“Unsettled Debts: 1968 and the Problem of Historical Memory” special issue of the International Journal of Communication. (Los Angeles: USC Annenberg Press, Oct 2022).

With a Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley, “Unsettled Debts” asks how we should orient to the contested past in order to foster decisive action in the present.

Back in 2018, the 50th anniversary of 1968 gave rise to a small industry devoted to commemoration. Scholars and journalists revisited that year’s insurgencies in dozens of essays and books, activists paid tribute to its emancipatory legacy in the streets, and companies exploited it on our screens. In one egregious display, Dodge Ram used an excerpt from a 1968 speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. to narrate a Super Bowl truck commercial. Within hours, a hijacked version of the ad circulated online, featuring the same speech but using an alternate excerpt, in which King denounced consumer society.

Such correctives defend the radicalism of an era that is distant yet unfinished. With each correction, however, we’re reminded that history is more than a record to set straight; it is a process of production in which we participate, where even our principled longings in the present can become obstacles to confronting our co-implication with the past.

How, then, might we revisit the “spirit of ’68” without succumbing to distorted forms of memory such as nostalgia and myth. Essays from Andrea Alarcon, Soledad Altrudi, Clementine Bordeaux, Frances Corry, Courtney Cox, MC Forelle, Paulina Lanz, Efren Lopez, Maga Miranda, Ly Thúy Nguyễn, Clare O’Connor, Adrien Sebro, and Loubna Qutami analyze media objects and moments from 1968 that have been activated in the service of contemporary social movements, obscured through superficial citation, or omitted from the record altogether. 

Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle, co-edited with Kelly Fritsch and AK Thompson. (Oakland: AK Press, 2016).

In Keywords (1976), Raymond Williams devised a “vocabulary” that reflected the vast social transformations of the post-war period. He revealed how these transformations could be grasped by investigating changes in word usage and meaning. Keywords for Radicals—part homage, part development—asks: What vocabulary might illuminate the social transformations marking our own contested present? How do these words define the imaginary of today’s radical left?  

With insights from dozens of scholars and troublemakers, Keywords for Radicals explores the words that shape our political landscape. Each entry highlights a term’s contested variations, traces its evolving usage, and speculates about what its historical mutations can tell us. More than a glossary, this is a crucial study of the power of language and the social contradictions hidden within it. 
Contributors include Himani Bannerji, Patrick Bond, Silvia Federici, John Bellamy Foster, Joy James, Miranda Joseph, Jaleh Mansoor, David McNally, Ilan Pappé, Mab Segrest, and over forty others.
 
“By extending Williams’ original project, Keywords for Radicals recognizes that language is both a weapon and a terrain of struggle, and that all of us committed to changing out social and material reality, to making a world justice-rich and oppression-free, cannot drop words such as ‘democracy,’ ‘occupation,’ colonialism,’ ‘race,’ ‘sovereignty,’ or ‘love’ without a fight.” 
—Robin D. G. Kelley
 
This keywords upgrade puts powerful weapons into revolutionaries’ hands. Indispensable.” 
—Jodi Dean
 
“A primer for a new era of political protest.” 
—Jack Halberstam
 
“Crafted by scholars and activists whose work has both influenced and inspired me, the succinct essays in Keywords for Radicals will be invaluable for political education workshops, reading groups, and classrooms. Drawing on first-hard experience in a wide range of movements, the genealogies that inform these investigations are sure to provoke insight and further the development of contemporary resistance struggles.” 
—Dean Spade
 
“Finally, a worthy successor to Williams!” 
—Stephen Duncombe