"Although the contributions here were written before the events of October 7, it is impossible to read the book outside of the many conflicts that continue to divide the left on the question of Israel and Palestine. At times, the arguments here lack a sufficiently critical perspective on Israel, Zionism and the political economy of occupation. Antisemitism, indeed, exists. There are also antisemitic perspectives regarding the state of Israel and Zionism. In a treatment of the Initiative Socialist Forum (ISF), for example, Stoetzler relates some of the history regarding the anti-Zionism of the Stalinist and Maoist, German New Left (16-17). The politics of antisemitism, however, is also being instrumentalized by defenders of Israeli policy against those who express solidarity for occupied Palestine. Although one does find a differential account of the Frankfurt School’s varying political orientations in regarding Zionism here, too often the treatment of the Palestine question plays into equivocations regarding the politics of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in a manner that reduces all criticism of Israel to pathologized forms of anti-imperialism or anti-capitalism. The uncritical acceptance of an absolute identity of Israeli policy and Jewishness can also be a form of antisemitism, as Braune observes (165). Such equivocation preempts the possibility of enlightened, rational criticism of Israeli policies. Can such a critical perspective that grasps the concrete violence of Israel-Palestine be grasped in its mediation by capitalist society? At times it seems not. Still, the arguments presented here are far from monolithic­, and should be considered."

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/22052_critical-theory-and-the-critique-of-antisemitism-by-marcel-stoetzler-ed-reviewed-by-charles-a-prusik/

Society Distracted by Off-Camera Spectacle

Hashtags: #CriticalTheory #Neoliberalism #FrankfurtSchool #Journalism #Spectacle #FakeNews #Situationists #Authentic #Photography

Source: https://take-note.com/note-takers/marshall--mayer/notes/society-distracted-by-off-camera-spectacle/view

Hi all! I’m looking for interesting accounts that talk sometimes about #LiteraryCriticism, or maybe other #literature and #CriticalTheory-based accounts. I’ve tried searching for authors I like, but haven’t had a huge amount of luck beyond finding posts. I’m especially looking for #SciFi criticism, but am curious about a lot of other genres too. Some other things I like are #DFW, #MarkFisher, #PKD, #BeckyChambers, #Solarpunk, #Cyberpunk, #Existentialism, #ArabLit, #Metamodernism. TY!

Hello everyone!

I've just joined the Fediverse, and I chose @zirk.us bc I'm most interested in #literature and the arts more broadly. I also created a #reading account via #Bookwyrm @d-integration, and a Fediverse-supported #blog (launching today) for my writings at @weaver@d-integration.org.

I'm most interested in #SpeculativeFiction, especially #SciFi and the #Weird, #ArabLit, #SocialCritique, #CriticalTheory, #Philosophy, and all things #Surreal and/or #reality breaking.

"In this issue our contributorsengage, in their different ways, with questions of subjectivity from within the Marxian problematic. From its very inception, Rethinking Marxism has been interested in exploring questions of subjectivity without falling into either the essentialist constructions of theoretical humanism or the determinist formations of theoretical structuralism. But the question of subjectivity has been central to Marxist thought from the very beginning. It is possible to trace the displacement of the problematic in Marx’s own writings from a standpoint of alienation and estrangement to that of exploitation and the division of mental and manual labor, from ideology to the fetishism of commodities. Again, in Lenin’s theory of corruption under imperialism and his insistence on the necessity of cultural revolution, the questions of subjectivity, if not formulated in this language, were central concerns. Lukàcs’s foregrounding of class consciousness under conditions of reification, Mao’s revolutionary political pedagogy, “from the masses, to the masses”; Adorno’s sustained engagement with fascism and the irrational beyond the collapse of Nazi Germany; Fanon’s writings on the psychic overdetermination of race, sexuality, and class under conditions of colonialism; Althusser’s materialist treatment of ideology in the context of the advanced capitalist state; E. P. Thompson’s historiography of the making of working-class consciousness; all are part of this persistent Marxist problematic around the question of the constitution of revolutionary subjectivity under capitalism and the subversion of that subjectivity by fascist currents that are, if not initially rallied, eventually welcomed by threatened capitalist classes."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2024.2400014

