Radical Paradoxes: The making of antipode at clark university

The radical journal Antipode was founded at the graduate school of geography (GSG) at Clark University in 1969. It emerged at a transformative moment in history, with an aim to take on and eventually supplant the conservative establishment in geography. This chapter expresses that the emergence of Antipode was a result of a combination of historical regimes of capitalism, widespread social activism, a contemporaneous shift in leadership at the GSG, and the graduate student community forged in Worcester, MA. It provides a brief early history of the Clark GSG from its founding until the early 1960s when it had become intellectually stagnant and politically conservative. The chapter discusses the growth of the GSG under Saul Cohen’s directorship linking it to postwar Keynesian capitalism and its financial largesse. It examines the suturing of the radical geographical project to the professional demands of tenure, theory, and publishing in “quality” journals.