e-flux Journal #83

<p>Every December, dictionaries and language societies across the globe identify the “words of the year”—words that resonated widely during the previous twelve months. In the mid-2000s, these lists were populated with words like “contempt” and “quagmire,” “ambivalence” and “conundrum.” A few years later, dominant words included “trepidation” and “precipice” and “fail,” “vitriol” and “insidious” and “bigot.” The <em>OED</em>’s word of the year for 2012 was “omnishambles.” 2016, however, was for <em>OED</em> the year of “post-truth.” Merriam-Webster selected the word “surreal.” In the wake of Brexit and the US elections, Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Turkey’s disregard for journalistic freedom, fake news and ever more puzzling hacks, and violence, all that violence, we are no longer just nervous about the state of the world: we are perplexed—bewildered in a wasteland of signs that were once familiar but no longer make any sense…</p> <p><strong>Editorial—“The New Brutality”</strong><br /> Rosi Braidotti, Timotheus Vermeulen, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, and Anton Vidokle</p> <p><strong>The Language of the New Brutality</strong><br /> Nina Power</p> <p><strong>Barbarous Hordes, Brutal Elites: The Traumatic Structure of Right-Wing Populism</strong><br /> Steffen Krüger</p> <p><strong>Overcoming Internet Disillusionment: On the Principles of Meme Design</strong><br /> Geert Lovink</p> <p><strong>LOL History</strong><br /> Shumon Basar</p> <p><strong>Primal Scream, or Why Do Babies Cry?: A Theory of Trump</strong><br /> Aaron Schuster</p> <p><strong>The Reality-Based Community</strong><br /> Erika Balsom</p> <p><strong>Human Animal Song</strong><br /> Marion von Osten</p> <p><strong>The Suspicious Archive, Part II: Every Word Is a Prejudice</strong><br /> James T. Hong</p> <p><strong>The Second Coming</strong><br /> Franco “Bifo” Berardi</p>