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Protean Magazine
@proteanmag.com
An independent leftist magazine collecting criticism, essays, fiction, poetry, and art • Support our work at www.patreon.com/proteanmag • www.proteanmag.com/
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2025 was a helluva year for @proteanmag.com – and, if you are able to, you absolutely should chip in to support their work over the ✨year ahead✨, imo.

it's become a tired cliché, but no less accurate to point out: truly independent, high-quality, leftist media could not be more indispensable.
2025 End of Year Round-Up | Protean Magazine
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January 14, 2026 at 3:33 PM
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Long and great article with @lalehkhalili.bsky.social interviewing @triofrancos.bsky.social!

Can't wait for Riofancos to write about her views on JB Fressoz book about energy transitions. Will lithium be yet another material added in the symbiosis?

@proteanmag.com

proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...
Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos • Protean Magazine
In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the poss...
proteanmag.com
January 16, 2026 at 8:32 PM
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Reposted by Protean Magazine
Haven’t read yet but reminded me of your post: bsky.app/profile/prot...
Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar explored how the ideology of real estate finds geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a turn to unmediated accumulation, exemplified by the egregious “Gaza development plan.”

proteanmag.com/2025/02/27/s...
Slumlord Empire • Protean Magazine
In this essay, Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bahndar explore how the ideology of real estate has come to find direct geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a tu...
proteanmag.com
January 4, 2026 at 12:02 PM
"All the while
more and more bones
still stacking up
underhill
with no sign
of the stolen ones
yet

So America said
what’s spoken
is what is
even in possession

So America says
but what’s seen is another matter."

– Ian Maxton, "The Possession"

proteanmag.com/2025/04/08/t...
The Possession • Protean Magazine
Poet Ian Maxton's "The Possession" roams across the "spooked-out American map," surveying the machinery of empire and the scorched landscapes it leaves behind.
proteanmag.com
January 3, 2026 at 11:32 PM
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“Recoiling from the crudity of global politics-as-property-development while pining for the “rules-based international order”—the reflex of the very centrist international elites that primed the world for Trump and his ilk—is an exercise in futility”
Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar explored how the ideology of real estate finds geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a turn to unmediated accumulation, exemplified by the egregious “Gaza development plan.”

proteanmag.com/2025/02/27/s...
Slumlord Empire • Protean Magazine
In this essay, Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bahndar explore how the ideology of real estate has come to find direct geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a tu...
proteanmag.com
January 2, 2026 at 8:00 PM
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This book by @lukeoneil47.bsky.social is full of beautiful, gut-wrenching prose. I'd call it Cormac McCarthy-esque.
Three new short stories by Luke O’Neil (@lukeoneil47.bsky.social)—"The rules,” “How to live,” and “Something that was once potentially good”—are excerpted here. All three appear in his new book of stories, We Had it Coming and Other Fictions, now out from OR Books.

proteanmag.com/2025/11/01/w...
We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS] • Protean Magazine
Three new short stories by Luke O'Neil—"The rules," "How to live," and "Something that was once potentially good"—are excerpted here from his new book of stories, We Had it Coming, out from OR Books.
proteanmag.com
January 2, 2026 at 4:30 PM
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'Across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, we see a particular kind of real estate development thriving in the absence of territorial integrity and sovereign political authority'
Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bhandar explored how the ideology of real estate finds geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a turn to unmediated accumulation, exemplified by the egregious “Gaza development plan.”

proteanmag.com/2025/02/27/s...
Slumlord Empire • Protean Magazine
In this essay, Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bahndar explore how the ideology of real estate has come to find direct geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a tu...
proteanmag.com
January 2, 2026 at 8:40 AM
This year marked the 8th anniversary of Protean's founding; it was also our busiest yet. Below is a selection of the best work that we published, online and in Issue V.

