philopapers

The concept of the concrete carries a lot of weight in critical theory. Travelling as it has from Hegel through Marx to Adorno’s derision of those who would arbitrarily divide the concrete and the abstract. But despite his noted value iconoclasm, it was Althusser who wrote in his infamous Preface to Capital Volume I of what it […]

In this, according to the blurb, ‘groundbreaking’ study, written by one of the most prominent representants of current critical theory, Christoph Menke, professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, promises nothing less than to develop a completely new conception of liberation which would resolve the problems of the traditional ‘Western’ idea. The book’s starting

In January 2024, a comedy routine was released onto the internet produced by an artificial intelligence that had digested thousands of hours of material by the late George Carlin and then attempted to mimic his style and wit while commenting upon present-day issues. This, of course, made headlines across the world, and resulted in a

Review of Keti Chukhrov, Practicing the Good Sascha Freyberg and Lukas Meisner Spinoza’s dictum that we ought to understand first – not ridicule, not cry, nor detest – is ignored surprisingly often, even in philosophical scholarship, when it comes to revising and appropriating intellectual labour from the context of ‘real existing socialism’ (RES). Such dismissal is usually not

Review of Natalia Romé, For Theory: Althusser and the Politics of TimeTill Hahn Although Natalia Romé’s book For Theory: Althusser and the Politics of Time comes in the disguise of humble secondary literature, it is not just an account of Althusser’s theory of temporality but also makes a claim for the power of theory in political struggle.

Review of Mattin, Social DissonanceMario Aguiriano Both a reconstruction of the notion of alienation and a partisan reflection on the relationship between experimental art and a social world, Social Dissonance could be considered the first work of ‘Brassierian Marxism’. If the study of Wilfrid Sellars led Ray Brassier to a profound engagement with Marx’s revolutionary contribution to

Review of Fredric Jameson, Allegory and IdeologyStephen Morton A concern with allegory as a mode of interpretation rather than as a literary historical description of a moribund genre has been a leitmotif in Fredric Jameson’s thought from Fables of Aggression (1979) and The Political Unconscious (1981) to Brecht and Method (1998) and A Singular Modernity (2002). In Allegory and Ideology – announced as the second

Review of Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin and Heather A. Brown, eds., Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism Senka Anastasova Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987) was a Marxist, humanist, feminist and revolutionary thinker, neglected in both Marxist and feminist traditions. This collection presents Dunayevskaya as a strong Hegelian-Marxist philosopher, focusing on her novel interpretations of Hegel on absolute negativity as

Review of Dario Gentili, The Age of Precarity: Endless Crisis as an Art of GovernmentFrancois Zammit This is the new English translation of a book first published in Italian in 2018. In a world that is still struggling with the crisis of the pandemic and its aftershocks, the 2018 Italian edition feels prescient and the

Review of Tom Holert, Knowledge Beside ItselfNicolas Helm-Grovas Tom Holert remarks near the beginning of Knowledge Beside Itself that art has traditionally been defined in contradistinction to knowledge, at least scientific or systematic knowledge. How then to understand the proliferation of discourses of ‘knowledge’ and ‘research’ in contemporary art? This is visible, Holert indicates, in ‘curatorial statements,