The Hidden God by Lucien Goldmann is what Marxist genealogy ought to be. If you want to track ur-concepts such as the "authentic," "the good," "community" and so on, well where do you start? How do you situate the worldview of the ruling class of our own time in a historical trajectory? In what exemplary … Continue reading Notes on Goldmann and the faith of Marxism
the aesthetic is proletarianized
4 notes on class, fate and cruel optimism I. I turn on the TV and see a wealthy YouTuber interviewing a Millennial in her early 30s without kids on how to choose the best tiny home to buy with a $35,000 maximum budget. The host of the show is also the real estate agent and … Continue reading the aesthetic is proletarianized
Lumpenization and the Double
My speculative hypothesis is that there is a relation between the lumpenization that takes on the hue of a total bourgeois order and the motif of the double or the doppelgänger in art that emerges in such conditions.
Seminar on Paranoia in Hegel and Lacan
Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia: The Romantic Idealist Reformer Becomes an Aggressive Paranoid Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics Presents: Wilfried Ver Eecke on "Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia" Dr. Ver Eecke is a Lacanian Psychoanalyst and Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University In this seminar, Dr. Wilfried Ver Eecke will discuss Hegel’s idea of the … Continue reading Seminar on Paranoia in Hegel and Lacan
Seminar with Bracha Ettinger
Our Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics is pleased to invite you to join our next seminar series with the psychoanalyst and artist Bracha Ettinger. We’re very grateful that Bracha has agreed to present to our group and following her lecture on Sunday March 14th, we will host a forum on Ettinger’s talk and her … Continue reading Seminar with Bracha Ettinger
Study Group on the Lumpenproletariat Today
Our study groups will continue with a timely public seminar with scholar and author Clyde Barrow on the class composition of Trumpism and understanding Marx’s concept of the lumpenproletariat. Barrow’s latest book, The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent … Continue reading Study Group on the Lumpenproletariat Today
Lacan and the Logic of Structure with Ellie Ragland
I'm pleased to offer a new seminar with Lacanian analyst and literary theorist Ellie Ragland starting in early 2021. You can sign up to join us here. Lacan and the Logic of Structure Two Seminars with Ellie Ragland January 7th 7:00 pm EST – "Topology, Lacan and the Borromean Clinic" January 14th 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm … Continue reading Lacan and the Logic of Structure with Ellie Ragland
The Politics of Resentment with Samo Tomsic
I'm happy to announce that we have an upcoming keynote lecture by Samo Tomsic on "The Politics of Resentment" on December 3rd at 7 pm. You can register for this talk here and check out our prior two sessions here (on ressentiment, sublimation and neoliberalism) and here (on Lacan, affects, and the four five discourses). … Continue reading The Politics of Resentment with Samo Tomsic
Announcing New Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Reading Series
This coming Thursday I will be starting a reading series on Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). I will host this series via Zoom on Thursday nights starting September 24th. We will read the text closely and reference Lacan's work throughout the series. On our first night, we will consider the famous "fort-da" game that … Continue reading Announcing New Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Reading Series
A book that may change left-Nietzscheanism for good
My review essay of Domenico Losurdo's groundbreaking work on Nietzsche has been published.
The Materialism of Warm-Stream Marxism: Ernst Bloch on Ibn Sina
Here's a new review essay on German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch and his intriguing book Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left. It's long been an interest of mine to put the Marxist tradition into dialogue with Islamic thought so naturally such a text is of profound interest to me. Give the piece a read here and … Continue reading The Materialism of Warm-Stream Marxism: Ernst Bloch on Ibn Sina
The Subject Supposed to Rebel
I'm pleased to share an article I wrote based on a talk I offered to the Lacanian Forum of Washington, DC earlier this month. The editors at Everyday Analysis have provided some really useful edits to this piece. You can read "The Subject Supposed to Rebel" here.
Reading Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History
Readers of this blog are invited to join me and my good friend Gabriel Tupinambá for a facilitated reading group on one of the most important Marxist philosophers of our time, Kojin Karatani and his work The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. This reading group will include six … Continue reading Reading Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History
Political emancipation and representation – Interview with Alain Badiou
In light of the 2020 uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd taking place across America, I want to share an excerpt of a longer interview on riots and protests I conducted with the philosopher Alain Badiou in 2013. This excerpt concerns Badiou's definition of what a militant subject is today, that is, how … Continue reading Political emancipation and representation – Interview with Alain Badiou
Socialists Think: Study Group on the Thought of Sylvain Lazarus
Readers may remember my references to the thought of Sylvain Lazarus over the years, including my piece on his Anthropology of the Name. I'm pleased to invite you to join me for a reading circle on Lazarus's thought starting on May 9th and concluding with a plenary event on May 30th featuring different papers on … Continue reading Socialists Think: Study Group on the Thought of Sylvain Lazarus
The Red-Green Conspiracy: On Messiah
A scholar of Rumi once told me that if Rumi had never met Shams he would have never found the pearl of deep spiritual insight. The function of Shams was that he possessed a certain knowledge, but Shams lacked the means to retrieve this knowledge and bring it up from the deep to allow it … Continue reading The Red-Green Conspiracy: On Messiah
Best Books of 2019
The traditional year-end inventory of my year in reading. Lists may be clichéd, but they really help me take a breath of air and look out on my intellectual projects and track where I am headed. This year I added the category of "best secondary literature and essays." If you want any of these essays … Continue reading Best Books of 2019
Upcoming Talk: On the Virtue of Modesty in Lacan
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.
A Lacanian Reading of Joker
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 … Continue reading A Lacanian Reading of Joker
On Kołakowski and the Neoplatonist Pre-History of Marxism
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 Neoplatonist Pre-History of Marxism
