Mike Davis: Election 2016
Opening an NLR symposium on the US transition, Mike Davis argues the vote was not a critical realignment but a razor-thin margin for the Republican, mobilizing rustbelt discontent while locking in the Christian right.

JoAnn Wypijewski: Politics of Insecurity
Exploration of the fractured subjectivity, racialized legacies and multiple, entwined insecurities of the American working class—the millions taken for granted by Clinton, relentlessly wooed by her opponent.

Dylan Riley: American Brumaire?
The electoral watersheds of 2016 signalled a rejection of the global-neoliberal formula of rule, but no viable establishment alternative exists. In its absence, Riley argues, Trump may offer a neo-Bonapartist substitute for a coherent hegemonic project.

Alexander Zevin: De Te Fabula Narratur
The electoral appeal of protectionism to exploited subjects of a superannuated empire, pinched by overseas competition: for Trump, read Joseph Chamberlain, monocled rabble-rouser of 1905 and scandalizer of liberal England’s free-trade consensus?

Perry Anderson: Passing the Baton
Leaving the White House with record ratings, why couldn’t Obama’s efforts secure it for his former Secretary of State? The legacy that helped Trump into office—and prospects for America’s newest left.

Göran Therborn: Dynamics of Inequality
Behind the political upsets in the Atlantic world lie far-reaching shifts in the distribution of global wealth. Göran Therborn assesses the path-breaking research of Branko Milanovic on world income trends.

Carlos Spoerhase: Beyond the Book
From Mallarmé to Valéry, Benjamin to El Lissitsky and Moholy-Nagy, theorizations of the challenge posed to Gutenberg’s medium by the relentless typographical innovations of the new mass media.

Hito Steyerl: On Games
Have algorithms and data-farming short-circuited relations between computers, games and the economy, to create a world of involuntary play—and can critical art practice suggest ways to turn the tables?

Cinzia Arruzza: Italy’s Refusal
Hailed for bucking the trend of electoral collapse for the neoliberal centre left, Matteo Renzi’s PD suffered an ignominous defeat in his December 2016 referendum. Cinzia Arruzza explains why.

Marco D'Eramo: They, The People
Marco D’Eramo on Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? German contribution to a burgeoning genre on opponents of the liberal order.

Peter Rose: Secrets of the Ancients?
Peter Rose on Josiah Ober, Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Athenian culture attributed to the ‘democracy and growth package’ of the polis.

Jeffery Webber: Social Theory from the South
Jeffery Webber on Maristella Svampa, Debates Latinoamericanos. Cartography of the continent’s social thought.