoln Square, 4736-38 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.

Danny Postel will present Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran.

Labor lawyer and American Prospect columnist Tom Geoghegan will discuss his book The Law in Shambles.

Journalist Rick Perlstein will discuss his pamphlet The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party.

Anthropologist Matti Bunzl will be discussing his hot-off-the-presses volume Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe.

Prickly Paradigm Press conceives of its mission as follows:

The old-time pamphlet is back, with some of the most challenging intellectual work being done today. Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC is devoted to giving serious authors free rein to say what's right and what's wrong about their disciplines and about the world, including what's never been said before. The result is intellectuals unbound, writing unconstrained and creative texts about meaningful matters.

Learn More about Prickly Paradigm Press

July 03, 2007

Author Event: Paul Werner

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Paul Werner, author of Museum, Inc., will be interviewed this coming Sunday, July 8th, at 10:00am (AEST - Australia Eastern Standard Time) on Artworks, a radio show from ABC Radio National in Australia.

Audio of the show will be available from the Artworks site

Learn More about the Book

June 05, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel in London

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UPDATE:

Listen to an mp3 of the Event

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Danny Postel will discuss his book Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran on Thursday, May 31st from 1pm to 2pm in London, England. The event is located at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA), 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ.

Postel will be joined by two panelists:

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, senior research associate, London Middle Eastern Institute, SOAS,
Mary Kaldo, director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE.

The event will be chaired by Benjamin Ramm, editor of the Liberal.

Please email lectures@rsa.org.uk or visit www.theRSA.org/events for reservations.

Learn More about Postel's Book

May 18, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Danny Postel recently wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian on the arrest of Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. Esfandiari travelled to Iran to visit her sick mother and had been barred from leaving the country since last December.

Postal argues, "Esfandiari's arrest is but the latest chapter in a crackdown on intellectuals and writers in Iran over the last year."

Learn More about Postel's Book

Read the Article in the Guardian

February 28, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Danny Postel, Jan Schakowsky, Ahmad Sadri, and Colonel Douglas A. Macgregor are speaking at Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston Campus, Annenberg Hall, Room G21 on Friday, March 2nd at 7:00p.m. to discuss "Averting an Attack on Iran."

Danny Postel is senior editor of the London-based magazine openDemocracy and contributing editor to Dædalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a member of the Committee for Academic and Intellectual Freedom of the International Society for Iranian Studies.

Jan Schakowsky is serving her fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Illinois' 9th Congressional District. A founding member of the Out-of-Iraq Caucus, she serves in the House Democratic Leadership as Chief Deputy Whip and as a member of the Steering and Policy Committee, and was recently appointed to the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

Ahmad Sadri is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College and is a founding member of the Organization for the Advancement of Human Rights and Democracy, a recently-formed umbrella coalition of all of Iran's major reform-oriented groups. He is co-editor of Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, the definitive source in English of the work of Iran's leading religious reformist thinker.

Douglas A. Macgregor is a retired Army Colonel and a decorated Gulf War combat veteran currently working as an independent defense and foreign policy consultant with the firm Glenside Analysis, Inc., based in Ashburn, Virginia. He is the author of Transformation under Fire: Revolutionizing How America Fights (2003) and Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century (1997).

Northwestern University
2120 Campus Drive
Evanston Campus
Annenberg Hall
Room G21

For more information call (847) 673-0614 or e-mail kendy@kendis.com

Learn More about the Postel's Book

February 27, 2007

Review: Revolt of the Masscult and Prickly Paradigm Press

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The Unsullied and Undismayed blog recently posted an entry on Chris Lehmann's Revolt of the Masscult: "This little pamphlet Revolt of the Masscult was an interesting read. Easy to read in a brief sitting and thoughtful. . . ."

The post goes on to praise Prickly Paradigm's whole series of pamphlets for their accessibility.

Read the Post

See a listing of all of Prickly Paradigm's pamphlets

February 16, 2007

Reviews: Museum, Inc. by Paul Werner

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Museum, Inc. continues to find support among the anti-Krens and anti-consumerist crowds. In "Museums, Art, and the Rackets" Paula Rabinowitz uses Werner's pamphlet to expand on the concept of the museum as mall.

Ian Wedde writes in The Listener on New York's artworld. He credits Werner's analysis of the relationship between art and money.

Read Paula Rabinowitz on Solidarity's Web Site

Read The Listener

Learn More about the Book

February 12, 2007

Review: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

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Scott McLemee recently reviewed Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran and interviewed author Danny Postel in Inside Higher Ed. McLemee and Postel emphasize the importance and urgency of the American Left supporting Iranian dissidents. Postel situates his remarks against the neo-conservatives' false-support for Iranian dissidents and their interest in an American attack on Iran: "It is we [the left-liberals and intellectuals] who stand in solidarity with Iranian human rights activists and student protesters and dissident intellectuals, not the Bush administration or the American Enterprise Institute."

