Social and Political Thought Conference 2015

Aesthetics

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT CONFERENCE 2015

FEMINISM & CRITICAL THEORY

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT CONFERENCE

UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX, JUNE 20-21, 2015

In the face of enforced austerity, rampant and increasing inequality, systemic crises of political, economic and environmental organisation, and violence and injustice on a global scale, there has been a resurgence of interest in both feminism and critical theory, as ways of understanding and criticising the world as it is. That such disasters disproportionately affect women is not, of course, new, nor are they differentiated solely through gender – race, sexuality, dis/ability, class and nationality also come into play. Yet many have detected an increase in violence, both (and often simultaneously) material and symbolic, directed against women and gender non-conformists across the world. Examples range from the ‘pornification’ of an increasingly misogynist popular culture (and equally misogynist ‘moral panics’ about the threat posed to society by deviant sexualities), to brutal cuts to already embattled women’s services, to continued institutional discrimination and institutionalised abuse (Yarl’s Wood is just one site).

This has been met with resistance in a variety of forms, on the ground in social movements and protests, and in many recent theoretical developments both scholarly and popular, including: the republication of many classic Marxist and socialist feminist texts of the 1970s and 80s; important contemporary debates, situated within both analytic and continental philosophy, on how to challenge the patriarchal nature of philosophy as a discipline and as disciplinary ideology; the emergence of innovative new journals such as the materialist feminist LIES; and scholarly reappraisals of radical twentieth-century figures like Shulamith Firestone, Claudia Jones and Rosa Luxemburg.

This year’s Social and Political Thought conference will investigate ? the relationship between feminism and other critical social theories in light of these developments. We begin by recognising that the different schools (and historical ‘waves’) of feminist thought are themselves often divergent and opposed. Furthermore, we recognise that there is a certain level of ambivalence attached to the term ‘critical theory’. In the narrow sense, it can refer to theory influenced by the Frankfurt School and the work of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse (and, on some interpretations, Habermas and Honneth). In the broad sense, on the other hand, it can refer to a group of interrelated, sometimes competing, social theories directed against the status quo, of which feminist thought is one strand. We view this ambivalence and its relationship to feminist theory and practice as potentially productive, and encourage submissions that deal with all kinds of feminism and their relationship to critical theory in both the narrow and broad senses of the term, including feminism as critical theory.

Possible approaches include but are not limited to: Marxist feminism or feminist thought engaging with Marxism; feminism, materiality, and ‘new materialisms’; feminist social movements and the politics of popular protest; feminism, police, and prisons; feminism and problems of universality; feminism and psychoanalysis; feminism and autonomism; anarchist feminism; post-crisis masculinities and feminism; postcolonialism and feminism; black British feminism; sexual, racial and social contracts; feminism and the politics and theory of intersectionality; feminism and nationalism; feminism and orientalism in the war on terror; ‘third wave’ feminism; feminism and new forms of slavery; feminism in the global South; feminism and poststructuralism;  feminism and communisation theory; feminism and LGBTQI struggles; feminism and sex-work; feminism and social reproduction; feminism and revolution.

 

Keynote Speakers:

Stella Sandford (Kingston University)

Lorna Finlayson (University of Cambridge)

 

We encourage submissions for both individual and full-panel presentations. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to ssptreviews@sussex.ac.uk by March 15 2015. In order to facilitate a double-blind review process, please send two separate attachments, one containing a short biographical note, and another containing your abstract with no identifying information.

See: https://ssptjournal.wordpress.com/social-and-political-thought-conference-june-20-21-2015/

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‘Time and Space in the Social Universe of Capital’ – by Michael Neary and Glenn Rikowski, now at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/10545768/Time_and_Speed_in_the_Social_Universe_of_Capital

 

The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School

University for Strategic Optimism

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS: MARX, LUKACS AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

OUT NOW

By ANDREW FEENBERG

The origins of “Western Marxism”

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1638-the-philosophy-of-praxis

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The early Marx called for the “realization of philosophy” through revolution. Revolution thus became a critical concept for Marxism, a view elaborated in the later praxis perspectives of Lukacs and the Frankfurt School. These thinkers argue that fundamental philosophical problems are, in reality, social problems abstractly conceived.

Originally published as Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory, THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS traces the evolution of this argument in the writings of Marx, Lukacs, Adorno and Marcuse. This reinterpretation of the philosophy of praxis shows its continuing relevance to contemporary discussions in Marxist political theory, continental philosophy and science and technology studies.

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ANDREW FEENBERG is the author of Critical Theory of Technology (1991), Alternative Modernity (1995), Questioning Technology (1999), Transforming Technology (2002), Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (2005), and Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (2010).

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“Feenberg’s subtle and wide-ranging study of Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness reaches forward to Marcuse and the Frankfurt School and backwards into Marx’s 1844 manuscripts. The book offers a whole new framework in which to grasp the history of Marxist theory, at the same time restoring Marcuse’s centrality in it.” – Fredric Jameson

“A model of lucid and sophisticated intellectual history.” – Martin Jay

“A most fascinating and significant book.” – Theory and Society

“A vigorous and thoughtful reassessment of both Lukacs and the Western Marxist tradition … of great interest to anyone interested in critical theory or continental philosophy.” – Robert Pippin

“Feenberg achieves his goal of demonstrating the relevance of seemingly dusty and abstract philosophical conundrums not only to contemporary social theory but to politics as well.” – The American Political Science Review

“Feenberg’s sensitive and intelligent treatment of a complex constellation of interrelated problems in Marxist studies should commend his book to a wide audience of interested scholars.” – Man and World

“Poses the central problem of history in such a way that every reader can identify its elements…. The author knows the subject thoroughly, and illuminates many points in the texts of his main authors, as well as in those of such subsidiary figures as Marcuse and Habermas.” – The Review of Metaphysics

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PAPERBACK: JULY 2014 / 272 pages / ISBN: 9781781681725 / $29.95 / £16.99 /$35.00 (Canada)