"Werner Bonefeld discusses with Lillian Cicerchia his new book A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, and Negation (Routledge, 2023)"

https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/vol3/iss3/3/

New Neural Issue #75, Artificial Corporeality co-edited with Zane Cerpina is hot from the press + extra: a postcard pointing to an AR extension of the artwork Ejector by Tim Høibjerg

> https://neural.it/issues/neural-75-artificial-corporeality/

subscribe > http://neural.it/subscribe/

"The impact of these ideas in the US, though considerable, was mostly concentrated in literature departments. Jameson argues that “theory was always a revolt against disciplines”. While that might have been true in France in the 1960s, where the whole gamut of the sciences humaines fell to the structuralists, it wasn’t true in the US in the following two decades.

“The American interest in these people,” Jameson adds, “was certainly part of a ’60s passion for new thinking which had to do with politics as much as anything else.” But, you might ask, what kind of politics? As Todd Gitlin, a leftwing sceptic of the politics of theory, observed mordantly at the time: “While the right has been busy taking the White House, the left has been marching on the English department.”"

https://www.ft.com/content/08139cab-6655-4643-96c2-d8efaf0097b8

"Among his more than two dozen books of literary and cultural criticism on matters as disparate as international cinema and universal military conscription, the titles Marxism and Form (1971) and The Political Unconscious (1981) might be nominated as the most important. The first of these rehearsed the ideas of a cohort of Western Marxists—Sartre, Adorno, and others—to argue for a “dialectical criticism” that could uncover the otherwise occluded reality of capitalist social relations through a formal analysis of literature. And the second went further, to insist on Marxism as the sole means of thought adequate to grasping all cultural artifacts and periods “as vital episodes in a single vast unfinished plot,” namely that of class society from the first agricultural settlements down to global capitalism.

Jameson was a reluctant interviewee, no doubt for reasons he explained in a 2006 essay, “On Not Giving Interviews”: the form tended to transform universal concepts into mere personal opinions, and encouraged an overall laxity of expression. But reluctance didn’t mean refusal. In our conversations over Skype, he spoke at generous length, in soft and musing tones, while his round face and thick glasses added to an impression of basic gentleness. This amiable disposition did not, however, make him complaisant or deferential. Owing perhaps to his skepticism of the interview form, he asked me to send written questions in advance of our sessions—and then usually rejected or severely revised the terms in which I’d formulated them."

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8373/the-art-of-criticism-no-5-fredric-jameson

"To return to Perry Anderson’s criterion, where or what is American Marxism? Short answer: lost in the academy. Of course, the story is ongoing — and the larger economic-political situation is hardly stable. A shift therein might enliven the gray academic Marxists. “All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.”

It is often missed that when Sombart wrote his analysis about why there is no American socialism, he closed on the opposite note. He believed the economic conditions that prevented socialism “are about to disappear.” The days of ample roast beef and apple pie were ending: “In the next generation Socialism in America will very probably experience the greatest possible expansion of its appeal.” Stay tuned."

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/american-marxism-academia-critical-theory

[thread] Christopher / Chris Rufo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo

* conservative activist
* New College of Florida board member
* senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
* opponent of critical race theory
* opposes 2SLGBTQIA+ education
* contends public schools "hunting grounds for sexual predators"

#education #CriticalTheory #CriticalRaceTheory
#ChrisRufo #ManhattanInstitute #FarRight #Trumpism #GOP #fascism #racism #antiCRT
#antiLGBT #transphobia
#DeSantis #NewCollegeOfFlorida

The journal Fast Capitalism just published a special section on #Napster's 25th anniversary containing no less than ten articles. Looks interesting:
https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/issue/view/33
#p2p #filesharing #piracy #mediastudies #musicindustry #criticaltheory

A new article by Andy Woodhouse, applying #Pashukanis' commodity-form theory of law to EU #climate #law:
"Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union"
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20414005.2024.2399989 (open access)
#marxism #criticaltheory #eulaw

