My current projects include a book titled Strange Love: How Social Justice Was Invented, and Why It Needs to Die, and Puzzling (about jigsaw puzzles) for Duke University. I am also working on a Young Adult novel about coming out.
I am currently particularly busy with two extremely complex projects. One is Strange Love, an account of how social justice dominated the left, why its dominance needs to end, and how the left needs to rebuild itself. Others on the left (where I reside) have written about the issues with social justice, but their books, while useful and clarifying, have been in the shape of relatively short works that look critically at left organising and strategies. Strange Love is a combination of history, reportage, and critical analysis, and it draws upon my considerable experience with organising in and around the central organising issues of the last few decades, including immigration and queer politics. It argues that we are here in our current time not because of the rise of the right, as harmful as that has been, but because of the inadequacy of the left’s strategising and its broader inability to actually be the left. Despite such a trenchant critique, Stranger Love is, in the end, a deeply compassionate (and often humorous) consideration of the left, and a blueprint for the possibilities of a world that we can still build even as worlds seem to crumble and break around us.
My other large project is one that I am keeping under wraps for now, but it is one that I’m truly excited about.
In the next couple of years, I will be expanding my work on some of the topics I’ve been writing about and adding new ones.
On plagiarism: Drawing on the work I’ve done on the subject in “On Plagiarism” and “Don’t Share Your Book Proposal,” I am expanding my analysis and critique of plagiarism to suggest legal and analytical frameworks that might prevent it. I have recently acquired legal representation by a friend and supporter who is also a lawyer with experience in the area of plagiarism laws. My concern is not just with my own work being lifted but with changing the larger culture of plagiarism in publishing.
My work on the topic is intended to change the discourse (currently, too many publications and writers have normalised the practice) and to make it difficult if not impossible for writers, publishers, and academics to exploit the marginalised among them.
Trauma: My many essays on trauma were among the first (non-academic) works to critically interrogate how the concept is weaponised against the communities who suffer from it the most. Given the current state of the world, “trauma” continues to function as an overarching narrative in which subjects—especially migrants, women, and trans individuals—have to position themselves. I’ve written extensively on the subject in “No, No, Nanette: Hannah Gadsby, Trauma, and Comedy as Emotional Manipulation,” “Trauma and Capitalism or, Your Trauma Story Will Kill You,” and “The Perils of Trauma Feminism.” I am among the most prolific and expansive non-academic writers on the subject. Unlike nearly everyone else writing on the topic who thinks of it as an emotional and cultural matter, my work on trauma considers it as a tool of capitalism and an enabler of neoliberalism.
Politics: I was the only one on the left to declare, the day after her acceptance speech at the August 2024 Democratic National Committee meeting, that “Kamala Harris Will Lose.” More recently, I’ve written about how the assassination of Charlie Kirk will make more centrists and liberals aware of his politics—and that the right will not be happy about this (I’ve since been correct on this as the right now tries to change his legacy.) I’ve written extensively about Barack Obama and Donald Trump — I see the latter as a symptom and not a cause of our current state of affairs, and the former as a grifter ex-president. I will continue to write about ongoing geopolitical matters and the violence of our times. I was also the only one to write that DACA would prove to be a disaster, and have consistently pointed out that both the immigration and the gay rights movement are inherently conservative and contributed to a rise in right-wing politics.
Art: I’ll be writing more about art, artists, and the art world in the next few months, so look for that. I’m also seriously exploring the possibility of getting a degree in art conservation, so let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions on that. I’ve written essays on art, as in “On Cultural Purity” and on why “Sally Mann Is Not That Interesting.”
Music: I’ve always been more of a casual listener than someone who sits and immerses herself in a band or musician. Of late, I’ve been interested in shifting my trajectory and thinking about music as music, and within its complicated histories. I have some ideas about groups and music trends I’d like to write about, so you can expect more work in that vein.
I’ve written about how “Everyone Needs a Course on Taylor Swift,” “On Lizzo and Sex and Bananas, Oh My!,” and annoying film music in “Steven Spielberg’s BFG and AMM.”
I’ve also written extensively on film and television, as in “John Mulaney: Everyone’s Phoning It In,” It’s Freaky That Movies Are So Bad, But AI Is Not the Problem, Merle Oberon and the Tyranny of Whiteness, Here Be No Monsters: On Succession and the mobility of capitalism, and much more. I have new essays forthcoming on Deadloch, the Australian lesbian detective show, And Just Like That (I’ve written about previous seasons here and here and here), the phenomenon of Tom Cruise, and the mystery of Meryl Streep’s unwarranted reputation as a fine actor.
To search for particular topics, use the search box or sift through the categories section; contact me if you can’t find an older work or are curious to know if I’ve written on a subject. To understand my politics, start with “A Manifesto,” written for the storied Evergreen Review.
I can be found on Twitter (@NairYasmin) and Facebook (Yasmin.Nair), LinkedIn, and Instagram (Bekargyan). “Bekargyan” is Hindi/Urdu for “useless knowledge.” I am no longer accepting friend requests on FB, but you can always use the “follow” option there. If you would like to support my work, you can do so in several different ways, with or without money.
That’s all for now. Writing is all I really want to do, and it would have been impossible to continue without your support, of all kinds. Thank you, and stay well.
Image, Odilon Redon, The Road to Peyrelebade, detail, no date