HARDBACK: JULY 2014 / 272 pages / ISBN: 9781781681732 / $95.00 / £60.00 / $108 (Canada)

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS is also available at a 40% discount (paperback) and 50% discount (ebook) on our website, with free shipping and bundled ebook. Purchasing details here:  http://www.versobooks.com/books/1638-the-philosophy-of-praxis

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Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

How the Commodity Form Dies

Adorno

HOW THE COMMODITY FORM DIES

Stream on Critical Theory: “How the Commodity Form Dies”
Historical Materialism Conference 2014 “How Capitalism Survives”
Eleventh Annual Historical Materialism London Conference – 6-9 November 2014 – Vernon Square, Central London

More than ever the theoretical implications of Marx’s theory of capital haunt the never fully established world order of capitalist production and consumption. Capitalism is always changing, its elementary form, the commodity form, however, survives. Already in the 1930s, Walter Benjamin wrote: “The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.” Today we might add: capitalism even survives its own death. The secret of its undead nature resides in its “sensuous-supra-sensuous” form, the commodity form. But how can a zombie die?

In the last decades, the intertwinement of the commodity form and the shape of time and space has been widely discussed. Scholars like Moishe Postone, Antonio Negri, Fredric Jameson, Michael Heinrich, David Harvey, David McNally, Massimiliano Tomba, Daniel Bensaïd, Stavros Tombazos, Neil Smith et al. have deepened our understanding of capital’s global dynamics of spatialization and temporalization.

This stream draws on this research and expands it to the site of language and symbolic economies: how does the commodity form survive by creating economico-linguistic structures beyond meaning? If we conceive of today’s global capitalism not only as an economic system but also as a global language in the crude sense, we can detect a “commodity language” (Marx), a real-abstract mode of the production of value and signification. Capitalism, however, is transcendentally meaningless.

This stream is interested in new assessments of theories central to Marx and Critical Theory such as critique, society, reification, second nature, natural history, commodification, fetishism, historical time, value, money, exchange, equivalence, ideology, domination, class, capital, social reproduction, epistemology, subjectivity etc.

The stream is particularly interested in (but not limited to) papers that address:

• New perspectives on the contemporary relevance of Marx’s thought for Critical Theory (Heinrich, Bonefeld et al.) which explore the relationship between Marx and the work of early Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer et al.)
• Productive and elective affinities between Marx, figures from the Frankfurt School and other critical theorists such as Bataille, Bensaid, Althusser, Foucault, Open Marxism, Postone, Heinrich, Kurz, Dieter Wolf, Castoriadis, Illyenkov, Bogdanov, etc.
• Monetary theory of value, state theory and the tradition of “Neue Marx-Lektüre” (from Pashukanis and Rubin to Backhaus and Reichelt)
• The question of “real abstraction” and the unity of commodity form and thought form (Alfred Sohn-Rethel)
• Theories of reification (Lukács)
• Theories of communization and value-form theory
• The intertwinement of capital, time and space
• Symbolic economies of “commodity language” (Marx, Hamacher, Goux, Derrida, Lacan, Lefebvre et al.)
• Adorno and the imagelessness of the political imaginary
• “Capitalist realism” (M. Fisher) and the aesthetic of the commodity form
• The biopolitical regulation of the population both as the collective exposure to a permanent state of exception (Benjamin, Agamben, Esposito et al.) and as the neoliberal condition of individual self-management (e.g. Virno’s “Grammar of the Multitude” or Lazzarato’s “Making of the Indebted Man”)
Stream coordinators: Sami Khatib (Berlin) Chris O’Kane (Seattle)

Register you abstracts here by 1 June 2014: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual11/submit

 

Communisation

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Beyond Capitalism – Critical Theory for Radical Democracy

Heathwood Institute & Press

BEYOND CAPITALISM: CRITICAL THEORY FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY

Open Call for Papers

Heathwood Press: An Independent Critical Organisation for Social Progress

Call for Papers: We are seeking contributions from a diversity of authors and researchers concerning discussions on post-capitalist society and the development of radical (participatory) democratic alternatives. This project is broad in scope, and we welcome papers and articles from across all disciplines: from economics and law to education, social sciences and the environment. We prefer works that directly emphasize an interdisciplinary approach and express an understanding of the aims of our critical theoretical project. One example of a proposal already received is a paper on 21st Century critical theory and radical (participatory) grassroots politics. Another example is a project that aims to establish a fundamental critique of violence in education, with a mind toward a foundational alternative philosophy of education.

Papers will be published online.

Before contacting us, please familiarize yourself with our project and past publications: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/advancing-frankfurt-school-critical-theory/

To contact us about this open call, please write to: enquiries[at]heathwoodpress.com

‘Beyond Capitalism’ Call: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/open-call-for-papers-beyond-capitalism-critical-theory-for-radical-democracy/

Heathwood Institute & Press: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

The Right to Freedom: A Symposium on Critical Theory

Herbert Marcuse

THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM: A SYMPOSIUM ON CRITICAL THEORY

London, 6-7 May, 2014

Venue: Woburn Suite (G22/26, Ground Floor), Institute of Philosophy, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

 

Invited Speakers:

Prof. Dr Axel Honneth
Institute for Social Research/University of Frankfurt/Columbia University

Prof. Lois McNay
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

Dr David McNeill
School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Dr Jörg Schaub
School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Dr Timo Jütten
School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex

Prof. Michael Rosen
Department of Government, Harvard University

ALL ARE WELCOME

 

This event is jointly organised and funded by the Department of Philosophy, The Open University, the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, and the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex.

Full programme details and venue directions.

The symposium is free but requires registration.

To register, please email your name and affiliation to criticaltheorysymposium2014@gmail.com.

For further information, please contact Dr Manuel Dries at manuel.dries at open.ac.uk.

