Lacan has remarked that modesty is the most important virtue. Lacan thinks modesty as an affect that keeps one’s desire or symptom protected behind a veil. Yet when the veil is lifted through the gaze of the other, the subject undergoes shame. Where there is shame, the extimate part of one’s being, precisely their desire is exposed to the other. Shame thus awakens the subject to being riveted to oneself, to a foreign self inside oneself.
Todd Phillip's Joker is a film about class war in utero. The film sets the stage for a coming political world in which the class war in Gotham has been named and elevated to the undeniable antagonism that situates the injustice of society. The film is also a psychobiography of an antihero's journey into this …
With increasing interest in new forms of Marxism, the philosophical origins of Marx’s thought have been a topic of important debate with many studies locating Marx’s early thought in Christian theology. The early Marx often reads like a quasi-theologian when he discusses ideas of universality and the emancipation of the proletariat. But does Marx’s early …
Continue reading "On Kołakowski and the Neoplatonic Pre-History of Marxism"
I have a long essay up on socialism, liberalism and solidarity for the great working class think tank The Hampton Institute. Please give it a read here. The piece is entitled "Overcoming Liberalism from Within: On American Socialism and Solidarity."
It's time to restore a tradition on this blog: the classic year-end best books list. 2018 has been a fairly significant year for my research and reading. As you will see below, my primary concerns orbit around political economy, psychoanalysis, the history of Marxist thought, the Black Radical Tradition, the theological genealogy of socialist thought, …
The following is an interview I conducted with Lacanian psychoanalyst Thomas Svolos for The New Polis where I serve as Contributing Editor.
The great European Marxist saw in American philosophy a form of thinking that refused speculative thought and that presented a form of reason adjusted to exploitation of the status quo. The confluence of American philosophy produced a most insidious form of idealism.
