About
the A-Line: a journal of progressive thought casts a broad net across the cultural and political landscape by assuming a progressive stance that seeks to examine national and international issues from this perspective. The journal will provide a venue for the exploration of the link between our work as citizen-intellectuals, made more urgent now, and the spectrum of matters, from climate change, a nearly unprecedented refugee crisis, xenophobic global populism, to mass incarceration and the other depredations of neoliberal public policy that shape our living in the early twenty-first century.
The unmitigated arrogance and ineptitude of the ruling order along with vulgar corporate interests; as in the Murdoch media empire’s contravention of every rule of decent engagement that we might imagine; the confirmed insufficiency of liberalism; the growing inequalities between rich and poor; the assaults on labor and the universal franchise; a Supreme Court with a stolen majority apparently in sync with oligarchic ambitions; an unstable climate in which the words and reports of the meteorologist constitute the most significant interface between ourselves and increasingly fatalistic weather; the seeming inability of the political class to deliver genuinely efficacious goods and services to the governed; the constant drumbeat of war; and, above all, the fear factor, stoked by ignorance and bigotry, all animated by the breakdown in language and good will, are altogether among the features of our dailiness that contribute to our collective misery. As frightening as these developments are, in fact, we feel somewhat better when we are able to add our mite to the larger effort to make sense of this critical juncture and to do so immediately.
Our intrepid editorial staff has assembled a team of contributors, contributing editors, and advisory board members (as well as an impressive stable of guest contributors)—a wide- ranging group of colleagues across the spectrum of age, sex, ethnicity, sexuality, geography, vocation, location, intellectual interest—who feel a serious commitment to the effort to analyze our predicament and speak to it in a journal that turns over featured, short to medium-form writing in issues that will run quarterly. The journal will also run a regular feature called, “Convergence,” in which selected writers will weigh in on a common thematic, and will also highlight books of note in our salon-style section, “The Reading Room,” in addition to announcing and reviewing exciting cultural happenings around the world in our section, “The Stage.”
Our audience is the informed reader or enlightened specialist desperate for timely critical intervention.
