It is a shame to hear of Jean-Luc Nancy's passing. I cannot claim to be deeply familiar with his work, but I often enjoyed reading the occasional interview or article by him. What's more, as someone who had an earlier interest in Blanchot and Bataille, I naturally had an interest in the discussions on the … Continue reading Thoughts Out to Jean-Luc Nancy
In our latest episode we discussed Franco Morreti's Signs Taken For Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms. Read on to listen to more of our discussions and access our interviews with sociologists and writers like Hartmut Rosa and Peter Salmon.
It seems common practice nowadays to fit Marx into one kind of triad or another. Marx-Lenin-Mao, for instance. Or Marx-Freud-Nietzsche - Ricoeur’s three “masters of suspicion.” Henri Lefebvre, eclectic and imaginative as ever, gives us his own triad of Continental giants in his aptly titled, newly translated, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche (or, The Realm of Shadows). … Continue reading Henri Lefebvre’s “Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche”
I realized I haven’t been linking to new podcast episodes on this blog as they’re released! Our latest discussion on Radical Thoughts Podcast is available now. In this episode we discuss Theodore Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life. If you’d like to help the podcast and get bonus episodes where I conduct interviews … Continue reading Radical Thoughts Podcast: Minima Moralia
The attempt to turn back to theory such that the Marxist approach to knowledge itself can be explained is commendable. The (re)introduction of certain levels of abstraction - particularly the separation of the "mode of production" and the "social formation" - are important and remain influential, impressively they have become important in some forms of anthropological practice itself. But many the most important features of Althusser's work are themselves marred by the entire "problematic" or theory of theory that they are integrated within. There’s a circularity to Althusser’s claim of at once maintaining fidelity to Marx’s word while stating that Marx’s words couldn’t be Marxist enough. The autonomous theory still has to try and connect to reality, but it simultaneously wants to refute the “empiricist” subject/object relationship. Althusser’s solution is unclear, and perhaps contradictory.
I recently read the piece “What Is It Like to Be A Man?” by Phil Christman, which I found to be insightful and, even if somewhat caught in a cul-de-sac of questions (not unusual for any piece trying to figure out these problems), thankfully shorter and less circular than many. One of the main points … Continue reading Speech, Power, Masculinity
Transgression, in fact, is a private affair, but a private affair which moves one beyond oneself. It is communal, but not public. The word "secret" pairs well with transgression. *** To engage in the political is to also realize that which is not political, and in so doing find how those categories that appear as oppositions relate … Continue reading Fragments on Transgression
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"Proletarian revolutions criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltryness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise … Continue reading The Biography, The Accounting of Life, Will Come – (Blanchot, Judgement, the Question of Political Redemption)
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and … Continue reading A Consummation Devoutly To Be Wish’d -The Speech of Hamlet, The Desire of Ending
Pen and Screen 