Ethnonationalism since 1973

Nov 17, 2022

A Discussion with Quinn Slobodian

Quinn Slobodian

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

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Summary

What’s the relationship between immigration, globalization and demographics? And what is woke particularism?

John and Elizabeth turn for answers to Quinn Slobodian, professor of history at Wellesley College and author, most recently, of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.

In a 2019 discussion that proves eerily prescient of politics in 2022, first discuss Jean Raspail‘s racist 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints, a book whose popularity in certain quarters since its publication might explain how Europe has gone from Thatcher to Brexit, from Vaclav Havel to Viktor Orban. How is this xenophobic screed related to science fiction of the same period–and to John Locke? Pat Buchanan, American early adapter of Raspail’s hate-mongering, figures prominently.

They then turn to Garrett Hardin’s “Living on a Lifeboat” and John Lanchester’s recent novel The Wall to work out the ideas of forming a society beyond or beneath the state in less obviously racist terms than Raspail’s. What kind of hard choices need to be made in allocating resources? What claims about hard choices are just a screen for the powerful to make choices that, for them, aren’t actually that hard? Does gold make things more or less nationalized?

Finally, in Recallable Books, Quinn recommends Mutant Neoliberalism, edited by William Callison and Zachary Manfredi, for an attempt to really understand the politics of 2016 and beyond; Elizabeth recommends Douglas Holmes’s Economy of Words, an ethnography of central banks; and John recommends Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, a novel of solitary solidarity.

Discussed in this episode:

The Camp of the Saints, Jean Raspail
A Republic, Not an Empire and The Death of the West, Pat Buchanan
Dune, Frank Herbert
“Living on a Lifeboat,” Garrett Hardin
The Lobster Gangs of Maine, James M. Acheson
The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome
Libra, dir. Patty Newman
“Slaveship Earth & the World-Historical Imagination in the Age of Climate Crisis,” Jason W. Moore
The Wall, John Lanchester
Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture, eds. William Callison and Zachary Manfredi
Economy of Words: Communicative Imperatives in Central Banks, Douglas R. Holmes
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Ursula K. Le Guin

Read here: RTB Slobodian

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Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world. Recall This Book is hosted by Elizabeth Ferry, Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and John Plotz, Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative.

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