Sean Kennedy – författare

The poems have diverse styles of rhyme and blank verse. I''ve experienced several crises in my time on the planet; some of which have a humorous touch, but others feature the grim or regretful side. Readers may interpret them as they wish.

The complexities of cricket are laid bare, and I was never any good at the game. But I was a world record holder as part of the crowd of more than ninety thousand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1961 when Australia played the West Indies.

Finally, there are some whimsical verses drawn on topics like the ocean, home life, psychology, and the Arctic.

Kennedy and McNaughton read Todd Phillips’ record-breaking Hollywood blockbuster Joker as an economic and political allegory of our times. It is a book full of dazzling insights into the malaise of contemporary capitalism.

What could be more surprising than the cinematic presentation of the Joker as a key to solving our present economic and political predicament? Send In the Clowns! leads us precisely there. Grip this movie’s visual language, its authors insist, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to all, that articulates a new, world-changing solidarity.

The predicament Send In the Clowns! diagnoses is urgent: the way late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality, unleashing a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. These pages map this unraveling onto the narrative of Joker. When the movie begins in 1981, neoliberal tides are shifting the sands: the rise of insecure work; the destabilizing of welfare; the explosion of racialized incarceration. A close reading of the film allows Kennedy and McNaughton to isolate and confront these phenomena.

Send In the Clowns! shows how melodrama has become late capitalism’s preferred genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by caricatured villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama allows demagogues to depict themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.

The myth of the lone superhero has brought us to the brink of disaster. If we don’t want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!

During the interwar years France experienced severe political polarization. At the time many observers, particularly on the left, feared that the French right had embraced fascism, generating a fierce debate that has engaged scholars for decades, but has also obscured critical changes in French society and culture during the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of essays shifts the focus away from long-standing controversies in order to examine various elements of the French right, from writers to politicians, social workers to street fighters, in their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. It offers a wide-ranging reassessment of the structures, mentalities, and significance of various conservative and extremist organizations, deepening our understanding of French and European history in a troubled yet fascinating era.