Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought

CONTRADICTIONS: A JOURNAL FOR CRITICAL THOUGHT

Call for Papers
A New Journal
Kontradikce /Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought

We are seeking submissions of scholarly articles and theoretical essays that skirt the disciplinary boundaries of political philosophy, social theory, and cultural critique. This peer-reviewed journal, based in Prague, aims to critically revive and update Central and Eastern European traditions of radical thought, bringing them to bear on the historical present and bringing them into international discussions of the theoretical problems involved in emancipatory social change.

The journal is therefore especially interested in 1) articles that delve into the often overlooked or forgotten history of radical left thought in our part of the world and assess this legacy’s contemporary significance; 2) articles that describe and develop related and parallel traditions of thought originating in other regions, bringing these traditions into conversation with the traditions of Central and Eastern Europe; 3) articles that analyze Soviet-type societies and their troubled relationship to historical and contemporary movements for social emancipation; and 4) articles that critically engage with the ideological assumptions and social conditions of “post-communism,” that is, of the discursive association of the communist project with Soviet-type societies and, thus, with a “failed” and irretrievable past.

With these thematic problems in mind, we ask what specific contributions to critical social theory can arise out of the post-Communist experience—that is, out of the historical conflation of communism (the idea and project) with Communism (the party and party-run states) and the subsequent de-legitimation of the former along with the latter. Our focus is thus both geographically specific and global, as we aim to bring together the specific intellectual legacy of those parts of Europe formerly under Communist Party rule with w orldwide reflections of the “fall” of communism as a leading political and intellectual force. Out of this situation, we ask what new visions can emerge.

The journal will be published once a year as a double issue in multilingual format, with one part in English and one part in Czech and Slovak. Submissions are welcome in any of these three languages (English, Czech, or Slovak).

The first issue, with a submission deadline of October 31, 2015, will focus thematically on assessing the current moment and the state of critical social—and in particular Marxist—thought a quarter century after the fall of governments in Central and Eastern Europe that officially sanctioned Marxism while also constraining its development as a tradition of social critique. Submissions are encouraged, but not required, to take this focus into account.

Articles are welcome in the following categories:

· “Studies” and “essays”: These may be articles of a more or less traditional academic character, but with an emphasis on the social significance of the material presented and on original and provocative argumentation. But we also welcome more essayistic contributions that break with some of the conventions of scholarly form. We are interested in rigorously theoretical essays, works of high scholarly value but which might not find a place in other scholarly journals. In this kind of writing, insightful generalization and shrewd observation will be given more weight than an exhaustive accounting for “existing literature” or a detailed description of research methodology. In other words, we have in mind essays that continue in the genre of most classic works in the modern history of ideas, from Rousseau’s Discourses through Benjamin’s “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and Karel Kosík’s Dialectics of the Concrete. More traditionally scholarly articles should be about 4000-9000 words long. Essays can range from 3000 to 10,000 words.

· “Translations” and “materials”: Here we include important contributions to Central/Eastern European social thought that can be brought to international attention in English translation; internationally important works in new Czech or Slovak translations; and previously unpublished or long-unavailable “materials,” accompanied by annotation that presents the materials’ significance to contemporary readers (these may be submitted in English, Czech, or Slovak). 3000-10,000 words.

· “Reviews” of recent publications in critical social thought. Reviews may be brief (500-2000 words) or may constitute longer “review studies” (2000-5000 words).

Send all submissions to jgrimfeinberg@gmail.com.
Further information available on www.facebook.com/kontradikce.
First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/new-journal-contradictions

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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 @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Politics and Poetics

POLITICS AND POETICS

Call for Papers, Presentations and Performances:

Politics and Poetics

The third symposium of the Leverhulme International Research Network ‘Imaginaries of the Future’

Queen’s University, Belfast, 19-21 January 2016.

Website: https://imaginariesofthefuture.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/cfp-politics-and-poetics-3rd-symposium-of-the-leverhulme-research-network/

What does it mean to think of politics as a poetics, and to do so through the prism of the expectant, the anticipatory, the Not-Yet, and the futural? The third symposium of the ‘Imaginaries of the Future’ International Research Network seeks to investigate the ways in which futures are both imagined and governed, projected, deferred and deterred, through different disciplinary formations, and to explore the effects of competing ways of conceiving futurity.

The ‘hope project’ at the heart of utopianism pursues a future transformed through collective agency, and develops an anticipatory register in which visions of competing futures are mobilized to orient such collective political agency. Conversely, in what ways are creative practices of agency obstructed, and how are visions of ‘the future’ deployed in reactive, prohibitory ways? How does the utopian anticipatory compare with other categories of futurity, such as precaution or pre-emption, risk or threat? How, then, can we theorize the ambivalence of the anticipatory, modes of capture and recuperation?

