Geoff Shullenberger

New York

Managing Editor at Compact

Managing editor @compactmag_.

Articles

From the War on Terror to the War on Covid-and Back Again

6 days ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger

A good deal of my writing in the years 2020-22 involved revisiting material I had studied in graduate school in a particular historical moment—the final years of George W. Bush’s administration and the first years of Barack Obama’s—and applying it to a new moment, that of the pandemic and its political fallout, which both resembled the prior one and did not. Compact’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The Great Neoliberal Novelist

1 week ago | compactmag.com | Geoff Shullenberger

In a controversial 1986 essay, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” the late literary critic Frederic Jameson argued that while the literature of the industrialized West had largely retreated from its political vocation, that wasn’t true of the great writers of the developing world.
The Long Birth Pangs of Post-Postmodernity

1 week ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger

My candidate for tweet of the week comes from Putin’s (alleged) Rasputin:Dugin posted this on April 9, the day the “yippy” bond market prompted President Trump to pause most of his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs (with China the big exception). Whether the Russian philosopher intended it this way or not, I think we can be quite precise about what he’s getting at, with some help from Stuart Jeffries’s 2021 book Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern.
What did y’all think post-neoliberalism meant? vibes? papers? essays?

2 weeks ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger

In a recent post, I quoted a line from Anton Jäger that has stuck with me: “The left’s real trauma might be that neoliberalism died without them actually killing it.” Jäger wrote this in March 2020, the last time we saw a stock market crash comparable to (although significantly larger than) the one occasioned this week by Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Notes on Viral Hegemony

3 weeks ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger

In a Washington Postcolumn this week, Shadi Hamid argues we are already at “the beginning of the end of the Trump era.” Trump still has nearly four years left in office, but according to Hamid, the “vibe shift away from the vibe shift” has commenced. After the November election, he recalls, he briefly “thought that a new era had begun—one of Trumpian hegemony,” but now, he goes on to argue, “Trump is squandering what might have been a once-in-a-generation realignment.
Notes on Viral Hegemony

3 weeks ago | substackfwd.xyz | Geoff Shullenberger

In a Washington Postcolumn this week, Shadi Hamid argues we are already at “the beginning of the end of the Trump era.” Trump still has nearly four years left in office, but according to Hamid, the “vibe shift away from the vibe shift” has commenced. After the November election, he recalls, he briefly “thought that a new era had begun—one of Trumpian hegemony,” but now, he goes on to argue, “Trump is squandering what might have been a once-in-a-generation realignment.
Fully Automated Luxury Liberalism

1 month ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger
Fully Automated Luxury Liberalism

1 month ago | substackfwd.xyz | Geoff Shullenberger

Much of the talk online this week has been about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. As others have pointed out, the book is neither particularly novel nor all that radical in its assessments or recommendations, bringing together various strains of pro-growth liberalism, notably YIMBYism and eco-modernism.
The ‘repressive tolerance’ of Trump

1 month ago | unherd.com | Geoff Shullenberger

Berkeley Free Speech Movementcampus cultureCultureFree SpeechHerbert MarcuseMahmoud Khalilnew Leftpro-Palestine protestsTrumpUniversitiesUS Last year marked the 60th anniversary of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the point of origin for the type of campus activism Americans have since come to take for granted and which saw a dramatic resurgence amid the Gaza war.
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 2)

1 month ago | compactmag.substack.com | Geoff Shullenberger

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:08:54Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley continue to explore the crisis of liberalism. They begin by discussing recent reversals around free-speech debates in the United States and the odd fact that ostensible post- and anti-liberals have often positioned themselves as defenders of a central liberal value: free speech.