I’m Nick Mirzoeff, a writer, teacher and critic in the areas of visual and cultural studies.
With this project, I intend to write and think about Occupy each day of 2012. It is a challenge to myself to continue the work that the Occupy movement has begun in rethinking our political economy and culture.
Following the evictions of November 2011, many people have assumed that the Occupy movement is “over.” Others have argued that it will have to develop a traditional hierarchical leadership or create a relationship to the Democractic Party (in the US) or other established vertical organizations.
While I think that many of us in the movement would find such outcomes disappointing, there’s no point in pretending that there are not serious difficulties ahead. This durational project is designed in part to generate persistence with this challenge from my own perspectives: critical visuality studies, cultural politics, the political economy of climate change and the transforming of both political and intellectual practice.
I’m using this blog as its home, rather than a public platform like Facebook, so that it can appear as a continuous project and so that readers can visit it occasionally, rather than having it pushed towards them every day. That said, anyone who wants to get it on a daily basis can sign up for email or RSS delivery on the home page.
Please feel free to comment on the project as a whole or any individual post: I’ll do my best to reply as soon as possible.
Just came across your blog or whatever it is. Not being particularly computer literate or internet knowledgable at 67 years I’m not exactly sure how to use it.
This is just a note to say how remarkable it was to see your comments on C. Osborne Ward’s great work, “The Ancient Lowly.” How my father, who would now be 113 loved that book and how often he urged me to read it as the real history of the class struggle for democracy and freedom that those on the bottom have waged for thousands of years.
That’s a lovely recollection, Wayne, and I am so pleased to learn this piece of history from you:)
great posts, thoughts, theories, Nick.
I find your musings and observations on after post colonialism and visuality.
best wishes and amazing work.
good stuff. enjoyed Mafia Capitalism piece.
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Good job. I’m interested in running some of your work in The Cynical Times. We’re a nonprofit news website for the faltering middle class. Please get back to me when you have a chance… Victor
Great project, Nick! My New Year’s Day took me to the Annual Poetry Reading at St. Marks on the Bowery, where Patti Smith also made a late evening appearance. OWS was on the lips of more than one poet, and I read Jim Behrle’s essay, “Occupy American Poetry” in the Poetry Project Newsletter on the subway ride home. It was great to see the greyest of beards and the tight-pantest of hipsters all on the same page, so to speak, renewing Downtown’s radical spirit.
Tavia, I would love to read that essay, I’ll look it up now. Patti Smith is a great reader, whether of her own poetry or others’. Her performance of the “Holy” section of “Howl” was astonishing. It seems that the movement is becoming what it said it wanted to be : decentered:)
thanks JP!
this is a great topical terrain for you to be grazing in nick.
010112 was a solid entry.
i look foreword to to dropping in on your observations & thank you for not using facebook.
I second that thank you for not using Facebook. The dude is a part of the upper, upper 1%. I continue to look for an alternative and thought-provoking reading is a good one.