Symposium participants may interrogate utopianism itself, exploring the poetics of utopian desire, affect, and agency vis-à-vis the politics of contestation, challenge, and transformation. We may also consider the specificity of politics and poetics, and the relations of connectivity between these approaches. Is politics necessarily reducible to calculative and instrumental modes of grasping the future? Is poetics more attuned to the epistemological and ontological uncertainty of the future, to what has not and might not happen? Or, is there a politics to poetics, and a poetics to politics? How can engagement with poetics help map forms of relationality and connection, and what is the role of affect, emotion, memory in creating connections and preconditions for political agency? What might be the political valence of aesthetic and sensual categories of experience — touch, proximity, intimacy, harmony and dissonance? How might technological and cybernetic invention advance both human agential capacity, as well as contribute to a critique of the anthropocentrism of both politics and poetics? And can we think of ethics (say, the Levinasian encounter with the Other, or perhaps the Spinozist endeavour to enhance capacity, agency, connectivity, and joy) as a missing third term between poetics and politics?

We welcome proposals of 250-300 words in length from across the arts and humanities (and beyond) for papers, presentations or performances of up to 20 minutes in length. Please send all proposals to both s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk and nathaniel.coleman@ncl.ac.uk

Utopia

Bursaries

Five travel bursaries, two of up to £1000, and three of up to £350, will be awarded through open competition to individuals who promise to make a significant contribution to the work of the Network. The larger bursaries are intended for applicants traveling a significant distance to attend the symposium. We welcome submissions from all career stages including PhD researchers. Bursary recipients will be expected to contribute a piece of writing and/or embedded media to the Network blog, and will be invited to submit work to be considered for publication opportunities arising from the symposium.

To apply for a bursary, please send a CV along with your proposal to both s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk and nathaniel.coleman@ncl.ac.uk by 30 October 2015

 

Dr Susan McManus

Lecturer in Political Theory

Politics, International Studies and Philosophy QUB.

Even Bigger Data

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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 @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Demos: Life in Common

Socrates

DEMOS: LIFE IN COMMON

Banff Research in Culture 2015 – Summer Research Residency

Program dates: June 1, 2015 – June 19, 2015

Application deadline: December 10, 2014

 

Faculty: Alex Hartley, Nina Power, Astra Taylor

Further info, including application information, can be found at:

http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1534

(Contact: Brandy Dahrouge: brandy_dahrouge@banffcentre.ca)

The word demos names ‘the people’, and thus democracy is, at its most basic constitutive level, the shared power of people thinking and acting. Democracy is grounded upon the capacity of the people to narrate and decide the shape of collective life. But the ‘democracy’ we experience and live with today has devolved into practices of state sovereignty and governmentality, a society characterized by social and economic inequality, and an under-represented and disenfranchised electorate. And it seems, too, that hopes in technology as a mechanism that might yet create a new common ground have failed to achieve their promised ends.

Demos: Life in Common invites participants to consider the ways in which we constitute and experience collective life in this century. We seek to bring together artists, writers, researchers, and cultural producers who in their work explore the ways in which we might reinvigorate democratic life today—not just ‘democratic’ in its narrow, political sense, but as life in common in which being and belonging engenders the full flourishing of individuals and communities. What new forms might politics take today—a time that bears little resemblance to those bygone centuries that gave birth to many of our political structures and imaginings? How is collective self-determination mobilized and what do recent events demonstrate about the will of the people and the will of the state? What is the role of new technologies in enhancing or impeding social equality? Might it yet help to create new forms of community and belonging? And how might contemporary cultural, artistic and intellectual activities enliven the belief of the dêmos in its own capacities and possibilities?

“Demos” also names cultural and social practices that suggest other ways in which we might pursue our inquiries during this program. A demo is also an essai—an attempt, a test, an experiment in sound that allows musicians to record their own creative efforts and to share their ideas with others. And, demos are what groups engage in when they want to draw attention to problems and limits that existing structures of government, law or economy can’t address or even apprehend. Demonstrations are a site at which the demos tries to upend the ossified language of culture and politics by upsetting the patterns of the quotidian, taking to the streets and affirming their collective displeasure en masse. Over three weeks, participants will engage in experiments of thinking, action, and making—demos that challenge the self-certainties and pieties of existing structures and practices, and so help to envision and enable renewed forms,of democratic life.

We look forward to receiving compelling and original proposals from thinkers and artists.