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Governing Academic Life

Teaching Marx

GOVERNING ACADEMIC LIFE

Conference at the London School of Economics and Political Science

June 25-26, 2014

June 25, 2014 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault. Governing Academic Life marks this anniversary by providing an occasion for academics to reflect on our present situation through our reflections on Foucault’s legacy. The focus of the conference, therefore, will be on the form of governmentality that now constitutes our identities and regulates our practices as researchers and teachers. However the event will also create a space for encounters between governmentality scholars and critics of the neoliberal academy whose critiques have different intellectual roots – especially Frankfurt school critical theory, critical political economy, feminism, Bourdieuian analyses of habitus, capital and field, and autonomist Marxism.

Proposals for papers and panels are welcome until March 15, 2014. Please refer to the guidelines below.

Background and Context:

The impetus for this event is the set of changes currently sweeping across UK higher education, which include cuts in direct public funding, new financing arrangements that are calculated to bring private equity into the sector and foster competition between providers, the likely emergence of new corporate structures for HEI’s which will open the sector to commercial providers, the separation of elite from mass higher education and the globalization of ‘trade’ in HE services; but also (and relatedly) the continuing development of instruments for rendering student-teacher interactions visible and comparable, and for calculating and governing the impact, influence and value of academic research.

Governmentality research is featuring strongly in the debates around some of this. Yet though largely ‘diagnostic’ in nature, it is increasingly being enlisted as groundwork for the radical critiques and alternatives offered by autonomist Marxist theorists of cognitive capitalism and immaterial labour. Meanwhile, critical theorists who idealise a public sphere of rational-critical debate (with ‘the idea of the university’ at its heart) are struggling to re-define what makes the university (a) public and to re-think the terms of its engagement with the wider economy and society in less radical ways – often without problematising the forms of (Foucaultian) government, or of complicity with capitalism’s logic of accumulation, that are necessarily involved with these reconstructions.  This conference aims to bring together leading contemporary scholars and activists who draw on one or more of these traditions for a series of mutually challenging discussions.

In general, the conference will be oriented by the concern to think critically about the conditions of possibility of the academy today – where ‘conditions of possibility’ could mean governmental assemblages of one kind or another, capitalist production relations, the forces defining how different capitals (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) register within the academic field, or quasi-transcendental presuppositions of rational communication. Participants will ideally aim to explore how we might think across these usually distinct ways of both conceiving what the university is and contesting what it has become.

Specific foci of debate may include:

* The idea of the university: ruined or redeemable? Social criticism in the age of the normalized academic

* Beyond public v. private? Dimensions of corporatisation

* The role(s) of (contract, competition, corporate, intellectual property) law in constructing the market university

* The government of academic freedom: constituting competition as a way of life

* Markets, measurement and managerialism: rankings and ratings, rights and royalties, accounting and audit, metrics … and alternative metrics?

* Academic career-ism and casualization; discipline and de-professionalisation

* The conditions for the persistence in the university sector of relations of domination organised in particular around gender and ethnicity

* Critical political economy and varieties of communicative capitalism

* Entrepreneurial universities and enterprising academic subjects: personal branding as ‘technology of the self’?

* What is an author, now? The future of academic authorship and the academic book

* The potentials and pitfalls of ‘openness’ and ‘commons-ism’ in scholarly communication

* The ‘technicity’ of academic forms of life: the potentials and pathologies of living with/in digitised work environments

* The student as consumer – or as producer?

* The rise of para-academic ‘outstitutions’ beyond the university’s (pay)walls

* Other strategies for resisting the neoliberal academy

* Envisioning and enacting alternative futures for the university 

Additional ideas for panels and themes are welcome.

Proposal submission procedure:

Proposals should be submitted as e-mail attachments to A.Barron@lse.ac.uk or M.S.Evans@lse.ac.uk, or in hard copy form by mail to one of the conference coordinators (addresses below). The deadline for receipt of proposals is March 15, 2014.

 Proposals for papers must include the working title of the proposed paper (which should be suitable for presentation in 20 minutes) together with the author’s name, affiliation, full contact information (including address, phone, fax and email), and a brief (500 words maximum) abstract or outline. Submissions are welcome from graduate students as well as from more established scholars.

Proposals for panels (of up to 4 speakers) must include the information indicated above for all papers that are expected to be part of the panel, together with an overview of the panel theme (max 300 words) and an indication of each proposed panellist’s willingness to participate.

Timetable:  Proposals will be reviewed by the conference co-ordinators, and notice of acceptance will be given by April 15 2014.

Registration: A registration fee of £100 will be payable to cover costs. A limited number of places will be available at a concessionary rate for graduate students, adjuncts and scholars without an institutional affiliation. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for one of these places when sending your proposal.

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‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Education Crisis

Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where Is “Frankfurt” Now?

Eisenstein

CRITICAL THEORY, FILM AND MEDIA: WHERE IS “FRANKFURT” NOW?

Call for Papers: Permanent Seminar Conference 2014: Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where is “Frankfurt” Now?

Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, DE, Aug. 20-24, 2014

Deadline for Papers: February 28^th

This is an international conference at Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany, August 20 through 24, 2014, organized by the Institut für Sozialforschung and the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories.

In 2010, Alexander Kluge releases a DVD called “Wer sich traut, reißt die Kälte vom Pferd” (Those who dare tear the cold down from his horse), the third installment in a series that started with a ten-hour film based on Eisenstein’s project of filming Marx’ “Das Kapital”. Picking up on an unfinished project developed with Adorno in 1967 on the theme of coldness, the 2010 DVD presents a media mix of 31 different types of short films and 41 stories in an accompanying booklet. The project is a collaboration between 12 artists, scholars and experts from various disciplinary backgrounds, two of them being fictive characters.  Reading theory has become a collaborative effort, involving various disciplines on different platforms, and dealing with unfinished projects. About the project Kluge writes:

“The possibility of a revolution in Europe has disappeared, and with it the confidence in a historical process that can be directlyshaped by people’s consciousness. With this confidence, a certain unrest and urgency have disappeared. … As if in a quiet garden we can now study strange thoughts from [x] and weird projects from [y], because they are like messages from an ideological antiquity. … We do not have to announce anything new, we do not have to pass final judgments, can change little and do not have to imitate [x] or [y]. One can see this as a goodbye, or as a beginning.”

