The most sensible thing seems to be to forget our negativity, to discard it as a fantasy of youth. And yet the world gets worse, the inequalities bec… - John Holloway

When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginnings is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition negativity, struggle.

Struggle against capitalism must be also struggle against the 'we' who are not only against but also in capitalism. To criticise is to recognise that we are a divided self. To criticise society is to criticise our own complicity in the reproduction of that society.

There is no room for the scream in academic discourse. More than that: academic study provides us with a language and a way of thinking that makes it very difficult for us to express our scream. The scream, if it appears at all, appears as something to be explained, not as something to be articulated. The scream, from being the subject of our questions about society, becomes the object of analysis.