Banff Research in Culture 2015

Banff Research in Culture (BRiC) is a residency program designed for scholars and artists engaged in advanced theoretical research on themes and topics in culture. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty (pre-tenure), activists, writers, and practicing artists from around the world will convene at The Banff Centre for three weeks to contemplate the theme Demos: Life in Common.

BRiC is designed to offer researchers and artists with similar interests from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds, an opportunity to exchange opinions and ideas in a fruitful and intensive environment. Participants are encouraged to develop new research, artistic, editorial, and authorial projects, both individually and in connection with others. Participants will attend lectures and seminars offered by visiting faculty. This program aims to develop new approaches toward the study and analysis ofculture, as well as create lasting networks of scholars and artists who might use this opportunity as the basis for future collaborative work.

Demos: Life in Common is the fifth edition of BRiC following Distributed Intimacies (2014); Dock(ing); or, New Economies of Exchange (2013); The Retreat: A Position of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), and On the Commons; or, Believing-Feeling-Acting Together (2011). The Banff Centre is a world-renowned facility supporting the creation and performance of new works of visual and digital art, music, dance, theatre,research and writing.

The 2015 edition of BRiC is generously supported by The Banff Centre, the University of Alberta, and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/banff-research-in-culture-2015-deadline-reminder-summer-research-residency-call-for-applicants

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Marx, Justice and Alienation

Karl Marx

MARX, JUSTICE AND ALIENATION

A SPECIAL CALL FOR PAPERS

New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

In spite of its clear and distinguished pedigree in European political philosophy and theology, the concept of alienation is now associated, almost exclusively, with Marxian critical theory and analysis. Yet, even within the orbit of Marxian thought the meaning and function of the concept of alienation has not always had a comfortable or stable position. Pointing to polysemic and intermittent use in the Paris Manuscripts, and the absence of explicit formation in Capital, Louis Althusser advised discarding alienation like other “old philosophical themes” (Althusser 1967.) Granted, there is a degree to which Marx’s own deployment of alienation has several different conceptions and connotations, but the Grundrisse and other textual sources provide evidence that alienation, its semantic elasticity notwithstanding, remained central to Marx’s political economic analysis and his theory of history, even while it appeared to ‘go underground’, so to speak, in his late thought.

Part of the confusion around this concept arises from the fact that Marx appears to use alienation as a kind of normative foundation, one which informs his various critiques. A central historical rendering tends to describe workers’ inability to fully realize their inner life in capitalist society outside of market forces, hence they are separated from their “species being.” Adopted from Feuerbach, and initially developed in the Paris Manuscripts, Marx tends to understand species-being as comprising the distinctive features of human being which when expressed facilitate the conditions for human life to flourish. The ability to freely make and create is central to this conception. But under capitalism the majority of people are unable to exercise their capabilities. In this respect, alienation is a normative assessment of the conditions of life and the potential possibility to fulfill necessary elements of them themselves. One can see residue elements of this sentiment in the language in and around the ideas associated with dignity, humanity, and human flourishing.

In terms of the analysis of capitalist social relations, Marx’s conception of alienation is narrower and is applied to studies of exploitation in the labour process. Alienation in this respect refers to how workers are separated or estranged, from their products. As a social system, capitalism is structurally dependent upon separating workers from their products and therefore requires dominating means to force workers to comply in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Thus separation implies subordination. Additionally, there is a reconstructed rendering of alienation wherein Marx’s concept of alienation can be reduced to “the notion that people create the structures that dominate them” (Postone and Brennan 2009, 316). Herein, alienation is a process by which persons are co-opted to reproduce their subordinate conditions.

While the idea of alienation has never quite disappeared from popular and scholarly consciousness, in recent years the impetus to understand these structures seems more urgent than it did only a decade ago. Indeed, when Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber argue that, for many, “crisis is the new normal” (Panitch, Albo, and Chibber 2012, ix), they articulate the conditions under which people both struggle to eke out the means of existence and make sense of the world today as well as the structural constraints which rigorously intercede and perpetuate social misery.

Increasingly, capitalism is at the center of critical attention. This is evidenced by the fact that Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which details he inequalities generated under capitalism (hardly a revelation), seems to struck a chord in the popular press, so to speak. So to have Milanovic’s The Haves and the Have-Nots and Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality. Unfortunately, these analyses, while detailing economic developments more broadly, are silent on issues of labor, working conditions, and the prospects for people to cultivate their inner life under contemporary capitalism. For this reason, alienation still nevertheless provides a useful focus to explore contemporary social thought. There is a need for old philosophical themes.

This special issue of New Proposals seeks to collect and showcase scholarship primarily concerned with using, refining, or deploying the concept of alienation. Given the diverse expressions of alienation we invite contributions that explore the historical, analytical, and practical underpinnings of the concept, its contemporary fate, and speculations on the trajectory of this idea.