Kluge then goes on to make a statement about Marx that we could paraphrase for our purposes in the following way: “The analytical instruments of the Frankfurt school are not outdated. … Sifting through the rubble of history we find useful tools.”

With a combination of social philosophy, philosophical aesthetics, political economics and a particular focus on technology the Frankfurt school and its kindred spirits Benjamin and Kracauer have paved the way for film and media studies as a critical discipline.

Now, at a time, when the generational project of 1968, the march through the institutions under the assumption that a revolution in Europe is possible, has largely run its course, it is time to sift through the rubble of history, collect the tools, pick up on unfinished projects and think about new beginnings.

What, then are the analytical instruments that the Frankfurt school provided that will be useful going forward? How did the Frankfurt School of critical theory shape the course of film and media theory in the 20th century, and how will its tools continue to shape the study and critical analysis of media and culture?

„Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where is ‘Frankfurt’ now?“, an international conference organized by the Institut für Sozialforschung and the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories (filmtheories.org), proposes to address  these questions through a series of panels, keynote lectures and panel discussions.

Contributions are welcome on various aspects of critical theory, film and media, from the impact of critical theory on the history of film theory and media studies and film and media practice to debates about media and politics and the continuing relevance of critical theory to postcolonial, queer and other recent strands of cultural theory.

In particular, the conference proposes to address, but will not limit itself to, the following areas of study

From the critique of the culture industry to the “creative industries”: Without doubt the culture industry chapter of the “Dialectics of Enlightment” is among the most influential texts in the history of film and media theory. Together with Adorno’s notes on cinema in the “Minima moralia” this chapter constitutes a damning indictment of commercialized culture as exemplified most notably by Hollywood cinema. Among other things, with its strong focus on Hollywood, the “Culture industry” chapter laid the groundwork for the institutional histories of Hollywood proposed by the New Film History and continues to echo in current debates about creativity and the “creative industries”. One of the aims of this conference is to trace how the Frankfurt school critique of the culture industry has shaped the study of commercial and popular culture, but also to inquire into the possible continuing relevance of some of the basic tenets of Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique to digital network culture.

Essayism, Criticism and Critical Theory: In his famous essay on the “Essay as form” from 1958 Adorno argues for a kind of critical writing that strategically subverts and transgresses disciplinary boundaries. Going back even further, criticism constituted a crucial part of the project of critical theory since its beginnings, whether the film criticism of Kracauer or the music criticism of Adorno. One could argue that film studies emerged as a field in precisely the area carved out by Adorno – indebted to criticism, in a space in between disciplines, borrowing tools and approaches from neighboring field, avoiding for a long time the ossifications of disciplinary protocol. Emerging roughly a decade after film studies, “Medienwissenschaft” occupied a similar trans- or non-disciplinary space. Revisiting the Frankfurt legacy of criticism as theory and of disregarding disciplinary protocol this conference proposes to explore the power and potential of essaysism in the academic study of film and media culture today.

Philosophy of History and the History of Media: The Institut für Sozialforschung was created in response to a failed revolution, the German revolution of 1918. Combining Marx with Freud to explain why the revolution did not happen led the Frankfurt school to develop a theory of power and subjectivity of which Foucault later acknowledged that it would would have saved him a lot of trouble had he known about it earlier. The idea of history as process evolving around the possibility of a revolution remained central to later generations of critical theorists. From the outset, Kracauer and Benjamin in particular tied the question of historical process and historical consciousness to the question of media technology, in particular photography and film. In the wake of the emergence of digital network communications and the current transformation of moving image culture the positions the work of Benjamin and Kracauer have re-emerged as key reference in film and media theory. This conference proposes to explore why, even though the urgency that comes with a confidence in history as process has been lost, as Kluge argues, this work appears to be immediately relevant to the study of media and history in contemporary media culture.

Critical Theory, Feminist Film Theory and the Politics of Desire: One of the most important and powerful contributions of the Frankfurt School to the field of critical theory in the 20th century consisted in linking the critique of capitalism to sexual politics and the politics of desire. Drawing on the Frankfurt School’s signature combination of neo-marxist analysis with Freudian psychoanalysis, Herbert Marcuse discussed the capitalist system of production in terms of a sublimation of desire in his book 1955 “Eros and Civilization” that an important reference for the generation of 68. Feminist film theory, from Laura Mulvey onwards, emerged in the 1970s from a similar convergence of Freud and Marx (and from Althusser and Lacan), while later approaches to sexual politics and media, from gender studies to queer theory, owe a significant debt to Frankfurt school critical theory in their own ways, in particular to Kluge and Negt’s critique of Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, but also to Benjamin and Kracauer and their interest in the historically changes modes of mediated affect. One of the aims of this conference is to explore how the critique of capitalism and the analysis of sexual politics intersect and re-align in contemporary media culture and in the face of what has variously been called “information capitalism” or “digital capitalism”.

Critical Theory, Artistic Practice and the Category of the Art Work: Critical theory, from Benjamin’s works on the theater to his essay on the author as producer and the artwork essay to Kracauer’s film theory and Adorno’s sociology of music has left a significant imprint on film art and on media practice more broadly speaking. German experimental theater and radio in the 1920s, the television programs with avant-garde composes curated by Mauricio Kagel in the 1960s and 1970s and the new German cinema of Kluge and beyond all in varying degrees have use critical theory as a frame of reference. Jean-Luc Godard, a former critic who never ceased to be a critic, continues to acknowledge his debt to critical theory and to Benjamin and Adorno in particular in his work for cinema and television as does, of course, Kluge in his television work. Of particular interest in these examples is a critique of the category of “work” that can be traced back to Adorno but is probably now more relevant than ever. This conference proposes to trace the Frankfurt lineage of the critique of the category of art work across a variety of artistic and media practices.

