Boston Review

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

I'm late to @johannawinant.bsky.social's wonderful essay. I love her practical, tactile guidance to students: "Point to a detail, one that’s really on the page and small enough to fit under your finger." Then you work out how that detail works with other details. Then you learn to make an argument.

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

"When offered a poem, and time, and attention, and good faith, my students offered their own arguments back as if they had been waiting their whole lives for the chance; they reciprocated my trust many times over." www.bostonreview.net/articles/the... by @johannawinant.bsky.social

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

Yes! An ode to close reading. (via @annehelen.bsky.social)

To Whom Does the World Belong? - Boston Review The battle over copyright in the age of ChatGPT.

“The prompt engineers who compiled The Urantia Book may have set legal precedent; Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra has already been cited in early AI copyright cases. The legal battles playing out may profoundly impact the balance of wealth and power in countless democracies in the decades ahead.”

Learning from the Luddites - Boston Review The key to an alternative is building a movement.

Brian’s been so good on this, I probably should’ve linked to him.

His book & newsletter are fantastic. Here’s one short example:

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

“Maybe the way to think about how to engage with enemies and friends alike is not in terms of drawing lines on the basis of some judgment of the balance of good versus evil present in a given case, but instead in terms of the direction in which our engagement moves us.”

Lorna Finlayson:

review article that places judith butler, sophie lewis, & andrea dworkin - three titans of anglosphere feminism and lightning rods of the heat and fire of its contemporary discourses among the commons - in conversation with each other by outlining the debate around women's consciousness & reaction

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

Few who use the term “gender ideology” seem to be quite sure what it means, but they don’t let that stop them—indeed, as Judith Butler points out, the vagueness enhances its phantasmic power.

Lorna Finlayson reviews WHO’S AFRAID OF GENDER?:

Excellent essay.

While focused on Trumps illegal and immoral murders, the arguments about law and morality seem to generalize. I couldn’t help but think of consent and immoral legal fictions, because that’s a project I’m working on, but I suspect you’ll think of others

The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public - Boston Review Trump’s actions are illegal, yes. Worse than that, they are wrong—precisely what the legality debate is meant to obscure.

“We are sold the myth that the language of legality is preferable to the language of morality because it is impartial and fixed. But as this whole dispute makes plain, that is least apt to be true precisely when it matters most.”

Joseph Margulies on Trump’s murders in the Caribbean:

Okay, ten seconds after I say it, I see Boston Review has said it WAY better.

In my opinion, this applies to pretty much any sort of change we want to make in any arena.

Appealing to philosophical values won’t build solidarity, but local communities might. - Boston Review Paulina Ochoa Espejo responds to Lea Ypi’s “The Real Border Crisis.”

“Workers should be internationalists—sure. But structures don’t spring automatically from cosmopolitan appeals. They must be painstakingly built upon people’s everyday practices.”

@pochoaespejo.bsky.social in our latest forum:

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

“Maybe the way to think about how to engage with enemies and friends alike is not in terms of drawing lines on the basis of some judgment of the balance of good versus evil present in a given case, but instead in terms of the direction in which our engagement moves us.”

Lorna Finlayson:

Both major parties in the United States have supported anti-migrant politics. - Boston Review Daniel Denvir responds to Lea Ypi’s “The Real Border Crisis.”

“Trump has been able to parlay anti-migrant politics into an authoritarian nightmare because Democrats have worked with Republicans to make it a problem as such. In short, anti-migrant politics has been actively supported at the highest levels of the two major parties.”

@danieldenvir.bsky.social:

Who’s Afraid of Frantz Fanon? - Boston Review Long decried by liberals and conservatives alike, the Martinican psychiatrist remains one of the most piercing critics of colonialism.

“Fanon’s bogeyman status reveals little about his thought, but it discloses a real tendency in his reception. More than almost any other 20th-century thinker, Fanon has been remembered and interpreted through his aphorisms, which are by turn lyrical, seductive, and arresting.” @samklug.bsky.social

The View from Besieged Beirut - Boston Review In the wake of exploding pagers, universalism plunges into the abyss.