 

Recommended Length:

Peer-Reviewed academic articles: 4’000-6’000 words.

Shorter comments and arguments: 1’500- 2’500 words

Please send queries and expressions of interest (including title, a 200 word abstract, a brief outline of the argument, affiliation, and contact details) via email to the co-editors.

Scott Timcke – snt2@sfu.ca

Graham MacKenzie – gsmacken@sfu.ca

 

Details at: http://newproposals.blogspot.ca/2014/09/old-philosophical-themes-marx-justice.html

‘New Proposals’: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals/index

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

 

Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

No Present: New Encounters in French and Italian Thought

No Future

NO PRESENT: NEW ENCOUNTERS IN FRENCH AND ITALIAN THOUGHT

March 13-14, 2015

Villanova University

Keynote: Jason E. Smith

The negotiation between French and Italian activists and intellectuals in the latter part of the twentieth century (marked by 1968 in France and 1977 in Italy) opened a field of theoretical experimentation, the effects of which pose a challenge for contemporary politics. This encounter materialized through various collectives, traversing the neat intellectual and practical boundaries of the academy. Whether through the images of intellectuals in the streets or through radical activist groups extending from the Situationist International to Tiqqun, the laboratory of French and Italian thought poses a constellation of conceptual weapons that remain vital for any contestation with the state of things. These implements have been successful in intervening within contemporary struggles on the level of theory, practice, and the construction of history in the present.

Under the inheritance of this tradition, this conference invites submissions from the interstices and margins of recent French and Italian philosophy. Possible paper topics include feminist recapitulations of post-workerism, the theoretical legacy of biopolitics as it is taken up in Agamben and Esposito, and the ongoing challenges for theory and practice posed by social movements extending from Latin America to the Mediterranean in the wake of events such as Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation.

Other topics include, but are not limited to:

• Post-Althusserian philosophy
• Decolonial challenges to eurocentric thought and strategies
• Wages for Housework and care economies
• Realism and contemporary cntologies
• Re-interpretations of the Gramscian legacy
• Philosophies of life and the problem of vitalism
• Lacanian psychoanalysis and its heritage
• French and Italian receptions of Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx
• Affect theory and imagination in cultural productions (e.g. film and media)
• Left Heideggarian reflections on community between Nancy and Agamben

 

The Philosophy Graduate Student Union at Villanova University welcomes graduate students and junior faculty to submit any of the following to be considered for our conference: paper abstracts of 250-350 words, papers of approximately 3000 words (including co-authored work) suitable for a 20 minute presentation, or proposed panels. Authors of accepted abstracts should send completed papers by March 1, 2015.

Please send submissions, prepared for blind review, by Dec. 21, 2014 to YUcont2015@gmail.com

This conference is committed to accommodating people with disabilities. Conference participants and attendees are encouraged to contact the above email address to discuss accommodations.

Villanova University (About): http://www1.villanova.edu/content/main/about.html

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics

Education Crisis

CONFERO: ESSAYS ON EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS

Open Call for Papers

Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy & Politics

Confero is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal focusing on issues related to education and social criticism. The journal provides a space for essayistic writing and especially encourages discussions of philosophical and political nature.

We are now inviting submissions of essays that deal with issues related to the broad scope of the journal, i.e. education and criticism.

The journal welcomes a broad range of empirical sources to explore the issue or phenomenon at hand: unconventional sources such as art works, literature, movies as well as conventional empirical material like interviews, statistics and ethnographies.

Confero publishes essays related to education written from various academic traditions, for example anthropology, literature, history, social psychology and sociology.

Confero is an open access journal, available for free to people engaged in social science research as well as a wider intellectual public. All the submission that potentially will possess the high quality required for publication, will go through a rigorous double blind peer-review process.

This open call for papers warmly welcomes contributions at any time.

The inaugural issue of Confero contains essays by such scholars as Sven-Eric Liedman, Ylva Hasselberg, Mary Lou Lou Rasmussen, Walter Mignolo and Ronny Ambjörnsson. To access these essays or getting further information on our submission guidelines, please visit: http://www.confero.ep.liu.se

We look forward to your submission!

The editorial team

Open Call for Papers: http://www.confero.ep.liu.se/call_for_papers.html

Confero: http://www.confero.ep.liu.se/index.asp

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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 @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Complicity

Dialectics

COMPLICITY

A two-day conference exploring issues of complicity, organised by the University of Brighton’s Understanding Conflict: Forms & Legacies of Violence research cluster.

