National Culture and the Fight for Freedom

February 28, 2017 Frantz Fanon

Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.

Three years ago at our first congress I showed that, in the colonial situation, dynamism is replaced fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes of the colonizing power. The area of culture is then marked off by fences and signposts. These are in fact so many defense mechanisms of the most elementary type, comparable for more than one good reason to the simple instinct for preservation.

We Don't Want To Be Emperors...

February 20, 2017 Alexander Billet and Craig E. Ross

The very idea of “President’s Day” has always been a farce. But in the age of Trump the idea of celebrating the American presidency’s unchecked power just feel bitterly ironic. Red Wedge isn’t the only one feeling this irony; today, in several cities, “Not My President’s Day” rallies are taking place.

When our editorial board adapted the text below and designed its accompanying image, it was intended as a reward for our fall fundraising drive (which we are in the process of mailing out as we write this). It is now available exclusively to anyone who joins the Red Wedge Patron program at ten dollars or more each month.

Anti-Fascist Protest Targets MoMA

February 18, 2017 Adam Turl

February 17 protest at MoMA (photo: Adam Turl)

In 1969 a group of artists, critics, museum workers and others formed the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC). One of their many achievements was to force the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to have a free admission day – to democratize access to the musuem’s collection. So it is fitting that last night, during MoMA’s “Free Friday" (February 17), a group of a few dozen protesters – joined at times by hundreds of other attendees – erupted in protest in MoMA’s lobby – demanding the removal of Larry Fink from the board.Fink, CEO of BlackRock, Inc., is also a member of President’s Stratigic and Policy Forum – a collection of “business leaders” who advise the revaunchist Trump administration. The protesters have rightly taken a position against any normalization of the Trump presidency.

Good Bait: A Lesson In the Political Economy of Desire

February 14, 2017 Crystal Stella Becerril

black on black on Black on
Timbs;
an interruption – no,
an intervention.
a reminder to the Columbus-ing ass fuckboys
(and girls) that
they
still

Patronize Red Wedge (In a Good Way)

February 9, 2017 The Editors

Cat Moir on "Marxism, Art and Utopia": John Berger on "The Nature of Mass Demonstrations"; China Miéville's Last Days of New Paris reviewed; Call for Submissions "The Return of the Crowd"; "Out of the Castle and Into the Street: Art Under Trump… — Cat Moir on "Marxism, Art and Utopia": John Berger on "The Nature of Mass Demonstrations"; China Miéville's *Last Days of New Paris* reviewed; Call for Submissions "The Return of the Crowd"; "Out of the Castle and Into the Street: Art Under Trump"; "Introducing wedgeshop"

We need money to make all of this happen. In years past, we’ve accomplished this by undertaking fund drives for a few months, soliciting our readers for one-time lump sums so that we can continue operating for the next year and/or pay for a particular project. It is, frankly, an exhausting and nerve-wracking way to fund a publication. Which is why this year we are going to try a different approach.

Tribe, Art, God, Change and Survival: an allegory, a primer, a to-do list

February 3, 2017 Roger Bonair-Agard

The question “what can a poem (actually) do?” has been a part of the philosophical debate about art for a long time. It is impossible to know when it was first asked, but I’m willing to bet that it had something to do with the onset of the Industrial Age, and the coming of age of Capitalism. That the lack of a definitive answer, or any recognizable material profit tied to its production hasn’t stopped people from either writing or reading it, is probably answer enough, but in the Fall of 1977, I moved from Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies to Winnipeg, Manitoba – the MidWest of Canada. My step-father was working with the Canadian government and so, we were migrating.

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