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…… Read more “the aesthetic is proletarianized”
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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… Read more "Study Group on the Lumpenproletariat Today"
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… Read more "Socialists Think: Study Group on the Thought of Sylvain Lazarus"
Is the Stock Market a “Camp”? Towards a Cosmic Politics
Arne De Boever's book Finance Fictions: Realism and Psychosis in a Time of Economic Crisis is not providing a new psychoanalytic analysis of psychosis, which I immediately thought it… Read more "Is the Stock Market a “Camp”? Towards a Cosmic Politics "
Philosophy in Saturated Times
Frank Ruda's For Badiou: Idealism Without Idealism probes the question that has driven a number of interventions into Badiou's thought: what is the role of philosophy in non-evental… Read more "Philosophy in Saturated Times"
Confessions of a Mystical Freudian
Of all the different directions Freudian-Marxism took during the twentieth century, Norman O. Brown, the American philosopher, stands out as presenting a particularly compelling version. The first thing… Read more "Confessions of a Mystical Freudian"
Is All Identity a Social Construct? Towards a Political Taxonomy of Rachel Dolezal
The #RachelDolezal story has sent social media into a tailspin. The details of the story are covered well in this original article from the local Spokane, WA newspaper where Rachel… Read more "Is All Identity a Social Construct? Towards a Political Taxonomy of Rachel Dolezal"
The Crowd and the Collective: Some Speculative Points
In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud says that “each individual taken independently is a constitutive part of different crowds." I understand this in… Read more "The Crowd and the Collective: Some Speculative Points"
An Interview with Dr. Daniel Tutt about his GCAS Series, “Badiou & Philosophy”
Originally posted on GCAS–The BLOG:
GCAS Interview with Daniel Tutt on Badiou and Philosophy–To register and study with Alain Badiou & Daniel Tutt please follow this link:…
The Queen Mob’s Teahouse
My first post as a blogger for the new webzine Queen Mob's Teahouse is here. I wrote about the affect of shame in Lacan. This is a… Read more "The Queen Mob’s Teahouse"
Millennial Narcissism as a Problem of Social Recognition
The Other, for Whitman was a wholly (holy) Other to oneself. To embrace this wholly Other other was the highest ethical act of self-love. While the faint torch of Whitman's gestalt love for the All is carried forward by obscurantist New Age spiritualists, millennials are certainly faced with the challenge of narcissism - but not as a choice they take onto themselves. Rather, millennial narcissism shows signs of revolt against a mode of subjectivity that is imposed upon them.
Becoming Noble: Time and Affect in the American Autumn and the Arab Spring
John Protevi's recent essay in The Contemporary Condition on the role of affect in the Occupy Wall Street protests got me thinking about some musings I had… Read more "Becoming Noble: Time and Affect in the American Autumn and the Arab Spring"
The #Occupy Movement and Gramsci
As we enter the second or third week of the #Occupy movement, I'm beginning to sense that the momentum is no longer an issue. The movement seems… Read more "The #Occupy Movement and Gramsci"
Anything is Possible? Lacan, Meillaisoux and the Ancestral
A big part of Quentin Meillaisoux's philosophy is based on the question of science and its capacity to think the ancestral. Correlationism (post Kantian support for an… Read more "Anything is Possible? Lacan, Meillaisoux and the Ancestral"
Towards an Ethics of Precariousness
Judith Butler is a Jewish philosopher working on an ethics of precariousness that goes back to the original project of Marx, at least as she described it… Read more "Towards an Ethics of Precariousness"
Poetic Art and the Lacanian Real
The open lecture last night at EGS by Alenka Zupancic stirred up quite a lot of fruitful debate and dialogue. The lecture looked at art and its… Read more "Poetic Art and the Lacanian Real"
What is an Apparatus?
What is an Apparatus? is perhaps the most important essay on Foucault I have read. More than an essay on an esoteric concept from the philosopher of… Read more "What is an Apparatus?"
Object Petit a and the Left
In Zizek’s Tarrying with the Negative, he compares how the American protestant “if it suffers it must be good” attitude to how popular culture has made Mohamed…… Read more “Object Petit a and the Left”
Notes on Heidegger’s books on Nietzsche
– In Heidegger’s two books on Nietzsche, he is seeking to answer the way in which being as a whole is. The general force of the world…… Read more “Notes on Heidegger’s books on Nietzsche”