Pop & Circumstance

The Get Down

Diamond-Dust Baroque Diamond-Dust Baroque

The Get Down, Baz Luhrman’s fairy-tale remix of the birth of hip hop, offers a glimpse of the beginning of the end of US power.

Sep 15, 2016 / Pop & Circumstance / Joshua Clover

Ieshia Evans in Baton Rouge

A Tale of Two Pictures A Tale of Two Pictures

Black Lives Matter resists definition and is full of contradictions, but that’s where its power lies.

Aug 8, 2016 / Pop & Circumstance / Joshua Clover

The Purge: Election Year

The Liberal Catechism The Liberal Catechism

The allegory in the latest installment of The Purge is pretty clear: Election 2016.

Jul 8, 2016 / Pop & Circumstance / Joshua Clover

Get Information

Get Information Get Information

Beyoncé’s “Formation” reflects today’s movement from black rage toward a racialized revolutionary politics.

Mar 9, 2016 / Pop & Circumstance / Joshua Clover

Flyers posted on a college noticeboard at Yale University, November 12, 2015.

Speechbros, Concern Trolls, and the Free-Speech Fraud Speechbros, Concern Trolls, and the Free-Speech Fraud

The anger over ceaseless racial threats has entwined with the recognition of campus as one more zone of unfreedom.

Dec 17, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

Abandoned newspaper vending machines, Covina, California, 2011.

Is Complicity Now the Entry Fee for Critique? Is Complicity Now the Entry Fee for Critique?

A new app brings clarity to an old situation: the collaboration between journalism and capitalism.

Oct 29, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

Don Draper Meditates

Our Mad Worlds Our Mad Worlds

We feel something has ended but nothing has begun. Perfect harmony is a magical, effervescent bubble.

Jun 19, 2015 / Pop & Circumstance / Joshua Clover

Financial Pop

Financial Pop Financial Pop

Money is sitting around in its sweatpants listlessly spooning peanut butter out of a jar.

May 6, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

Jobs and Empire

Jobs and Empire Jobs and Empire

The music of Empire is the theology of capitalism.

Apr 8, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

From Lenin to Lego

From Lenin to Lego From Lenin to Lego

Snowpiercer mocks what The Lego Movie cheers—a happy world of compulsory production.

Mar 24, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

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