As ever, readers' generosity is the only reason any of this is possible. Support us by becoming a patron: patreon.com/proteanmag
Get more from Protean Magazine on Patreon
Independent, ad-free leftist magazine: essays, interviews, art
patreon.com
December 31, 2025 at 10:31 PM
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"Frontier names a duality where the place is important but the people are unimportant"
Two brilliant scholars @triofrancos.bsky.social@lalehkhalili.bsky.social in conversation, highly recommended!
proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...
Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos • Protean Magazine
In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the poss...
proteanmag.com
December 28, 2025 at 12:42 PM
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A good interview here at @proteanmag.com with Mitchell Abidor, whose new book on Victor Serge I'm looking forward to reading, though the revelations of Serge's apparent late-life anti-communism etc. are tough, as I admire so much of his writing.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/18/v...
Victor Serge, Turncoat Radical? • Protean Magazine
Andrew Holter interviews Mitchell Abidor on Abidor's new book, Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, out from Pluto Press. "It seems like we in the English-speaking world, at least, have misunderstood s...
proteanmag.com
December 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
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Reposted by Protean Magazine
As I'm bombarded with algorithmically served advertisements aimed to induce me to purchase more consumer goods this holiday season, I am reflecting on this essay I wrote six years ago for @proteanmag.com

proteanmag.com/2019/08/28/s...
Simulacra & Self-Simulation
by Steven Monacelli. If we are what we repeatedly do, then let’s face it: we are becoming increasingly machine-like through our near-constant interactions with technology.
proteanmag.com
December 25, 2025 at 9:35 PM
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In this wide-ranging interview, Laleh Khalili (@lalehkhalili.bsky.social) speaks with Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos.bsky.social) about her new book, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism"—on lithium mining, prospects for a just climate transition, and more.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...
Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos • Protean Magazine
In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the poss...
proteanmag.com
December 22, 2025 at 9:37 PM
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It was an honor to be interviewed in-depth by @lalehkhalili.bsky.social @proteanmag.com

A key theme: how to analyze “extractive frontiers” from a world-systemic perspective attentive to both the structures of colonialism and capitalism—and to socio-ecological struggle proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...
December 24, 2025 at 3:39 PM
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Wondering what work is like for all those tasked with delivering those last-minute Christmas gifts? For @proteanmag.com I wrote this on algorithmic management, logistics work, and the possibilities for class struggle at the tail end of the supply chain x.com/brechtfast/s...
x.com
December 24, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Shane Boyle reviews Craig Gent's Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management. "Rather than representing a step towards scientific perfection, algorithmic management is simply the latest episode in capital’s interminable struggle to subjugate labor."

proteanmag.com/2025/12/23/t...
The Workplace Arms Race • Protean Magazine
Shane Boyle reviews Craig Gent's Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management. "Rather than representing a step towards scientific perfection, algorithmic management is simply the latest episode in c...
proteanmag.com
December 24, 2025 at 6:51 PM
In this wide-ranging interview, Laleh Khalili (@lalehkhalili.bsky.social) speaks with Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos.bsky.social) about her new book, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism"—on lithium mining, prospects for a just climate transition, and more.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/22/e...
Extractive Frontiers: An Interview With Thea Riofrancos • Protean Magazine
In this extensive, wide ranging interview, Laleh Khalili speaks with Thea Riofrancos about her new book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, the political economy of lithium mining, the poss...
proteanmag.com
December 22, 2025 at 9:37 PM
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December 21, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Protean Magazine
On the drive back I had to stop for a couple of school buses to let all the kids get off to cross the street to get home. Bopping around with their backpacks on. proteanmag.com/2025/11/01/w...
We Had it Coming [EXCERPTS] • Protean Magazine
Three new short stories by Luke O'Neil—"The rules," "How to live," and "Something that was once potentially good"—are excerpted here from his new book of stories, We Had it Coming, out from OR Books.
proteanmag.com
December 15, 2025 at 1:06 PM
"'Solidarity' contains analysis of the dire contemporary situation for children, the author’s reflections on raising a non-binary child in circumstances of fear and threat, [and a look at] how the right weaponizes ideas of 'the child' in the name of parental rights."

proteanmag.com/2025/11/19/h...
Horizons of Youth Liberation • Protean Magazine
Sarah Brouillette reviews Madeline Lane-McKinley's new book Solidarity With Children, out this month from Haymarket Books.Sarah Brouillette reviews Madeline Lane-McKinley's new book Solidarity With Ch...
proteanmag.com
December 19, 2025 at 8:10 PM
In "Live Action Role Play," poet Christopher Blackman considers the linkages among LARPing, imperial decay, and the splendor of a full moon.

proteanmag.com/2025/12/18/l...
Live Action Role Play • Protean Magazine
In "Live Action Role Play," poet Christopher Blackman considers the linkages among LARPing, imperial decay, and the splendor of a full moon.
proteanmag.com
December 18, 2025 at 11:26 PM