Read the Full Review

Postel is also discussed at Soft Skull

Learn More about the Book

January 31, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel at Stop Smiling

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On Friday, February 2nd at 7:00 pm at the editorial offices of Stop Smiling, Danny Postel will discuss "The Necropolitical Imagination" or Michel Foucault's complex interaction with the Iranian Revolution. The discussion will be based on a section from Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism and will be followed by a conversation between Postel and Stop Smiling editor J. C. Gabel.

Stop Smiling is located at 1371 N. Milwaukee Ave, about halfway between the North/Damen and Ashland/Milwaukee Blue Line stops in Chicago. Don't miss it!

Find out more about Stop Smiling

Learn More about the Book

January 10, 2007

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Tomorrow, January 11th at 6:00 pm, Danny Postel will discuss contemporary Iranian politics within the context of his pamphlet recently published by the Prickly Paradigm Press, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism. Postel's talk is part of an ongoing series at the U of C's Center for International Studies, The World Beyond the Headlines and will be held on the U of C campus at the International House Home Room, 1414 E. 59th St. Don't miss it!

The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A "liberal renaissance," as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in his pamphlet, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism Danny Postel charts the contours of this intellectual upheaval.

Find out more about The World Beyond the Headlines Series at the Center for International Studies
Learn More about the Book

December 18, 2006

Review: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

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Danny Postel's new pamphlet Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran from Prickly Paradigm Press continues to have an impact on those interested in Iranian politics, sensible foreign relations, and the opportunities for liberalism there. As Doug Ireland notes on his DIRELAND blog, ". . . if you're truly interested in Iran, you should read it . . . ."

Read the Review

Visit The Postel Service, Danny Postel's Site

Learn More about the Book

December 14, 2006

Review: Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran by Danny Postel

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Joshua Glenn has written a plug for Danny Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran from Prickly Paradigm Press. With Iran in the news nearly every day, Postel's pamphlet is sure to engage, as Glenn describes, "I read the pamphlet every morning before work last week, on the subway; couldn't put it down! Great stocking stuffer. . . ."

The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A "liberal renaissance," as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in this pamphlet, Danny Postel charts the contours of the intellectual upheaval.

Read Glenn's Braniac Blog from the Boston Globe

Visit The Postel Service, Danny Postel's Site

Learn More about the Book

December 11, 2006

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Dany Postel, senior editor of OpenDemocracy, will discuss his new book Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran from Prickly Paradigm Press on Saturday, December 16th at 6:00pm. The discussion will take place at the New World Resource Center, 1300 N. Western Avenue at the corner of Western and Potomac in Chicago (one block north of Division).

Visit OpenDemocracy

Visit The Postel Service, Danny Postel's Site

Learn More about the Book

December 04, 2006

Author Event: Danny Postel

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Danny Postel, author of the Prickly Paradigm Press title Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism, is participating in a panel on "Iran and the Left" sponsored by In These Times and openDemocracy. The panel includes Janet Afary, author of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution and president of the International Society for Iranian Studies, as well as Nader Hashemi, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of political science at Northwestern University. The panel will be moderated by Christopher Hays, senior editor of In These Times and contributor to The Nation.

The dialogue will take place at In These Times, 2040 N. Milwaukee Ave., Tuesday, December 5th at 7:00pm.

Visit openDemocracy.org

Visit In These Times

Learn More about Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran

September 07, 2006

Update: Ramin Jahanbegloo Released

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Ramin Jahanbegloo was released from prison in Tehran, where he had been held since April 27th, 2006.

For more information on Jahanbegloo, please follow the links below:

Our initial post concerning Jahanbegloo

News article on Jahanbegloo's release from the Washington Post

Open Democracy's take on the events surrounding Jahanbegloo's release

Maclean's analysis of events

Danny Postel's Site

Jahanbegloo und Postel auf Deutsch

Noch eine andere Deutsche Übersetzung

A Serbo-Croatian Translation of Jehanbegloo and Postel

Learn more about Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism

July 21, 2006

Author Event: Danny Postel Interviews Ramin Jahanbegloo

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Logos recently posted a conversation with Ramin Jahanbegloo and Danny Postel. The discussion is an excerpt from Postel's forthcoming Reading Legitimation Crisis in Iran (Prickly Paradigm Press).

Jahanbegloo and Postel discuss the prospects for liberalism in Iran, illuminating the history of philosophy in Iran and demonstrating the possibilities for the growth of an Iranian civil society opposed to the authoritarianism of the "revolutionary model" of citizenship.

Not long after the conversation, on April 27th, 2006, Jahanbegloo was arrested at the Tehran airport and imprisoned without charges.