Tuesday 31st March – Wednesday 1st April 2015
University of Brighton, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS

DEADLINE: 1st December 2014

The problem of complicity is a longstanding feature of everyday moral experience, and yet comparatively little work focuses explicitly on it. Furthermore, in an increasingly neo-liberal world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid complicity both in its creation of a particular model of the person and with its attendant demands on how we live, on what we do and do not do and on how we think. If Georgio Agamben is right to insist that ‘Today’s man … has become blind not to his capacities but to his incapacities, not to what he can do but to what he cannot, or can not, do’ (‘On what we can not do’, Nudities, 2011, p.44), then complicity is taking centre stage in our everyday lives. It thus requires our attention in terms both of practice and of theorization.

This conference will seek to begin that work. We invite proposals (max. 300 words) that address one of the broad inter-related themes outlined below:

DAY 1

What is complicity?
Issues might include:

– What counts as complicity and why? What counts as non-complicity and why?

– What are complicity’s logical limits? Is there anything that cannot be (re-)described as complicity?

– What to do? What to avoid? What to not do?

– If there are degrees of complicity, how might they be characterised?

Theorising complicity in relation to related moral-political issues
Issues might include:

– How does the problem of complicity relate to that of “dirty hands”?
– What are the relations between complicity, personhood and moral agency?
– Complicity versus integrity?* Reasonable and unreasonable excuses
– Chains of complicity: moral overload; moral distance; moral paralysis political overload;
political distance; political paralysis
– Commission and omission
– Complicity and the means/ends problem
– Complicity and/with violence
– Complicity and culpable ignorance
– The importance of moral disruption
– The relation of complicity to asymmetries of power; in or out of the tent?
– Complicity, hypocrisy and necessity
– Complicity and power

DAY 2

Empirical cases

Issues might include:

How to act on a committee
– Whistleblowing
– Voting
– Lifestyles; petitions; protest; charities
– Conflict resolution; conflict transformation
– Specificities of the neo-liberal world
– The egoism of non-complicity, Impotent self-flagellation versus principled refusal
– Accepting tainted money: research grants and the like

– Embedded journalism, War photography
– Anthropological research, charitable work
– The armed forces
– Trade, business and “the market”
– Research, advocacy and silence
– Bodies
– Gender, sex and their interconnections
– Making use of power one thinks one ought not to have.

We anticipate that these and related issues will be of interest to a wide range of people working in and studying, among other areas, cultural studies, philosophy, political theory, media studies, photography and journalism, art practice and visual studies, film studies, the armed forces, international security, armaments, banking, finance and globalisation, politics and geopolitics, sociology, NGO and charitable sectors, colonialism and post-colonialism, health studies and NHS, queer theory, women’s studies and women and the family.

Proposals of no more than 300 words should be emailed by 1st December 2014 to conflictcluster@brighton.ac.uk

For more information on the work and scope of the University of Brighton’s Research Cluster

Understanding Conflict: Forms and Legacies of Violence

Visit http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research

Conference website: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/conflict/cluster-activities/complicity-conference

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Composition of Force, Composition of Interest: The Art of Government

Guy Debord

COMPOSITION OF FORCE, COMPOSITION OF INTEREST: THE ART OF GOVERNMENT

L’art de gouverner: conflits et composition des intérêts (XVIIème-XXème siècle)

Seminaire de recherche organisé par Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University, London et Collège International de Philosophie) et Oliver Feltham (American University of Paris)

American University of Paris

The Grand Salon
31 Avenue Bosquet
Paris 75007

Vendredi 3 october, 17h

 

Bernard Aspe, Les deux corps immatériels

À quoi répond l’art de gouverner ? Et, plus précisément, à quoi répond-il, au XVIIèmesiècle ? Ainsi formulées, ces questions présupposent que les mutations dans l’art de gouverner n’ont pas leur raison en elles-mêmes – qu’il faut donc quelque chose de tel qu’une contrainte extérieure pour qu’elles adviennent. Quelle est donc la source de ces mutations ?

Pour pouvoir essayer de répondre, il faut tout d’abord préciser le problème. Il s’agit en l’occurrence de savoir à quoi répond la théorie de la représentation politique telle qu’elle se construit dans le XVIIème siècle anglais avec Locke et Hobbes. J’insisterai ici sur Hobbes, car son œuvre montre parfaitement que la représentation politique ne repose pas sur la supposition d’une métaphysique des substances, qualités et accidents (qui seraient attachées aux « identités sociales »). Il y a représentation politique dans la mesure où est généré un nouveau type d’être : le corps immatériel du souverain.

