In the twentieth century, millions of people across the globe addressed each other as “comrade.” Now, among the left, it’s more common to hear talk of “allies.” In Comrade, Jodi Dean insists that this shift exemplifies the key problem with the contemporary left: the substitution of political identity for a relationship of political belonging that must be built, sustained, and defended.
Bio: Professor Jodi Dean is an activist and author. She is the Harter Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the author or editor of twelve books, including Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (Duke, 2009), Blog Theory (Polity, 2010), The Communist Horizon (Verso, 2012), and Crowds and Party (Verso, 2016).