Critical Theory and the Critique of Institutions: The Institut für Sozialforschung was created in the late 1920s as a research institution outside the university, even though it had ties with the University of Frankfurt, which itself had only been founded in 1914. Benjamin’s troubles with academic protocol are well known, and Kracauer consistently worked outside the university until very late in his life. Critical theory emerges outside of, or in tension with, the established institutions of academic life and carries the critique of institutions as its birthmark, so to speak. The Frankfurt school’s critique of institutions further extends to cultural institutions, from Benjamin’s critical analysis of Brecht and Brechtian theater to Adorno’s critique of the practices and institutions of classical music. One of the key legacies of the Frankfurt school is to keep the critique of institutions alive in film and media studies in areas where the focus tends to either be on representations of social and gender roles or on technologies regardless of their institutional dynamics.

Critical Theory and Gesture as Interruption: Few other concepts from early critical theory have developed a more virulent afterlife in the theory of theater, film and media than the concept of the “gesture”. Emerging from the theory of language and theater from his early essay on language an the book on the German “Trauerspiel” Benjamin defines “gesture” as a interruption of an action and as the “frozen dialectic” that later becomes a key to his theory of film and of the images, as well as to his readings of Kafka. Roland Barthes draws on Benjamin’s theory of gesture in his analysis of Eisenstein, as does Heiner Müller in his re-readings of Brecht, Jeff Wall in his tableaus or Godard in his “Histoire(s)”. This conference proposes to explore the prehistory and afterlife of this key concept of both critical theory and modern art theory.

Critical Theory and the History of Media Technology: Over the last few years a strain of Medienwissenschaft focused on the history technology and particularly computer technology has gained prominence in the Anglophone world under the label “German media theory”. Inspired mostly by the work of Friedrich Kittler and deriving from Heidegger rather than Adorno – or from Freiburg rather than Frankfurt –, this strain of media theory has proposed what we might call “Technohegelianism”, i.e. a philosophy of history as driven by technology and information technology in particular, as an alternative to a critical theory approach to media. This conference intends to explore the relative merits as well as the points of convergence and communication between “German media theory” and FrankfurtSchool critical theory, with a particular focus on the question of media technology.

The conference will be held at the Campus Westend, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.

Proposals for papers and panels should be submitted to before February 28, 2014.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out before March 15, 2014.

Scientific committee:

Dr. Sidonia Blättler, Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Eva Geulen, professor of German literature, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger, professor of cinema studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Axel Honneth, director of the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Rembert Hüser, professor of media studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, professor of theater studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Juliane Rebentisch, professor of philosophy and aesthetics, HFG Offenbach
Prof. Dr. Marc Ries, professor of media sociology, HFG Offenbach
Prof. Dr. Martin Seel, professor of philosophy, Frankfurt
Dr. Marc Siegel, assistant professor of cinema studies, Frankfurt

Information and Contact: info contact: frankfurtconference@filmtheories.org

See website: http://filmtheories.org/permanent-seminar-conference-2014-where-is-frankfurt-now/

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Heathwood Institute & Press: New Funding Campaign

Heathwood Institute & Press

HEATHWOOD INSTITUTE & PRESS: NEW FUNDING CAMPAIGN

Dear All

We’ve recently launched a new fundraising campaign on Indiegogo and are calling on everyone’s support to help us reach our goal. A breakdown of our funding campaign can be read below. If you could forward this e-mail onto friends and colleagues, it would be greatly appreciated. (For more information about our funding drive, please visit our campaign page: http://igg.me/at/heathwood-institute-and-press/x/4227978

Sincerely,
Robert C. Smith
Director and Researcher
Heathwood Institute and Press

Website: http://www.heathwoodpress.com
Email: robert.smith@heathwoodpress.com
Phone: +44 (0) 07919252541
Address: Barn Cottage, 7 Hempstead Road,
Holt, Norfolk, United Kingdom, NR25 6DL

***

Short Summary

Heathwood Institute and Press is a non-profit, critical theoretical organisation that was formed by a collective of academic researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

Motivated and inspired by Frankfurt School critical theory, our aim is to investigate the root causes of social, economic and environmental inequality by offering foundational, multidimensional and holistic social critique as well as developing concrete, critical alternatives to the type of social policy symptomatic of today’s highly unjust societies.

We delve into history, anthropology, psychology and sociology, and ask fundamental questions about the way we as humans have historically related to ourselves, the world and each other. We look at how we humans respond to our experiences (emotionally, psychologically, and in our actions) and why we organise our institutions, societies and belief systems in the ways that we do. We ask hard questions about our theories of religion, knowledge and education, and about how we build and perpetuate ideologies and economic systems. In essence, we seek to understand how, why and when we relate to ourselves, the world and each other in destructive ways, and ultimately to develop new, healthier ways of relating and acting in the world.

To do this we bring together academics from a range of disciplines; economists, sociologists, anthropologists, educationalists, philosophers, theologians …

One of our aims is to take what we perceive to be of value from the traditions of the Frankfurt School, and to retrieve, redevelop, rework and advance it to be relevant and useful in 21st Century society. In building on and extending the traditions of Frankfurt School critical theory, we strive to not only challenge existing fields of research and policy, but also to fundamentally challenge from a foundational and multidisciplinary perspective the existing social model as a whole, with a mind towards promoting systemic change.

Through our research we are working to develop an understanding of the meaning of healthy social progress in the 21st Century from a holistic, integrated and methodologically unique perspective. We aim to achieve this through the advancement of critical theoretical thought by calling for new standpoints of critique and ultimately grounding our calls for new norms of critique according to a foundational, multidimensional critical theory of society.

In the interests of social progress we are geared toward excellence in scholarship and distinguished merit in terms of providing ground breaking research in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Economics, Psychology and Education, with the ultimate goal of communicating the findings of our research in an engaging, practical manner that is both applicable to policy makers and accessible to the general public.

