Platypus in Halifax Platypus Affiliated Society, Dalhousie University Chapter
Short Course Introducing Platypus
5pm thursdays dalhousie university club pub What is progress if not the absolute elaboration of humanity’s creative dispositions. . . unmeasured by any previously established yardstick[,] an end in itself. . . the absolute movement of becoming? – Karl Marx on “becoming” (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58) Week I: 28 Feb 2013 • Epigraphs on modern history and freedom [...]
PR #51: THE ELECTION ISSUE
November 2012 Election 2012: An interview with Jill Stein Spencer A. Leonard with Edward Remus On November 3, 2012, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed 2012 Green Party candidate Jill Stein. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. Spencer Leonard: You have written that, “It is time for the Left to be realistic about how [...]
Democracy and the Left
14 November 2012 Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Audio Link (click here) Panelists: Matthew Furlong (Foundation Year and Contemporary Studies Programme, King’s University) David Howard (Historical and Critical Studies, NSCAD University) John Hutton (student activist, Dalhousie) Clare O’Connor (Toronto activist and author) From the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs to the question of “sovereign debt”; [...]
Platypus Review #50
October 2012 “These Petrified Relations Must be Forced to Dance”: An Interview with Dick Howard by Douglas La Rocca and Spencer A. Leonard On August 22, 2012, Douglas La Rocca and Spencer A. Leonard of Platypus interviewed Dick Howard, professor emeritus at Stony Brook University and the author of The Specter of Democracy: What Marx [...]
Does Marxism Even Matter?! (Teach-In)
A teach-in on the Communist Manifesto Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society at Dalhousie Part of the NSPIRG Alt-101 Radical Frosh Series Thursday 7pm | September 20, 2012 Room 302, Student Union Building, Dalhousie University In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a ‘specter’ was haunting Europe — [...]
PLATYPUS REVIEW #49
September 2012 From Habakkuk to Locke: The non-peculiarity of the English Glorious Revolution by David Black T. J. Clark, in “For A Left With No Future,” compares the “immobilized” state of the present-day Left with the impasse of Enlightenment radicals in the years between the Restoration of 1815 and the Revolutions of 1848. He argues [...]
Which way forward for sexual liberation?
Thursday, 13 September 2012 Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Audio link: (click here) A conversation concerning the history and legacy of the struggles for sexual liberation. What successes and setbacks have shaped the prospect for LGBTQ and feminist organizing today? Panelists: Karin Cope, Professor of Historical and Critical Studies, NSCAD Kevin Kindred, Nova Scotia [...]
Platypus summer 2012: Trotsky and Trotskyism
Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia (Summer 2012) Links to readings and lectures below Recommended preliminary readings: + Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980) + Nicolas Krassó, “Trotsky’s Marxism” (1967) • Platypus Historians Group, “The dead Left: Trotskyism” (2008) • Richard Rubin, “The decline of the Left [...]
What’s next for the Quebec Left?
A roundtable on the Quebec Left following the student strike / Une table ronde sur l’avenir de la Gauche québecoise à la lumière de la grève étudiante Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society / Présenté par la Platypus Affiliated Society Monday 6pm | June 18, 2012 / Lundi, 18 heures / le 18 juin 2012 [...]
PLATYPUS REVIEW #46
May 2012 Marx and Liberalism: An interview with Domenico Losurdo Pam C. Nogales C. and Ross Wolfe On March 17, 2012, Ross Wolfe and Pam Nogales of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Domenico Losurdo, the author, most recently, of Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation… Changes in art [...]