Critical Social Theory

Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal

by Christian Garland

‘Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal’ (under review) in Radical Philosophy Review. Version of paper presented as part of Panel 24: ‘Looting, Refusing, Negating, Embodying’, 'Critical Refusals’ Fourth Biennal Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society, University of Pennsylvania, 27-29 October 2011

Something for all, so that none may escape: reworking the critique of consumption (2012)

by Christian Garland

Something for all, so that none may escape: reworking the critique of consumption in Fast Capitalism 8:2

“We Teach All Hearts to Break” (2012)

by Christian Garland

“We Teach All Hearts to Break”: On the Incompatibility of Education with Schooling at All Levels, and the Renewed Need for a De-Schooling of Society
Published in Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 48:1, Special Issue: “Anarchism… is a living force within our life…” Anarchism, Education and Alternative Possibilities pps.30-38
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/heds20/48/1

Review of Frolich P. (2010) Rosa Luxemburg: Ideas in Action (2012)

by Christian Garland

Unedited version of shorter review published in Anarchist Studies 21.1 pps.119-121
http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/current.html

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies... more Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Psicología del objeto

by Baltasar Fernández-Ramírez

Draft

El construccionismo es una síntesis de orden psicosocial que lleva a conclusiones que niegan la existencia de la... more El construccionismo es una síntesis de orden psicosocial que lleva a conclusiones que niegan la existencia de la realidad tal como se concibe tradicionalmente. No es una consecuencia necesaria, pero tampoco es eludible. Si no queremos pensar en un mundo poblado por fantasmas que se resuelven únicamente en las interioridades del sujeto, necesitamos elaborar una teoría del objeto que sea capaz de incluir y al mismo tiempo de trascender las bases conceptuales del propio construccionismo. La discusión sobre el objeto es una ontología. Este texto, sin embargo, es una reflexión sobre las personas, o más bien, sobre las implicaciones del construccionismo para caracterizar el mundo de los objetos en el que las personas enmarcan su vida. Dejaré a un lado las alternativas que tienen que ver con una filosofía del lenguaje, es decir, argumentos provenientes de las ciencias del discurso, si bien es imposible sustraernos a ellas por completo, puesto que el construccionismo recibe un importante aporte de ideas desde este origen. El resultado final de mi reflexión es débil, lo reconozco, aunque prefiero considerarlo un punto de partida apto para defender un elogio de la diferencia y para matizar los riesgos solipsistas implícitos en la argumentación construccionista menos avisada.

Construccionismo. Ontología. Objetos. Personas. Nihilismo.

I Am Yourself

by Eyal Rozmarin

Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. 43 (2), 525-562.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article... more In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

Poesia e critica

by Nicola D'Ugo

Pubblicato/Published in: AA.VV., 'Il mestiere della critica', Semar, Roma 1998, pp. 42-49.

Sull'attuale panorama della critica di poesia nella pubblicistica e nelle istituzioni italiane.

[On the... more Sull'attuale panorama della critica di poesia nella pubblicistica e nelle istituzioni italiane.

[On the problems of poetry criticism in the current Italian institutions and media.]

Reflections on Knowledge, Criticism, and the Intellectual

by Jason Craige Harris

„Postkoloniale Studien und kritische Sozialwissenschaft “

by Hannah Franzki

Social and Political Critique in Otto Dix’s War Triptych

by Frederic Derose-Jacques

Latino families becoming-literate in Australia: Deleuze, literacy and the politics of immigration

by David R Cole

This article examines qualitative data from a two family case study in New South Wales. Both families are from South... more This article examines qualitative data from a two family case study in New South Wales. Both families are from South America and have recently moved to Australia. This study demonstrates that an understanding of the ways that the families are becoming literate in Australia necessitates moving beyond linguistic analyses of the changes that are occurring. The changes that are addressed constitute a politics of immigration, whereby the internal hopes and desires of the family make up an affective plane that transforms language learning. Such writing exemplifies the use of Deleuzian theory in the analysis of the literacy learning of the families, and shows how this rests on notions of the will to power, affect and the multiple nature of the self. The paper will use Masny’s (2006) multiple literacies theory (MLT) to reconcile the politics of becoming involved with the immigration of the families and variant modes of expression.

