Like nuclear test isotopes, traces of psychiatric medication permeate the biosphere and our bodies. D. Kulchar, with an eye to both Mark Fisher and “Midsommar,” reflects on contradictions in collectivity and subjective suffering.
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Protean Magazine – Latest Articles
Three Sonnets [Today God is running late at the bus stop.]
J. David’s sonnet sequence explores the affective brutality of capitalism, concluding: “The world isn’t broken because / we suffer, the world is broken / because we believe it better than it is.”
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Children of the Nkalagu Mine
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, in “Children of the Nkalagu Mine,” visits a beautiful world in which the dream of African liberation—peace, environmental justice, and genuine democracy—has been realized.
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Ghost Story
David W. Pritchard’s “Ghost Story” catches a glimpse of Marx’s specter and the limits of poetry.
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There are Trees in the Future, Or, A Case for Staying
Lupita Limón Corrales writes with a lyrical reflection on her past year in Los Angeles—the destabilization of housing and health, and the stability recaptured in organizing and solidarity. “Space is malleable. Layers of meaning compete.”
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Gilded Rust: The Making of Buffalo’s Socialist Upset
C.M. Lewis examines the context and significance of India Walton’s historic win in the Buffalo mayoral primary. Years of neoliberal “revitalization” and naked cash grabs have set the stage for a spectacular socialist reprisal.
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Connolly and the Serpent: What the Left Misses on Modern Unions
C.M. Lewis of Strikewave draws on Rosa Luxemburg and Irish socialist James Connolly to revisit the debate around sectoral bargaining, pointing to weak spots in the modern left’s understandings that are inimical to building working-class power.
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The Disability Construct and Mental Illness in Future Societies
M.K. Anderson discusses the merits and limitations of the social model of disability and considers the challenges that even a better society could face in furnishing accommodations.
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OF
In “OF,” Palestinian poet and performance artist Fargo Tbakhi seethes against the violence of Israeli occupation and honors the vitality of Palestinian culture and resistance.
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The “Qonvention” Was Exorbitant and Depraved
Protean publisher Steven Monacelli managed to infiltrate a Dallas QAnon convention. He found that not only did it resemble a particularly warped evangelical religious revival, but also that the movement continues to come alarmingly close to actual power.
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