On Writers as Scabs, Whores, and Interns, And the Jacobin Problem
▻http://www.yasminnair.net/content/writers-scabs-whores-and-interns-and-jacobin-problem
The problem with publishing today, even and perhaps especially on the Left, is that it is increasingly becoming crowded with people with enough money to “do” writing as a hobby (and we might want to think about all the class, gender, and race privileges that can denote), and that most publishers think of paying writers out of a general sense of noblesse oblige, not because they actually realise that blank pages with no words on them wouldn’t get them readers or advertisers. To compound matters, there’s a new phenomenon of public intellectuals and academics desperate to make themselves seen in publications other than academic journals. As my articles will indicate, Jacobin’s cowardice came about because of a number of reasons, but its arrogance was bred in the very conditions it claims to critique.