Feast and Famine: A conversation with Iain Boal on scarcity and catastrophe

 

This text is based on an interview with David Martinez, a San Francisco-based filmmaker and journalist, in late 2005, and on material from a forthcoming book by Iain Boal, entitled The Long Theft: Episodes in the History of Enclosure.

 

This interview (also here) is reproduced here with the permission of Iain Boal.

 

Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of science and technics, associated with Retort, a group of antinomian writers, artisans and artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is one of the authors of Retort's recently published Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, which Harold Pinter described as "a comprehensive analysis of America's relationship with the world. No stone is left unturned. The maggots exposed are grotesque."