“The shock of mutilated bodies was matched by the shock of the mundane source of the explosions—devices mostly used, these days, by medical professionals. My hospital alone received over 190 casualties. . . . New weapons are being perfected on lives deemed expendable.” @joelleabirached.bsky.social

Congratulations to contributors @joelleabirached.bsky.social and @samklug.bsky.social, whose 2024 essays “The View from Besieged Beirut” & “Who’s Afraid of Frantz Fanon?” are recognized as notable essays in the Best American Essays 2025, edited by Jia Tolentino and series editor Kim Dana Kupperman.

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

“My only chance to be believed is to find a way of writing bolder and stronger than woman hating itself—smarter, deeper, colder. This might mean that I would have to write a prose more terrifying than rape, more abject than torture.”

Andrea Dworkin, discussed in a review by Lorna Finlayson:

The Real Border Crisis - Boston Review The problem isn't immigration. It's the failure of liberal democracy itself.

“Migration is less a matter of free choice than the symptom of a broken order: people move because conditions in their homes have been made unlivable.”

@leaypi.bsky.social opens our latest forum:

The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public - Boston Review Trump’s actions are illegal, yes. Worse than that, they are wrong—precisely what the legality debate is meant to obscure.

“We are sold the myth that the language of legality is preferable to the language of morality because it is impartial and fixed. But as this whole dispute makes plain, that is least apt to be true precisely when it matters most.”

Joseph Margulies on Trump’s murders in the Caribbean:

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

“Thinking the world is going to the dogs because of immigrants or ‘gender ideology’ is a delusion. But is it more or less of a delusion than the liberal attitude that things were basically okay until circa 2016?”

Lorna Finlayson reviews Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin, and @reproutopia.bsky.social:

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

"All we needed was a poem, a few hours each week, and trust in what we could do, in what we did do, together." @johannawinant.bsky.social @bostonreview.bsky.social

www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

The Care Factory - Boston Review In the decades since the Wages for Housework movement, care work has become a site of profit in ways its leaders could never have predicted.

In 1974, Rose Craig had an idea. If factory workers could strike against their bosses by downing tools, then women should strike against the state by abandoning their dependents. “How much is it going to cost the government after four or five weeks?” she asked. “They’ll have to give in to you.”

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

Few who use the term “gender ideology” seem to be quite sure what it means, but they don’t let that stop them—indeed, as Judith Butler points out, the vagueness enhances its phantasmic power.

Lorna Finlayson reviews WHO’S AFRAID OF GENDER?:

Extraordinary text by Honora Spicer, situating context & origins of horrors of contemporary migrant detention at Fort Bliss in El Paso ("Camp East Montana"), exemplifying systematic abuses of Trump 2.0's campaign of persecution & terror vs migrant communities
www.bostonreview.net/articles/pro...

The Real Border Crisis - Boston Review The problem isn't immigration. It's the failure of liberal democracy itself.

In the latest forum of @bostonreview.bsky.social I wrote about migration, social class and the causes of displacement around the world. You can read the essay, the responses and the response to the responses online here & also subscribe to Boston Review!

The Claims of Close Reading - Boston Review Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.

I don't remember who I saw link to this, but it's one of the better essays on teaching that I've read (where "better" means, at least partly, giving voice to something close to, yet alien from, my own experiences of teaching).

Tainted Ladies - Boston Review Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

“We are living through an ugly period. It seems everyone you talk to has an incel acquaintance, a son obsessed with Andrew Tate, or an aunt with an unhealthy fixation on public toilets. Misogyny, not new so much as newly shameless, is all the rage.”

Lorna Finlayson in our latest issue:

The Real Border Crisis - Boston Review The problem isn't immigration. It's the failure of liberal democracy itself.

The new Boston Review Forum is out!
With a lead essay by Lea Ypi, and responses by Alexander Aleinikoff, Dara Lind, Daniel Denvir, Chandran Kukathas and Ayelet Shachar and me.

@bostonreview.bsky.social
@leaypi.bsky.social
@danieldenvir.bsky.social
@daralind.bsky.social