Ruth First (1997/2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, africa, apartheid, biography, communism, democracy, journalism, politics, race, south africa

“The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the ‘voices of liberation’ were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.
The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. The series offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy.
This volume presents a brief biography of Ruth First, followed by a selection of her writings as a political activist, scholar and journalist. The book presents a timeline summary of significant events in Ruth’s life within the context of major socio-political events of the time. It concludes with a reflection on her legacy from a current perspective and offers a further reading list.”
Compiled by Don Pinnock
Publisher HSRC Press, Cape Town, 1997
Second edition, 2012
Voices of Liberation series, 2
Open access
ISBN 9780796923592
vii+182 pages
Commentary: Ruth First: lessons for a new generation of African scholars (Tebello Letsekha, DEP, 2014).
Ruth First Papers
PDF chapters (bibliography missing)
single PDF (complete)
Identities, Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, 11: The Future of the Idea of the Left (2015)
Filed under journal | Tags: · capitalism, community, democracy, economy, left, marxism, metaphysics, philosophy, politics, theory

Identities “is a peer reviewed international journal that seeks to serve as a platform for the theoretical production of Southeastern Europe and enable its visibility and an opening for international debate with authors from both the ‘intellectual centers’ and the ‘intellectual margins’ of the world. It is particularly interested in promoting theoretical investigations which see issues of politic, gender and culture as inextricably interrelated.”
With contributions by Jacques Rancière, Katerina Kolozova, Oxana Timofeeva, Craig Gent, Creston Davis, Artan Sadiku, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Tibor Rutar, Zdravko Saveski, and Richard Seymour.
Edited by Katerina Kolozova and Žarko Trajanovski
Publisher Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje, 2015
Open Access
ISSN 1857-8616
129 pages
The Birth of Digital Populism: Crowd, Power and Postdemocracy in the 21st Century (2015) [EN, IT]
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, degrowth, democracy, internet, italy, politics, populism, power, web

“The Five Star Movement led by Grillo & Casaleggio had an unexpected success in the Italian general elections of February 2013, deeply disrupting the panorama of Italian politics. This book seeks to explore some of the features characterising the emergence of a new political phenomenon: digital populism. We asked Italian and English thinkers from different political and disciplinary backgrounds to contribute to an analysis of some fundamental points behind the rise of populism and the digital relations between masses, power and democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The book features nine interviews carried out between May 2013 and February 2014 with Luciana Parisi, Tiziana Terranova, Lapo Berti, Simon Choat, Godani Paul, Saul Newman, Jussi Parikka, Tony D. Sampson and Alberto Toscano.”
Published in January 2015
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
84 pages
Five Star Movement on Wikipedia
Editors
PDF: English, Italian
Issuu: English, Italian