Poem: The Monsters and the Absurd

December 4, 2025December 4, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Author’s note: Inspired by the absurd news story of a drunk raccoon.

Photo by Samantha Martin/Hanover County Protection via AP.

Gramsci warned us in his Prison Notebooks:
“The old world is dying,
and the new world struggles to be born;
now is the time of monsters.”

Utopian Realism

November 30, 2025November 30, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Marxists Write Poetry, Too.

November 4, 2025November 10, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Theory Isn’t the Only Tool

TALKS AT THE YENAN FORUM ON LITERATURE AND ART

Karl Marx wrote poetry. So did Joseph Stalin. Mao Zedong as well. Their creative work came before their political and philosophical output. That’s not a coincidence—it’s a pattern. And yet, most Marxist discourse today treats art as secondary, decorative, or indulgent. Why?

Cat’s Out of the Bag—and It’s Pissed. /s

October 14, 2025October 14, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)4 Comments

Jones Dances for Tucker

Quotes: Illusions

September 4, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)5 Comments

Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School

March 22, 2025March 22, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Since the election of Donald Trump, a growing body of research has examined the role of digital technologies in new right wing movements (Lewis 2018; Hawley 2017; Neiwert 2017; Nagle 2017). This article will explore a distinct, but related, subject: new right wing tendencies within the tech industry itself. Our point of entry will be an improbable document: a German language dissertation submitted by an American to the faculty of social sciences at J. W. Goethe University of Frankfurt in 2002. Entitled Aggression in the Life-World, the dissertation aims to describe the role that aggression plays in social integration, or the set of processes that lead individuals in a given society to feel bound to one another. To that end, it offers a “systematic” reinterpretation of Theodor Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity (1973). It is of interest primarily because of its author: Alexander C. Karp.

Moira Weigel — Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School

The Indifferent by Antonio Gramsci

February 22, 2025February 22, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Indifferent by Antonio Gramsci

I hate the indifferent. I believe, as Frederich Hebbel did, that ‘living means being partisan’. There can’t be men [sic] who are men alone and exist outside of the city. To really live means to be a citizen and to take part. Indifference is abulia, is parasitism, is cowardice. Indifference isn’t life. This is why I hate the indifferent.
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This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

This Valentine’s Day, Let’s Look to Marxists to Reimagine Love, Romance and Sex

It’s certainly fitting to think of what Gramsci was writing from a fascist prison in today’s political climate. But it’s also true that we’re in another sort of interregnum, one of romance, sexuality and gender itself. And this one comes with its very own set of morbid symptoms, as anyone who’s tried dating lately can attest. Dating apps are a plague, every week there seems to be a new term for bad behavior (“ghosting,” “breadcrumbing,” whatever), work demands more and more of our time, leaving less and less for love, and a constantly destabilized economy leaves us anxious and stressed even if we do happen to have stable work. Abortion is now illegal in a huge chunk of the country, and homophobic and transphobic violence — not to mention actual bans on trans healthcare and drag — are on the rise. And even if you do make it to coupledom and want to have children, our country still has precisely no support for working parents. The material basis on which you might have thought you’d be able to build a life is crumbling.
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