Mic Check/Reality Check

Over the past couple of months history has been unfolding with dizzying speed. The #occupy model of leaderless, demandless direct action, which in the beginning no one with only a slim understanding of how capitalism works thought could become anything more than a facile if charming jab at anti-corporate activism, has gone viral. Every morning we wake up to new reports about ‘occupying X’, where X can be anything from cities, campuses, boardrooms, buildings, highways, and public events, all the way to academic disciplines. What originally seemed like a romantic fantasy about temporary autonomous zones now feels like history. And no one likes to find themselves on thewrong side of history, especially not intellectuals, let alone intellectuals in the business of explaining global politics.