Originally founded in December 2011 by a group of well-respected researchers, academics and activists, we are now actively bringing together and supporting individuals who are leaders in their area and whose research possesses the potential to break new grounds in addressing the problems that we face in today’s world.

For more information, please see the ‘About us’ section of our website, where you can find our full mission statement, statement of need, programme description, a comprehensive breakdown of our progressive, eco-friendly (print) publishing model, and even our (digital) democratic publishing initiative: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/advancing-frankfurt-school-critical-theory/

Mission Statement

The mission of Heathwood Institute and Press is to address the root causes of social, economic and environmental inequality, and to also develop healthy and sustainable alternative ways of being. In the process we are also committed to the promotion of an informed and engaged citizenry; to promote a foundational awareness and understanding of social, cultural, economic and political processes; as well as to fight economic and social injustice, and to protect the diversity of nature and society and the natural systems upon which all life depends.

By investigating more generally the idea of ‘damaged society’ our goal is to produce highly respectable, critical works, whose seminal theses offer more broad foundations for concrete, critical alternatives which affirm the notion of systemic change and the need for fundamental public policy shifts. We seek to further this mission by advancing Frankfurt School critical theory in the 21st Century.

In principle, our mission is three-fold:
1) To understand the fundamental human issues that prevent individual and collective harmony and well-being, and that impede social progress as well as the healthy development of Western civilization;
2) To identify catalysts for change on a fundamental level across the different spheres of society;
3) To engage with researchers, policy makers and most importantly the general public in effort to promote critical dialogue as well as active leadership and participation in the manifestation of social change

We’re an independent, autonomous research organisation in the truest sense

Heathwood is a non-profit organisation that works hard to maintain independent status as well as a respectable distance from corporate and market forces.

In order to maintain our critical stance, we choose to adopt a wholly autonomous economic and political position in the face of society’s present socioeconomic-political circumstance. For these reasons we do not have shareholders or trustees. Nor do we have ties with multinational corporations or to the more general distortions of the global market.

In the same sentiment, Heathwood does not under any circumstance accept conditional funding. In this respect we are proud and, indeed, humbled to be one of the few remaining independent academic groups left.

But as a wholly independent organisation it is not always easy to financially sustain the type of autonomous practice we believe in, especially as predominant economic policy continues to strangle the independent and public spheres of our society.

Therefore if you would like to support Heathwood, its growing list of authors and researchers, and the development of new works, any amount of financial support will go a long way toward sustaining the daily practice of our organisation.

What We Need: A breakdown of funding requirements

Every donation, big or small, is highly valued and goes a long way in supporting both new research and the publication of new works as well as contributing toward the daily operating costs of the organisation.

Our funding campaign can be broken down as follows:
Our goal is to raise £40,000 for the following academic year, which will support the organisation’s operational costs until more sustainable funding sources can be identified. It will also contribute significantly to future publication costs, website maintenance, the salary of its director Robert C. Smith, and the part-time employment of two academic research associates.
In addition, this money will not only help support the organisation’s key project, which centers around investigating the roots of social, economic and environmental inequality. It will also enable the organisation to continue to its (free) online publication programme, which supports the democratic rights of citizens to have free access to information without any sort of monetary barriers or discriminations.

The funds you donate will also assist us in expanding our roster of international academics and researchers from all disciplines. This is crucial because the more researchers we’re able to support from across all academic disciplines, the greater our multidisciplinary voice and the better our ability to ultimately break new grounds in understanding the fundamental problems of contemporary society.

A large portion of our total funding goal will also go toward costs for much needed editorial support and the translation of new works from German to English. It will also assist us in the continuing development of the organisation’s Frankfurt School (digital) archives, which has become a valuable resource for students, academics, researchers, and engaged citizens.
If the organisation does not reach its total goal in obtaining £40,000, the money that is donated will still be put toward the needs stated above.

The Impact

Your contribution will make a significant impact in terms of supporting Heathwood’s project when it comes to understanding the meaning of ‘social progress’ in 21st Century society. It will support further research developments in the areas of foundational social critique as well as the generation of new works that deal with concrete, critical alternatives in the areas of economics, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and education. 

Already our organisation has gained extremely positive feedback from academic circles all over the world. With a large and continuously growing readership ranging from academics to ‘everyday citizens’, your financial support will have a direct impact on the future of our collective project and will allow us to continue to establish an open, alternative democratic dialogue with readers, researchers and policy makers.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you cannot contribute financially, there are still other ways you can support Heathwood and its members:

Help us speread the word via social media

Contribute to discussions on our website – share your thoughts on important social matters.

Robert C. Smith
Director and Researcher at Heathwood Institute and Press
Website http://www.heathwoodpress.com
Email: robert.smith@heathwoodpress.com
Phone: +44 (0) 07919252541
Address: Barn Cottage, 7 Hempstead Road,
Holt, Norfolk, United Kingdom, NR25 6DL

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society, by Glenn Rikowski is at Heathwood Press and can be viewed at: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/monthly-guest-article-august-critical-pedagogy-and-the-constitution-of-capitalist-society-by-glenn-rikowski/

 

Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Selected Works

Alfred Sohn-Rethel

ALFRED SOHN-RETHEL’S SELECTED WORKS

The Historical Materialism book series at Brill is initiating a project to translate and publish Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s most important work.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899-1990) was a Marxian economist and philosopher. He is best known for developing the notion of ‘real abstraction’, which influenced the work of the Frankfurt school (Adorno), Autonomism (Virno), the Neue Marx-Lektüre, and has recently been the subject of renewed interest.  As Sohn-Rethel himself noted, the idea of ‘real abstraction’ was the core idea he developed, revising it over the course of several decades. Yet the English translations of Sohn-Rethel’s work are hard to find and only offer a partial grasp of his thought, particularly the development of ‘real abstraction’. The selected works will remedy this situation by translating Sohn-Rethel’s most important writings. It will also help contextualize his relationship with the Frankfurt School, Autonomism and the Neue Marx-Lektüre .