Read the Conversation

Read the Open Letter regarding Jahanbegloo's imprisonment

Learn more about Postel's Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism

July 11, 2006

Review: Museum, Inc.

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Paul Werner's Museum, Inc. recently received praise from Zeke's Gallery. In short form, "Museum Inc. is a wicked cool book."

Paul Werner draws on his nine years at the Guggenheim Museum to reveal that contemporary art museums have not broken radically with the past, as often claimed. Rather, Werner observes, they are the logical outcome of the evolution of cultural institutions rooted in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the colonial expansion of the liberal nation-state, and the rhetoric of democracy.

Read the full Review

Learn more about the Book

May 24, 2006

Author Event: Rick Perlstein

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Rick Perlstien, author of The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party, appeared on Berkeley's Pacifica Radio on Sunday, May 21st. The discussion ranges from blogs to politics and the relation between the two. Perlstein advocates looking for the best of blogs and fact-based blogging, before pre-judging all blogs as inherently low in veracity. He also discusses the future of a progressive Democratic party in the face of the dominant Republican machine.

Visit Pacifica Radio

Learn More About The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo

May 17, 2006

Review: Paul Werner, Museum, Inc.

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Paul Werner's Museum, Inc. continues to amuse and inform. Carlin Romano, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, praises Werner's tract on the corporatization of the museum:

. . . [T]his little screed is relentlessly brilliant, hilarious, dead-on and hyperwitty. Werner writes like Vanity Fair critic James Wolcott on speed (while channeling philosopher of art Arthur Danto), and since the Vanity Fair critic produces more metaphors stone sober than the New York Times manages in a month, this makes for a wild ride.

Read Romano's Review

Learn More about Museum, Inc.

March 15, 2006

Review: Paul Werner, Museum, Inc.

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Paul Werner's Museum, Inc. has been raising eyebrows, lately. While Werner's criticisms are generally praised as pointing to significant issues with the corporate-style governance of the Guggenheim, some think he has gone too far. Brian Sholis remarks in his In Search of the Miraculous blog, "Every flash of insight Museum, Inc. presents is undercut by rhetorical overkill, often in the very same paragraph." After complaining that Werner offers no solutions to his criticisms of the Guggenheim, Sholis goes on to say, "I cannot recommend reading it."

Others are enthusiastically in favor of Werner's pamphleteering skills. The New York Arts Exchange was ecstatic, "I scarfed down Paul Werner's latest book Museum, Inc: Inside the Global Art World like a bag full of Reese Pieces, completely oblivious to quantity or time--what a treat. And what catharsis."

Todd Gibson writes in From the Floor that, "Museum, Inc. takes its share of cheap shots (many of which are spot on and quite funny), but it also makes a serious case.... [F]or those interested in the current state of the art in museum management, Werner leads an interesting tour through the museum that has embraced corporate models for growth more openly than any other."

Learn More about Museum, Inc.

March 06, 2006

Author Event: Paul Werner

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Paul Werner, author of Museum, Inc., is giving a lecture at the Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, New York, NY 10002 on Saturday, March 25 at 7:00pm.

It's no secret that art and business have always mixed, but their relationship today sparks more questions than ever. Museum, Inc. describes the new art conglomerates from an insider's perspective, probing how their roots run deep into corporate culture.

Visit the Bluestockings Site for more information on the event.

Paul Werner's Museum, Inc. Site

February 15, 2006

Author Event: Tom Geoghegan, Law in Shambles

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Tom Geoghegan, author of the Prickly Paradigm pamplet Law in Shambles, will be speaking at 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th Street, in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood on February 22nd at 7pm. Geoghegan will be joined in conversation by journalist Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm and The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo.


Geoghegan convincingly explains in Law in Shambles how the 2000 presidential election was only the first sign that justice is now driven by party politics. He notes how even lawyers are becoming disillusioned with the law, as federal cases are increasingly determined by whether they are heard by a Bush-appointed judge or a Clinton-appointed judge.


Geoghegan ultimately contends that the sense of disorder in our legal system has never been greater, and we may no longer have the basic civic trust necessary to preserve the rule of law.


More details on the event


Read more about Law in Shambles

January 30, 2006

Free Prickly Paradigms

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Are you committed to the unconventional? Are you in need of free, clearly written arguments in anthropology, critical theory, philosophy, or politics that shake up the status quo? Prickly Paradigm is offering full .pdf's of its early pamphlets for download. Now you have a chance to read what you have been missing from this provocative press with essential tracts from Marshall Sahlins, Bruno Latour, Derek Nystrom and Kent Puckett (conversing with Richard Rorty), Deirdre McCloskey, Thomas Frank, Michael Silverstein, Donna Haraway, Eliot Weinberger, and David Graeber.


Visit Prickly Paradigm