Марксизм и критическая теория (Marxism and critical theory)

2022-04-24 18:23:09 Isabell Lorey - Martial masculinity and authoritarian populism

On the rise of authoritarian populism in Europe and beyond.

Thirty-three years after the fall of the Berlin wall, bloc-thinking is back. The democratic “West” against the authoritarian “East”. Authoritarian alliances in the “West” recede into the backdrop, critique of liberal democracy’s chronic shadows grow silent. States recently accused of threatening democracy and the rule of law are embraced. They belong once again to the democratic “We”. With the war in Ukraine, authoritarianism in the “West” is externalized to the Putin regime. But authoritarian populism has been growing in Europe for a long time in the midst of liberal democracy, in states that claim to be illiberal, but not only there. The pandemic has intensified this neoliberal-authoritarian transformation. When uncertainties increase and bring about the compulsion to control, all sides take recourse to identitarianisms, as if there had never been a critique of it.

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2022-04-24 16:20:49 How “New Democrats” Betrayed American Workers

Lily Geismer gives a history of the New Democrats' assault on labor and social programs from her new book Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality.



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2022-04-24 13:57:06 Lovia Gyarkye - Permission to Imagine

A new collection of Stuart Hall’s writing offers a guide to the limits of representation in building anti-racist politics.

Gilroy and Gilmore open Selected Writings on Race and Difference by situating Hall as a cultural theorist and an educator. Although Hall, who taught at the high school and university level, would bristle at being confined to just two roles, his work in both fields shaped his approach to writing. As a teacher, he helped students develop their ideas and theories, which required abandoning dogmatic thinking and the desire to always be right. These experiences resulted in writing that isn’t primarily concerned with answering questions correctly or incorrectly. In “Absolute Beginnings: Reflections on the Secondary Modern Generation” (1959), Hall meditates on the limits of the British education system. Instead of teaching students to think critically, schools, Hall argues, are engines of propaganda, “making students familiar, through education, with the social and class barriers to education and culture which the society has already imposed.” As they get older, these lessons are reinforced through popular culture. The shows they watch, the music they listen to, and the books and magazines they read calcify their perceptions of class distinctions, making it harder for them to imagine a world different from the one they live in.

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2022-04-24 11:55:59 Mitchell Dean - What does «Left» mean?

Mitchell Dean responds to the review of his book The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution (co-written with Daniel Zamora) published in the journal Foucault Studies.

First, we absolutely reject the weight of Foucauldian scholarship that claims that the main thrust of his contribution on neoliberalism is to offer a concept or theory of the enterprising self or entrepreneurial subject. We argue that Foucault found in neoliberalism a form of regulation that did not «subjectify», i.e., fabricate subjects, but that worked as an action upon the environment. Second, in our detailed account of the context and take up of Foucault’s lectures on the topic, we refer to the one contemporary French reception of the lectures, in the Second Left journal, Autrement, published in September 1979, in which Foucault is understood as advocating «a subversive use of neoliberalism» that would create an «enterprise-oriented Left».

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2022-04-24 06:18:02 Michael Galant - In the 1970s, Third World Leaders Wanted a New Economic Order

Fifty years ago today, Mexican president Luis Echeverría outlined a vision to remake the relationship between rich and poor countries. It became part of a broader struggle for a more equal international order.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/04/new-international-economic-order-united-nations-global-south-mexico-luis-echeverria Открыть/Комментировать

2022-04-23 18:16:12 #КНИГОЛИКБЕЗ : МНОЖЕСТВО: Война и демократия в эпоху империи

Сегодня платоновская дилемма Единого и Многого превратилась в выбор между диктатурой и демократией. С одной стороны - закручивающее гайки и укрепляющее властную вертикаль, тоталитарное единство. С другой стороны - вариативное полифоническое множество, "не поддающаяся упрощению плюральность". За центростремительной силой Единого стоит все прошлое, с его культом национально-политической целостности, нерушимости традиций, несгибаемости духовных скреп и тому подобным историческим реквизитом. Этим старым метанарративам можно противопоставить модернистскую эмансипацию частей, свободу творческой индивидуальности, все, что Хардт и Негри называют множеством.
Дилемма нашего времени - это по-прежнему выбор между свободой и рабством. Догадайтесь, кому именно нужен "стабильный" понятный миропорядок, укрепленный "сильной рукой" бессменного Господина?



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2022-04-23 16:16:36 «It’s time for a general riposte»: Interview with Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou on the disorientation of the world.

In Remarques sur la du monde, the philosopher paints an alarming picture of capitalism, with its risks of economic disturbance and global war. Against this, he calls for positive resistance in the framework of a ‘communist reorientation’.
The interview took place in Paris on 2 February. Masks were still worn and the Russian army had not yet invaded Ukraine. However, the discussion was already very serious in the face of the present course of the world and the disorientation on the political and strategic levels induced by the ‘management of societies’ by capitalism and ‘its representatives’. For Alain Badiou, it is possible to engage in the new period by rediscovering ‘the methods of offensive communism’ and putting forward a programme on precise themes and against privatisation.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5333-it-s-time-for-a-general-riposte-pierre-chaillan-interview-with-alain-badiou Открыть/Комментировать

2022-04-23 13:57:39 Ernesto Laclau - Politics and ideology in Marxist theory: Capitalism, fascism, populism

rnesto Laclau is best known for co-authoring Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, with Chantal Mouffe. Politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s, and a member of PSIN (Socialist Party of the National Left), Laclau's oeuvre links the working class and new social movements. Rejecting Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle, Laclau instead urged for a radical democracy where antagonisms could be expressed. Frequently described as post-Marxist, Laclau's writings have focused on political movements. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory was Laclau's first published work, where readers can trace the early formation of ideas that shaped the twentieth century. Открыть/Комментировать