 

The Selected Works will broken down into the following three volumes:

Volume 1: A Critical edition of Intellectual and Manual Labour. This edition will make Sohn-Rethel’s magnum opus readily available in English in a new form. This will be done by incorporate changes Sohn-Rethel made in the subsequent Italian and German editions of Intellectual and Manual Labour. It will also include a few notes he made in an annotated edition of English translation of Intellectual and Manual Labour which clarify certain passages on the epistemological dimension of real abstraction.

Volume 2: Collected essays that include the most notable of Sohn-Rethel’s early work, some mid-period essays from Geistige Und Korperliche Arbeit : Zur Epistemologie Der Abendlandischen Geschichte, Warenform und Dankform and the later Das Geld, die bare Münze des Apriori, none of which are available in English. This volume will complement the critical edition of Intellectual and Manual Labour by including the essays that mark the development of the idea of ‘real abstraction’, prior to and following the publication of Intellectual and Manual Labour.  It will also feature Sohn-Rethel’s writings on the Frankfurt School, and other items of interest including essays on technology.

Volume 3: Will consist of a translation of his correspondence with Theodor W. Adorno.

 

Those interested in helping translate, edit and otherwise contribute to the project should contact Chris O’Kane at theresonlyonechrisokane@gmail.com. The project also has a website at alfredsohnrethel.wordpress.com/

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/alfred-sohn-rethels-selected-works

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Heathwood Institute, Heathwood Press, Heathwood Network & the Global Voice Project

Heathwood Press

HEATHWOOD INSTITUTE, HEATHWOOD PRESS, HEATHWOOD NETWORK & THE GLOBAL VOICE PROJECT

Hello everyone,

We have just launched our new website and are sending out several batches of newsletters to update our readers, friends, and colleagues about what has been going on over the last three months and what to expect from the organisation moving forward.

Launch of New Beta Site

– Our ambition as a group has always been to break down the barriers separating critical theoretical discourse and ‘the everyday practise of social and individual life’. In attempting to achieve this we have engaged with readers and have been working with several leading theories of alternative media and web application, to develop new ways in which a range of media projects can assist the organisation to bridge the theory-practise divide.

– One of the new features on our website includes the organisation’s Global Voice project, which acts as centralised hub or platform for the publication of non-profit research and reports.

The non-profit sector of society is notorious for its ability to encourage ethical and critical practise across many different social spheres. Drawing close links to some of the leading non-profit organisations, locally and globally, Heathwood can directly assist and support the ongoing research and practise of NPO’s in a number of fundamental ways: 1) to pull-in non-profit media, report, commentary and critique from around the world and disseminate that information in one centralised place; 2) to normatively engage with independent non-profits so as to support their efforts on a grassroots level with a highly engaged critical theory; 3) to listen to NPO’s across the globe and the struggles and conflicts they report in order to further our own understanding about social agency and structure;  and 4) to integrate non-profit research and data, which is heavily rooted in praxis, with Heathwood’s post-Frankfurt school critical theory.

– Another exciting feature that we’ve been working on for some time consists around the democratisation of media and how to make Heathwood’s site more representative of a truly social, participatory media centre.

To achieve this we have launched a new on-site comments system that allows for real-time discussion between members of the public as well as between readers/public and members of Heathwood. The aim of this new feature is to encourage over time the development of a fertile digital ground for discussion and the sharing of ideas.

Heathwood Network

We have also recently launched a new public forum called the Heathwood Network, which will further support and encourage direct discussion and engagement on a range of subjects. The forum can be accessed via the menu on our new site.

– We’ve also been developing a series of critical theory eGuides, ranging in subject from alternative education and epistemology to alternative economics and ideology critique. No launch date has been set for this programme.

-Lastly, we have been working on publishing a range of infographics, interactive media, videos and datablogs to further support our present research activity and public engagement campaigns.

New Members

We’ve welcomed a new member in past few months, Robert King, whose work in systems will be a great addition to the organisation.

We’ve also had the opportunity to work with some great people from around Europe and North America, including Glenn Rikowski, Chris Cutrone, Richard Wolff, Peter Thompson, Daniel Little, Geert Dhondt, Jeanne Willette, and others.

Moving Forward

There’s a lot planned for the upcoming year, including several new book publications and further expansion to our digital media projects.

If anyone has any questions or would like to discuss more about Heathwood and where it is headed, please feel free to contact Robert C. Smith at robert.smith@heathwoodpress.com

Alternatively, follow the organisation on twitter for daily publication updates.

Signed,

-The members of Heathwood

P.S. Feel free to forward this information to friends, colleagues or whomever you may think appropriate.

Robert C. Smith
Director and Researcher at Heathwood Institute and Press
Website: http://www.heathwoodpress.com
Email: robert.smith@heathwoodpress.com
Phone: +44 (0) 07919252541
Holt, Norfolk, United Kingdom

******END******

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Sixth International Critical Theory Conference

Moishe Postone

SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THEORY CONFERENCE – ROME

CALL FOR PAPERS

6TH INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THEORY

CONFERENCE OF ROME

Stream on Marx and the Frankfurt School: New Perspectives and their Contemporary Relevance.

May 6-8^th, 2013

John Felice Rome Center of Loyola University Chicago

Website– http://romecriticaltheory2013.wordpress.com/

 

Recent years have seen a flourishing of new perspectives on the contemporary relevance of Karl Marx’s thought. Very little of this thought has been applied to the relationship between Marx and the work of the Frankfurt School.  Instead, with the notable exception of scholars such as Werner Bonefeld and Moishe Postone, much of the work on Marx and the Frankfurt School in the Anglophone world is still approached through paradigms such as the Marxist Humanist discourse of alienation or of scholarly interpretations established by Jurgen Habermas, Martin Jay and Gillian Rose. This stream aims to bring together the best contemporary scholarship offering new perspectives on the relationship between Marx and the Frankfurt School and to consider the contemporary relevance of this relationship.

