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January/February 2016

The New Nature

Jedediah Purdy leads a forum arguing that there is no longer a nature independent of human meddling—so how then, he asks, do we make that condition more democratic? Also, writing by Alisa Reznick on weaponized clean water  in Syria’s civil war, David G. Victor on university divestment from fossil fuels and more.

 

In our first forum of 2016, Jedediah Purdy accepts that there is no longer a nature independent of human meddling—so how then, he asks, do we make that condition more democratic? Alisa Reznick reports on how clean water is being used as a weapon in Syria’s civil war, and David G. Victor questions whether university divestment from fossil fuels really brings us closer to a greener future. In an arresting personal essay, Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey reports on an experiment in the humane raising and butchering of pigs. Also, Nick Bromell asks whether we should enshrine dignity as a critical democratic right, Robert Archambeau reviews two new collections from Charles Simic, and more.

Forum 

The New Nature

JEDEDIAH PURDY DEBATES

JO GULDI, JAIRUS GROVE, ROBERT PAARLBERG, ANDREAS MALM, DAVID KEITH, ANNA TSING, UGO MATTEI, VANDANA SHIVA, PAUL WALDAU, AND ROY SCRANTON.

Editors’ Note

Deborah Chasman and Joshua Cohen
 

Foundations

Dispatch: Weaponizing Syria’s Water
Alisa Reznick
Wonders: Rethinking Evolution
Anne Fausto-Sterling

Private Life

Pigs

Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

Fiction

The Visigoths
Olivia Clare

Books & Ideas

Carbon on Campus
David G. Victor
 
To Be and To Do: Giorgio Agamben’s L’uso dei corpi. Homo sacer, IV, 2
Leland de la Durantaye
 
Beyond Freedom and Equality: The Democratic Value of Dignity
Nick Bromell

On Poetry

Poet’s Sampler

Uyen Hua introduced by Chris Nealon

A Strange and Quiet Fullness: Charles Simic’s The Life of Images and The Lunatic
Robert Archambeau
 
The Volatile I: Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness
Johannes Goransson
New Poetry, February
Microreviews of Juan Felipe Herrera, Leopoldine Core, and more.
 

On Film

Blooming, Buzzing Experience: Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders
Alan A. Stone
 

Poems

Luminaires and The City of Fremont Streets Department
John Mullen
 
What Made it Good
Allyson Paty
 
These Miles
Aaron Coleman
 
Parade
Bret Shepard
 
moon as my witness and scrapers parody buddha
Amber Atiya
 
The Words,
Mark Irwin
 
want (18) and want (19)
Rusty Morrison
 
Oddities
Barbara Tramonte
 
 
 

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