Ce corps immatériel s’ajoute à la collection des uns – les individus séparés – qui ne fait un peuple que dans cet ajout. Hegel en donnera la formule métaphysique : il n’y a de Tout que s’il y a une médiation par laquelle le Tout devient pensable par lui-même, en lui-même. On ne dépasse donc la collection des uns que par la médiation qui ajoute à leurêtre l’être du Tout – mais celui-ci n’est au fond rien d’autre que le procès même de la médiation.

On sait quel reproche a été adressé à Hobbes : prendre pour donné cette collection d’uns – qui n’est peut-être qu’une abstraction de la philosophie politique. On a pu dire par exemple que le véritable donné se joue en-deçà de ces « uns », dans l’infra-un des multiplicités « pures » ou « virtuelles », au choix. Mais on pourrait peut-être mieux dire que le donné, selon le mot de Simondon, est le plus qu’un depuis lequel seulement se laisse appréhender chaque être.

Chaque « un » n’est tel que d’être élément d’un foyer relationnel – ce que Simondon appelle un « collectif ». Il y a un collectif là où chacun de ses membres est amené à s’éprouver comme plus que lui-même, décentré par rapport à lui-même, et mis en œuvre dans la relation qui fait l’être du collectif. Celui-ci n’est donc pas le fruit d’une médiation. Le donné, dans cette perspective, ce n’est pas une collection d’uns qui doit trouver le terme médiateur capable d’instaurer entre eux un rapport ; c’est une relation qui est en capacité de générer sa propre consistance, sans en passer par cet élément tiers. On dira pourtant que ce qui apparaît comme l’être du collectif, ou plutôt comme le mode de consistance de cet être, peut bien être conçu comme un corps immatériel qui s’ajoute à la collection des uns – mais il n’est pas, alors, de même nature que celui voulu par Hobbes.

 

BIOGRAPHIE

Bernard Aspe, né en 1970, est philosophe. En 2001 il a soutenu sa thèse sous la direction de Jacques Rancière, sur la relation entre la pensée de l’individuation chez Gilbert Simondon et la question de la subjectivation politique telle qu’elle est posée par la philosophie contemporaine (Badiou, Rancière, Agamben, Negri, Tronti). Il a publié en 2006 son premier livre, L’instant d’après, projectiles pour une politique à l’état naissant aux éditions La fabrique. Les éditions Nous ont publié son deuxième livre, Les mots et les actes, en 2011. Sa thèse a été publiée en 2013 sous le titre Simondon, politique du transindividuel aux éditions Dittmar. Ses ouvrages, et de nombreux articles qui leur sont associés (publiés dans les revues Futur antéri eur, Multitudes, Alice, Attaques, Grumeaux, etc.) ont pour projet de réarticuler le questionnement philosophique (notamment le rapport à l’ontologie) et les exigences de la politique contemporaine.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/bernard-aspe-3-october-17h-au-paris-research-seminar-in-political-philosophy-composition-of-force-composition-of-interest-the-art-of-government

**END**

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

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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.

————

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

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Crisis and Critique: Special Issue, Vol.I Issue II, 2014

Critique

CRISIS AND CRITIQUE: SPECIAL ISSUE, VOL.I ISSUE II, 2014

CRISIS & CRITIQUE: http://materializmidialektik.org/crisis-and-critique-n-2/

CRISIS & CRITIQUE SPECIAL ISSUE VOLUME I / ISSUE II, 2014

Edited by Acheronta Movebo

EDITORS Agon Hamza Frank Ruda

 

CRISIS & CRITIQUE Editorial Board is:

Henrik Jøker Bjerre, Aaron Schuster, Adrian Johnston, Joan Copjec, Robert Pfaller, Frank Ruda, Gabriel Tupinambá, Sead Zimeri, Fabio Vighi, Benjamin Noys, Roland Boer

 

ACHERONTA MOVEBO Editorial Board is:

Sina Badiei, Srdjan Cvjetićanin, Oguz Erdin, Chrysantho Figueiredo, Agon Hamza, Martin López, Fernando Marcelino, Duane Rousselle, Ehren Stuff, Gabriel Tupinambá, Daniel Tutt, Bree Wooten, Yuan Yao

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial note (p.4)

Toward a New Thinking of the Absolute (p.6)

Politics, Subjectivity and Cosmological Antinomy: Kant, Badiou and Žižek (p.14)

Discontent, Suffering and Symptom: Reading Lacanian Diagnostics through Amerindian Perspectivism (p.33)

Psychoanalysisas labor: an impossible profession and the Marxist conception of labor (p.49)

The 21st Century Dawns with a Chance (p.61)

Entlassen. Remarks on Hegel, Sacrifice and Liberation (p.71)

Real Abstraction and the Autonomization of Value (p.84)

Serialism as Simulacrum (p.95)

