On the last day of the year, we give you twelve of our favorite pieces from 2012.
Christopher Glazek (“Raise the Crime Rate”) made his case for prison abolition.
Elizabeth Gumport (“Female Trouble”) looked at Chris Kraus, Native Agents, and the feminist problem with privacy.
Elizabeth Gumport (“Made in Manhattan”) returned to defend Lena Dunham. “Just because some people overcome obstacles to succeed doesn’t mean obstacles are necessary to success.”
Charles Petersen (“Lions in Winter”) delivered the past and present of the New York Public Library, in a piece that became part of the story of its future.
Keith Gessen (“NHL Playoff Update 2”) presented several theories about hockey. “I am pretty sure the Devils are often skating six or seven guys.”
David Auerbach (“The Stupidity of Computers”) claimed that computers are stupid and will not be able to destroy us—unless we allow them to destroy us with their stupidity.
Bela Shayevich led a team of translators to produce a full translation of the Pussy Riot closing statements.
Dayna Tortorici collected a remarkable series of remembrances of radical feminist and artist Shulamith Firestone. “More than anyone I’ve known, she was able to harness negative emotions around her and turn them into the kind of rage needed to fuel a revolutionary movement.”
Nicholas Dames (“The Theory Generation”) surveyed the work of Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sam Lipsyte, and other novelists who came of age with Theory.
Anya Ulinich and Anya Yurchyshyn (“Two Views of the Storm”) gave us hurricane dispatches.
The Editors (“The Intellectual Situation”) were filled with an exuberant rage and denounced men and magazines! “What do women have to do with the internet? We submit that, at least in the eyes of media executives, women are the internet.”
Kirill Medvedev’s It’s No Good: Poems/Essays/Actions appeared to mark the end of the year and gave us four new poems.