Remembering Catalonia: The Lesson of Die Thälmann-Kolonne

What I want to do today, briefly, is shine a light on the group in the war that is often pushed to the margins. You see, on the Republican side of the war were not simply Spaniards fighting the Fascist takeover of their homeland, but the International Battalions. People from all over the world who poured into Spain to try to stem the tide of Fascist takeover. Many people who know about the International Battalions know about the Abraham Lincoln Battalion – the American contingent, which was largely made up of Jewish men from New York and surrounding environs – and their history is fascinating and important. There was also a German contingent on the Republican side, and they’ve been an object of fascination for me recently. They were called the Thälmann Battalion.

Commentary, Written by: CameronCameron SummersApril 2, 2021History, Historiography, Spanish Civil WarComment

What is Modernity?

My worry is that, as alienating and bad as things are now, that the cessation of modernity might be followed by merely swapping one savagery for another. We like to believe that the world is growing less brutal and less violent, but the moral arc of the universe doesn’t bend towards justice: there is no arc. There is no absolute, inevitable progress. Everything that we get, we need to push for, fight for, argue for. It’s possible that the world might be a better and more just place if the modern era had never happened, but it has happened. If it is undone, it will most likely be undone through a great deal of suffering.

Enumerating the Future: Cancellation as Overload

There’s the brain bug that says that we can ignore the things we know will be happening in the future, because we don’t want to deal with it, and moreover says that planning for the desired outcome alone is fine. We habitually silo off our plans for the future. We could easily say that this means that there is no coherent future – or no future at all.

Cameron SummersJanuary 13, 2021The Hauntological, History, Historiography, FuturismComment

Living in the Burn Down

The world is burning down around us, and we’re going to work. We’re going to the grocery store and the laundromat and watching Netflix. We have no ability to productively imagine what we have to do in this situation, because the obvious option – taking to the streets, going on strike, making actual demands – are things that we have been conditioned not to do. We continue on as we have been, because the alternatives are either outright unimaginable or are the objects of horror and anti-fascination.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story: on Historiography

History is forever looking over her shoulder at fiction, denying the relation like the embarrassed, preppy child of hippies.

Pirating College, Written by: EdgarC.-E. BoylesAugust 12, 2020History, HistoriographyComment