… Bret Benjamin is an associate professor of English at SUNY Albany, author of Invested Interests: Culture, Capital, and the World Bank, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus … (full text).
… His most recent work is in transnational cultural studies, studying in particular various aspects of globalization and alter-globalization social movements. His current book project, Invested Interests: Culture, Capital and the World Bank, develops a cultural critique of the World Bank. The project argues that the Bank must be understood as a cultural institution-an institution that not only affects global cultures, but also one that, given its role in the post-war mapping and remapping of the globe, has been intimately bound up in the construction of « culture » as a theoretical category, and « cultural studies » as an academic discipline. Contrary to assessments of the Bank that figure the institution as a metonymic stand-in for « globalization, » this book reads the Bank as a protean institution that has undergone a series of transformations during its sixty-year history, in which we can see the World Bank maneuvering to contain resistance and manage crises … (full text).
His teachings; his vita; his projects.
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Bret Benjamin – USA
World Bank Literature … Under Control, reading the facts ans FAQs of population control, page 201.
He signs the Open Letter Opposing War in Iraq.
The book: A Guide to On-Line Writing, by Daniel Anderson, Bret Benjamin, and Bill Paredes-Holt. Ed. Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
Find his publications on AddAll; on bookfinder; on amazon.
Book-review – Invested Interests, Capital, Culture, and the World Bank, 304 pages, 2007:
- … by Bret Benjamin:Benjamin maps the (World-) Bank’s contemporary rhetorical maneuvering in the wake of ever-intensifying protests, offering close readings of the World Bank’s corporate literature, the activities of the antiglobalization World Social Forum, and the writings of prominent Bank critic Arundhati Roy, including her novel The God of Small Things. Deftly investigating the World Bank’s ideological struggles over six decades, Invested Interests develops a conceptually and politically nuanced critique of the Bank as a cultural institution deeply enmeshed in the last century’s historical transformations of imperial power and anti-imperial struggle. (full text).
- by Phil Wegner;
- by books xyz; BOOK SYNOPSIS: Despite the World Bank’s profound impact on economic, political, and social conditions during the post–World War II era, cultural critics who rigorously theorize other institutions of colonialism and globalization have largely ignored the institution. Working to correct this blind spot, Bret Benjamin’s Invested Interests presents the first extended cultural analysis of the World Bank … (full text);
He writes: … The open space versus movement debate figures an irresolvable antinomy within the WSF. I recognize the deep appeal of horizontal collectivities and understand that within the WSF there will be inevitable resistance to the merest hint of a party platform delivered from on high. Nevertheless I think many within the WSF would eagerly throw their weight behind a shared political project. To my mind, the Bamako Appeal, with its strong but nuanced anti-capitalist critique, offers an excellent starting point for such a project, particularly if it can be opened for debate and amendment in the ways that CACIM suggests. Patrick Bond’s clear-eyed and persistent calls to build upon the coherent political platforms and expertise of established social movements in the Global South strikes me as a necessary first step for revising Bamako. One hopes, then, that the antimony need not be disabling; that a double vision might yet emerge that is capable of envisioning both totality and particularity, both the ideal of horizontal, non-representational collectivity and the tactical efficacy of mass action. Here the WSF sails in uncharted waters. While it can surely draw inspiration and insight from earlier revolutionary movements — CACIM offers one useful genealogy, from Marx’s Manifesto to Bandung to the Zapatistas — no obvious precedents exist for the WSF’s unique amalgam of conceptual, geographical, organizational, and political ambitiousness. The two-year cycle for international meetings may benefit not only those social movements stretched thin by the burdens of yearly meetings but also the institutionalization of the WSF itself. Longer periods between events may allow for more local collaboration and consultation, avoiding some of the divisions between organizers and local constituents that appear to have marred this year’s meeting in Nairobi … (full text).
links:
Doug Henwood’s radio archives;
Writing Skills, an annotated bibliography, part one.