"The satisfaction of Tetler’s book does not then rest on its reconstruction of the importance of ‘not-capital’ to Marx’s mature theory (although that is certainly still there). Instead, it rests upon an ingenious structure in which, through the lens of ‘not-capital’, Tetler addresses the ‘blind spots’ within one theorist’s position by drawing upon the position of the theorist who follows (138). What results is not quite a value theory battle royale, so much as an intricate dialectical progression, which takes us from Roman Rosdolsky, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri (chapter two), to Chris Arthur (chapter three), Moishe Postone, Wertkritik and John Holloway (chapter four), before eventually arriving at a ‘critique of capitalist society’, which comprises a Postonian ‘critique of labour’, an ‘open Marxist’ conception of ‘capital as class struggle’, and a Neue Marx-Lektüre inspired ‘monetary theory of value’ (chapter five). What makes Tetler’s arrival at this composite position satisfying, however, isn’t simply that our route is so skilfully crafted. Rather, it’s that – in a Marxist field oversaturated with hackneyed labels, slogans and -isms, in which movements and schools might be readily dismissed or adopted with little care, attention, or, most frustratingly, justification – the dexterity and deliberation that Marx’s Not-Capital demonstrates is so unusual."

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21758_marxs-not-capital-labour-and-the-contemporary-critique-of-political-economy-by-benjamin-tetler-reviewed-by-will-berrington/

Two of the best works ever in the critique of political philosophy and the critique of political economy, respectively - #Marx #Capital #SheldonWolin #PoliticalEconomy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy

#CriticalTheory #Marxism #Modernism: "Marxist Modernism’s conclusory claim is that any critical theory of aesthetics should examine the historical and social termination of art forms. For Rose ‘that’s not as asociological as it might sound’ (60). One must start looking at the style or the technical features of artworks to uncover its social determination. In other words, the highly abstract nature of commodified art makes it necessary to analyse the formalistic characteristic of artistic movements or works and to uncover how they are shaped by the social forces and relations of production. The methodological task thus ultimately lies in unravelling the relation between the abstract formalism of style and the masked social substance of the artwork."

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/21716_marxist-modernism-introductory-lectures-on-frankfurt-school-critical-theory-by-gillian-rose-reviewed-by-alexander-aerts/

California 1st State to Enshrine Intersectionality in Law, Recognizing Amplified Harms of Overlapping Discrimination ️
https://msmagazine.com/2024/10/11/california-intersectionality-law-discrimination

* multiple forms of discrimination exacerbate ea. other resulting in amplified forms of prejudice/harm

Intersectionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
* sociological analytical framework
* how social/political identities result in combinations of discrimination & privilege

#CriticalTheory #CulturalStudies #Marxism #Postmodernism: "Cultural theorists like Jameson are a reinvention of the classical intellectual. Intellectuals differ from academics in ranging across a number of disciplines, but also in bringing ideas to bear on society as a whole. They are typically both polymaths and polyglots. Jameson was fluent in several languages and had a voracious appetite for knowledge. He was as learned in Czech science fiction as he was in Taiwanese cinema. He continued to produce major works until his death last month at the age of ninety. His exceptional range of interests pointed to the way an otherwise socially pointless literary criticism might manage to justify its existence. By becoming a form of cultural critique, it can play a modest role in changing the world as well as interpreting it.

Much like his English counterpart Perry Anderson, another master of languages who can move from aesthetics to political theory to realpolitik in the course of an essay, Jameson seemed like a survival from a more erudite age before the rise of modern academia, with its jealously guarded specialisms. But his extraordinary intellectual reach was also a product of the present. Theory represented a new configuration of knowledge, appropriate to an age in which the boundaries between traditional academic subjects were crumbling and most of the exciting work was being done in the borderlands between them."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n19/terry-eagleton/the-excitement-of-the-stuff

We're so back. Calling all creative radicals, get in contact@interregnum.live we want to publish your work: poetry, art, critical theory, essays, novellas, short stories, photojournalism

https://interregnum.ghost.io/welcome-back/