What is missing / what is coming  (p.101)

The Analysis and the Presentation of Marc Lachièze-Rey’s ‘Travelling in the Time: The Modern Physics and the Temporality’ (p.109)

 

Crisis

Editorial Note

The texts comprise a special edition of Crisis and Critique, created by the editors of a different journal project, entitled Acheronta Movebo which is still in its infancy. This latter project, which began about 7 months ago, is comprised of a few students and researchers whose aim was to construct a Freudian journal which was not strictly psychoanalytic, but makes use of the Freudian categories in politics and philosophy as well. As we began to receive submissions from various authors, we decided that Acheronta had not sufficiently distinguished itself from other journals with similar commitments, most notably this one, to warrant its own existence. Although the topics covered in this issue are perhaps of a more variegated nature, we believe that they essentially fit into the structure and platform of Crisis and Critique better than our own project.

In this sense, our decision to move our first issue under the banner of a different journal is very practical – we simply think that one good journal devoted to Marxist critique is good enough, and that there is no need to further divide an already fragile field. By consolidating with Crisis and Critique, we are also motivating a question regarding our future plans – how should Acheronta Movebo move forward? The present letter from the editor is an inquiry into this situation – we hope that by outlin ing the facts of our project, what we aimed to do, and why we thought our end product did not fit the idea, we can engage ourselves and others to re think our mode of work.

The texts offered here were to be divided into two “camps” – Rings (which are modeled after Zizek’s productive engagement with the borromean knotting of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and ideology) and Conditions (which are further divided into Badiou’s “main” truth procedures – politics, art, science and love). Our thesis (and if you affirm this, we consider you one of us) is that this split between the two thinkers orients the entirety of philosophy today. Their differing perspectives on the same issues is well documented, but it is not enough to simply “choose” one or the other – it is not a matter of dividing their readers into the same two camps as the thinkers themselves. Rather, we conceive of their disagree ment as an example of what the Left should be capable of today – internal dissension (about the role of the State, about the nature of the New, and about the unconscious) which supports, rather than detracts from, our solidarity.

We have also come to realize that the primary marker of distinction for our project should be the novelty maintained in the way we work with our authors, which unfortunately was not upheld this time around. A platform that supports the “contradictions among the people” requires that we engage the authors by confronting their texts with certain naïve questions about their positions. Namely, we want to ask our authors those questions which would make their point clear for ourselves – and ﾭself. The current texts are the product of intelligent thinkers, and for that reason, they ought to be met with the incomprehension of an engaged student.

Our first attempt was that of a standard Call for Papers – but we soon found that there were certain obstacles inherent to the openness of this request – first and foremost, the lack of submissions, but also the vagueness of the criteria we used to judge whether a text was properly “Zizekian” or “Badiouian”.

In that vein, here is an excerpt from the original editorial note which was planned:

“The goal of this journal is to establish, by means of a self-referring movement, a field of study which can be properly named as Badiouian and Zizekian. This effort requires us to go beyond the work of the thinkers themselves, to expand it in as many dimensions as possible. It is not our job to dissect and disseminate their work, but rather to begin new projects that inherit the problems they’ve posed to us. The first problem ﾭtending a thinker’s work actually betray it most fully? It is a sure sign that one is among the left when the charge of “revisionism” is raised, but as the masters have shown us, it is only in rendering this charge undecidable that we make progress. What we need is to acquire the capacity to betray with honesty, to make use of what we grasp as the real contradictions of previous thought. In that sense, the division of the journal into two sections – Rings and Conditions – is a perfect fit for the task. If Badiou ’s thesis that truth is always the outcome of certain procedures (and that philosophy must maintain itself upon those procedures) is true, then we can only go as far as our grasp of these procedures (e.g. love, politics, art and science). If Zizek’s thesis that one must close the internal gap of cynicism before one can subvert the existing ideology is true, then we must train ourselves to take the Freudian unconscious seriously. In short, we must confront the contradictions posed by Badiou and Zizek’s respective edifices by establishing our own practice of them. This means to question, as they do, the ontological and ethical premises of the various situations which constitute our time – not simply to satisfy a vain understanding, but so that we may intervene in these situations with boldness.“

We essentially failed in our first attempt to actualize the above points, for reasons that were mostly based on our own inexperience, but also on the inherent problems of the field we are involved in. Our failure confirms for us that this project (Acheronta Movebo) cannot do without the close proximity between the editorial team and the authors of the journal. We rarely contacted the authors to make major changes to their texts or to ask for clarifications – a task which is quite difficult when faced with authors of such erudition – and we didn’t ask ourselves what sort of new criteria would be required to authorize any such changes in the first place. We think that our project should be more devoted to establishing the Zizekian and Badiouian field of study rather than being a format for celebrating already established figures.