Three Normative Models of Work

by Nicholas H Smith

From Smith and Deranty eds, New Philosophies of Labour, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2012, pp. 181-208.

I argue here that the post-Hegelian tradition presents us with three contrasting normative models of work. According... more I argue here that the post-Hegelian tradition presents us with three contrasting normative models of work. According to the instrumental model, the core norms of work are those of means-ends rationality. In this model, the modern world of work is constitutively a matter of deploying the most effective means to bring about given ends. The ends for which working is the means do not themselves come from the working, they are not internal to work activity: they derive first and foremost from the material conditions of human existence and the natural necessity of securing them. The rational kernel of modern work, the core norm that has shaped its development, is on this view instrumental reason, and this very same normative core, in the shape of advanced technology and more efficient, time-saving production, can help to liberate it. The second model, by contrast, takes the core norms of work to be internal to working activity. Rather than work gaining its normativity, so to speak, from something external to it, from ends to which the work is a contingent means, on this second view the core norms of work are expressions of values or meanings that are immanent to working practices themselves. The expressive model of work, as I shall call it, regards the actual world of work to be constituted historically by work-specific norms, norms which working subjects themselves have invoked and mobilised around in the course of their struggles for emancipation. According to the third model, the core norms of work, in the double constitutive-transformative sense we are dealing with here, have to do neither with instrumental rationality nor authentic self-expression. Rather they concern norms that relate either to individual achievement or contribution through work (in the form of esteem) or to the conditions that must in place for individuals to participate in the exchange of services by which market societies reproduce themselves (in the form of mutual respect). Following Honneth, I shall call this the recognition model.

Work and the struggle for recognition

by Nicholas H Smith

Pre-proof version. Published in European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 8, no. 1, January 2009, 46-60.

This paper examines a neglected but crucial feature of Honneth’s critical theory: its use of a concept of recognition... more This paper examines a neglected but crucial feature of Honneth’s critical theory: its use of a concept of recognition to articulate the norms that are apposite for the contemporary world of work. The paper shows that from his first writings on the structure of critical social theory in the early 1980s to the recent exchange with Nancy Fraser on recognition and redistribution, the problem of grounding a substantive critique of work under capitalism has been central to Honneth’s enterprise. This answers the routine objection that the recognition paradigm fails to take into account economic or material realities. At the same time, Honneth’s approach to the critique of work has undergone significant shifts, and it is yet to be fully developed. The paper traces these changes in direction, and it proposes an expressivist conception of work that builds upon the ‘normative content’ of the concept of work described by Honneth in his 1980 essay ‘Work and Instrumental Action’.

Levinas, Habermas and Modernity

by Nicholas H Smith

Pre-corrected proofs. Published in Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 34, no. 6, July 2008, 643-664.

This article examines Levinas as if he were a participant in what Habermas has called ‘the philosophical discourse of... more This article examines Levinas as if he were a participant in what Habermas has called ‘the philosophical discourse of modernity’. It begins by comparing Levinas’ and Habermas’ articulations of the philosophical problems of modernity. It then turns to how certain key motifs in Levinas’ later work give philosophical expression to the needs of the times as Levinas diagnoses them. In particular it examines how Levinas interweaves a modern, post-ontological conception of ‘the religious’ or ‘the sacred’ into his account of subjectivity. Finally, the article looks at some problems that arise for Levinas once his position in the philosophical discourse on modernity is made explicit.

Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign... more Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

Extrapolating Revolution in Who Fears Death and District 9

by Frederic Derose-Jacques

CRITIQUES IN PSYCHOLOGY – CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY

by Athanasios Marvakis

with Dafermos, Manolis
2006.
In: Annual Review of Critical Psychology, No 5