Possible topics include:

·      New assessments of the relationship between Marx and major figures from the Frankfurt School including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Habermas and Honneth.

·      New assessments of the relationship between Marx and minor figures from the Frankfurt School including: Sohn-Rethel, Kracauer, Kirchheimer, Löwenthal Neumann, Pollack, Wittfogel, Negt, Kluge, Schmidt, Backhaus, Reichelt.

·      Comparative accounts of different figures from the Frankfurt School’s interpretation of Marx.

·      New assessments of theories central to Marx and thinkers from the Frankfurt School such as critique, society, reification, second nature, natural history, commodification, fetishism, value, money, exchange, equivalence, ideology, domination, class, capital, social reproduction, epistemology, subjectivity etc.

·      New assessments of the reception and the influence of the Frankfurt School’s relation to Marx in national and international contexts.

·      Importance that the ideas of Marx and the Frankfurt School have for contemporary theories of capital, crisis, social domination, subjectivity, the state, epistemology, class, critical pedagogy, emancipatory politics, and issues of crisis, social reproduction, ecological catastrophe etc.

·      Criticisms different Marxisms or critical theories might have of thinkers from the Frankfurt School.

·      Criticisms the thinkers from the Frankfurt School might have of Marx and different Marxisms.

·      Productive and elective affinities between Marx, figures from the Frankfurt School and other critical theorists such as Bataille, Bensaid, Althusser, Foucault, Open Marxism, Postone, Heinrich, Kurz, Dieter Wolf, Castoriadis, Illyenkov, Bogdanov, etc.

·      Productive and elective affinities between Marx, figures from the Frankfurt School and other Marxist schools such as Autonomism, Political Marxism, Open Marxism, communisation and value-form theory.

·      Contextualizing the reception of Marx and the Frankfurt School in the work of Martin Jay, Gillian Rose, Jurgen Habermas etc.

 

If you are interested in presenting a paper or organizing a panel (of up to 3 speakers), please submit a 1-2 page abstract by February 28, 2013 (including name and institutional affiliation). Abstracts should be submitted by email to the stream coordinator Chris O’Kane at: theresonlyonechrisokane@gmail.com

Decisions regarding the program will be made by March 2013.

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/6th-international-critical-theory-conference-of-rome-6-8-may-2013

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: https://rikowski.wordpress.com

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Marx and the Frankfurt School – Call for Papers

Theodor Adorno

MARX AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL – CALL FOR PAPERS

CALL FOR PAPERS

6TH INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THEORY CONFERENCE OF ROME

Stream on Marx and the Frankfurt School: New Perspectives and their Contemporary Relevance

May 6-8, 2013

John Felice, Rome Center of Loyola University Chicago

Recent years have seen a flourishing of new perspectives on the contemporary relevance of Karl Marx’s thought. Very little of this thought has been applied to the relationship between Marx and the work of the Frankfurt School. Instead much of the work on Marx and the Frankfurt School is still approached through paradigms such as the Marxist Humanist discourse of alienation or of scholarly interpretations established by Jurgen Habermas, Martin Jay and Gillian Rose. This stream aims to bring together the best contemporary scholarship offering new perspectives on the relationship between Marx and the FrankfurtSchool and to consider the contemporary relevance of this relationship.

Possible topics include:

·      New assessments of the relationship between Marx and major figures from the Frankfurt School including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Habermas and Honneth.

·      New assessments of the relationship between Marx and minor figures from the Frankfurt School including: Sohn-Rethel, Kracauer, Kirchheimer, Löwenthal Neumann, Pollack, Wittfogel, Negt, Kluge, Schmidt, Backhaus, Reichelt.

 ·      Comparative accounts of different figures from the Frankfurt School’s interpretation of Marx.

 ·      New assessments of theories central to Marx and thinkers from the Frankfurt School such as critique, society, reification, second nature, natural history, commodification, fetishism, value, money, exchange, equivalence, ideology, domination, class, capital, social reproduction, epistemology, subjectivity etc.

 ·      New assessments of the reception and the influence of the Frankfurt School’s relation to Marx in national and international contexts.

 ·      Importance that the ideas of Marx and the Frankfurt School have for contemporary theories of capital, social domination, subjectivity, the state, epistemology, class, critical pedagogy, emancipatory politics, and issues of crisis, social reproduction, ecological catastrophe etc.

 ·      Criticisms different Marxisms or critical theories might have of thinkers from the FrankfurtSchool.

 ·      Criticisms the thinkers from the FrankfurtSchool might have of Marx and different Marxisms.

 ·      Productive and elective affinities between Marx, figures from the Frankfurt School and other Marxists such as Bataille, Bensaid, Foucault, Open Marxism, Althusser, Heinrich, Kurz, Dieter Wolf, Castoriadis, Illyenkov, Bogdanov, etc.

 ·      Productive and elective affinities between Marx, figures from the Frankfurt School and other Marxist schools such as Autonomism, Political Marxism, Open Marxism, communisation and value-form theory.

 

If you are interested in presenting a paper or organizing a panel (of up to 5 speakers), please submit a 1-2 page abstract by February 28, 2013 (including name and institutional affiliation). Abstracts should be submitted by email to the stream coordinator Chris O’Kane at theresonlyonechrisokane@gmail.com

Decisions regarding the program will be made by March 2013.

 

First published at: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-stream-on-marx-and-the-frankfurt-school-new-perspectives-and-their-contemporary-relevance-1

 

**END**

 

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

Glenn Rikowski’s paper, Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society has been published at Heathwood Press as a Monthly Guest Article for September 2012, online at:

http://www.heathwoodpress.com/monthly-guest-article-august-critical-pedagogy-and-the-constitution-of-capitalist-society-by-glenn-rikowski/

 

Heathwood Press: http://www.heathwoodpress.com