Bar-B-Que Utopia (in honor of July 4)

Stephen Duncombe

Dreaming of the ideal Bar-B-Que and its promise of class egalitarianism: in front of the grill man bonds with man, not over business or sport, but in the arts of familial nourishment and the sensually sublime pleasure of taste. (more)

I Want To Believe

Stephen Duncombe

Meditations on Another Iraq War Teach-In

Stephen Duncombe

I sat down this morning to write something for an Iraq war teach-in I was supposed to speak at and found that I had nothing to write. So I’ve written about this. What point can I make that hasn’t already been made? I’m a critic: I criticize, but what good does critique do now? (more)

Impossible Dreams

Stephen Duncombe

That the mainstream Left has forgotten how to dream is to state the obvious. Fortunately, there are political pioneers who dare to dream the impossible dreams of imagining a better tomorrow. The dreams of Reverend Billy and Subcomandante Marcos move past the real: they are absurd, irrational, and seemingly impossible. Like poems, they are a means to imagine new ends. (more)