Additionally, we found that good contributions to the “Conditions” section were especially sparse. Though there is a relatively large community of thinkers who engage with Badiou’s work, we could not find many who would write with enough proximity on the truth procedures. Thus, we are today lacking a platform to engage with what is new, and – following Badiou – this contributes to an overall degradation of philosophy. Certain questions, then, have to be confronted. What would be the proper text on love, for example? How would our texts on science be distinguished from those of other formats, and what would compel a scientist to publish with us given other options?

The reasons for “transplanting” our first texts to C&C became clear when we realized that it is genetically identical with AM (in the sense of having similar authors, political and philosophical positions), but without the extraneous structure we are imposing on ourselves. We hope that this decision stands as one of those few examples of the Left “unionizing” rather than dividing in the face of common obstacles, and we affirm our commitment to a new presentation of AM’s idea, one that has learned from the concrete experience of its first attempt.

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/new-issue-of-crisis-critique

Crisis

**END**

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

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

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The Rhetorical Foundations of Society

R.C. Smith

THE RHETORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY

By ERNESTO LACLAU

NEW IN PAPERBACK

Co-author of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy shows how rhetoric constitutes the social order: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1652-the-rhetorical-foundations-of-society

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The essays collected in this volume develop the theoretical perspective initiated in Laclau and Mouffe’s classic Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, taking it in three principal directions. First, this book explores the specificity of social antagonisms and answers the question “What is an antagonistic relation?”—an issue which has become increasingly crucial in our globalized world, where the proliferation of conflicts and points of rupture is eroding their links to the social subjects postulated by classical social analysis. This leads Laclau to a second line of questioning: What is the ontological terrain that allows us to understand the nature of social relations in our heterogeneous world?” This is a task he addresses with theoretical instruments drawn from analytical philosophy and from the phenomenological and structuralist traditions. Finally, central to the argument of the book is the basic role attributed to rhetorical tropes—metaphor, metonymy, catachresis—in shaping the “non-foundational” grounds of society.

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ERNESTO LACLAU was Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government, University of Essex, and Distinguished Professor for Humanities and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University. He authored, amongst other works, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Chantal Mouffe), New Reflections of the Revolution of Our Time, The Populist Reason, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (with Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek), and Emancipation(s).

Sadly, ERNESTO LACLAU died in April 2014. Read Robin Blackburn’s obituary here: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1556-ernesto-laclau-1935-2014

ERNESTO LACLAU’s last interview with La Nacion: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1575-ernesto-laclau-s-last-interview-with-la-nacion

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“What needs to be politically articulated at the present time is the possibility of a leftist populism. This is what makes Laclau’s long-awaited book so important. Arguably, populism has always been the governing concept in Laclau’s work and in On Populist Reason, he lays out his position with great power and analytical clarity.” – Simon Critchley, Praise for On Populist Reason

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Paperback, 256 pages / ISBN: 9781781681701 / May 2014 / US $26.95 / £16.99 / $32.00 (Canada)

Hardback, 256 pages / ISBN: 9781781681718 / May 2014 / US $95 / £60.00 / $108 (Canada)

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK

THE RHETORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY is available at a 40% discount (paperback) on our website. Purchasing details here: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1652-the-rhetorical-foundations-of-society

————

Visit Verso’s website for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers: http://www.versobooks.com

 

***END***

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Jason Read at the TheoryLAB

Nanopolitics

JASON READ AT THE TheoryLAB

Dear All

Please find details of the next event in the seminar programme: Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude organised by Caroline Williams, TheoryLAB , SPIR and Filippo del Lucchese, Brunel and CIPH, Paris. We hope you will be able to join us.

Please distribute to interested colleagues.

Full details and eventbrite link via the TheoryLAB page: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/theorylab/

Seminar Two: 14 May 5-7pm

Venue: Queen Mary University of London, Arts Two, 3.16

 

Jason Read

The Affective Composition of the Political: From Negative Solidarity to Collective Indignation
Jason Read is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He teaches courses in the history of political philosophy, contemporary social theory, the politics of work, philosophy of film, and philosophy of history. He is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY 2003) and Relations of Production: Transindividuality between Economics and Politics (Brill/Haymarket 2014/15) as well as articles on Althusser, Deleuze, Spinoza, Hegel, Negri, and The Wire.

 

Dr Caroline Williams

School of Politics & International Relations Queen Mary, University of London

327 Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

United Kingdom

Email: c.a.williams@qmul.ac.uk

Webpage: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/staff/drcarolinewilliams.html

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ 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