A is for apocalypse

A is for apocalypseDavid J. Blacker, The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, Zero Books, Winchester and Washington DC, 2013. 319 pp., £15.99 pb., 978 1 78099 578 6. Amidst the recent flood of lachrymose reports on the neoliberal assault upon education, this book stands out for its unflinching survey of the extent […]

186 Reviews

Many reviews of books on or by Walter Benjamin begin with a capsule description of the key events in his life. It goes something like this. Born in 1892 into a well-off assimilated German Jewish family in Berlin, Walter Benjamin failed to gain an academic career, just about getting by, instead, through journalism and handouts […]

183 Reviews: Peter Hallward and Knox Peden, eds, Concept and Form, Volume 1: Key Texts from the ‘Cahiers pour l’analyse’ Peter Hallward and Knox Peden, eds, Concept and Form Volume 2: Interviews and Essays on the ‘Cahiers pour l’analyse’ Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life Peter Sloterdijk, The Art of Philosophy Finn Brunton, Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, Evil Media Pete Jordan, In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist T.J. Clark, Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica Gert Biesta, Julie Allan and Richard Edwards, eds, Making a Difference in Theory: The Theory Question in Education and the Education Question in Theory Uncertain Commons, Speculate This!

REViEWSRed carnation Peter Hallward and Knox Peden, eds, Concept and Form, Volume 1: Key Texts from the ‘Cahiers pour l’analyse’, Verso, London and New York, 2012. 272 pp., £16.99 pb., 978 1 84467 872 3. Peter Hallward and Knox Peden, eds, Concept and Form, Volume 2: Interviews and Essays on the ‘Cahiers pour l’analyse’, Verso, […]

Lines in class: The ongoing attack on mass education in England

Comment Lines in class The ongoing attack on mass education in England Matthew charles Andrew McGettigan’s analysis of the financial transformations of higher education (‘Who Let the Dogs Out? The Privatization of Higher Education’, RP 174) is important for comprehending the complexity of the changes universities are undergoing and their implications. As he argues, ‘it […]

174 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Walter Benjamin, Early Writings, 1910–1917Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Towards a New ManifestoBernard Stiegler, The Decadence of Industrial DemocraciesMiguel Abensour, Democracy against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian MomentErika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, Posthuman International Relations: Complexity, Ecologism and Global PoliticsAlison Stone, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Maternal SubjectivityCatherine Malabou, Changing Difference: The Feminine and the Question of PhilosophyNadir Lahiji, ed., The Political Unconscious of Architecture: Re-opening Jameson’s NarrativeGillian Howie, Between Feminism and Materialism: A Question of MethodMartin Woessner, Heidegger in AmericaChris Danta, Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot

Reviews SWøWalter Benjamin, Early Writings, 1910–1917, trans. and intro. Howard Eiland, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2011. 320 pp., £20.95 hb., 9 780 67404 993 2. This translated collection of forty-five of Benjamin’s early writings begins with his first published work, a poem that appeared pseudonymously just before his eighteenth birthday, and follows the tempestuous […]

Of course… however

Michael Bailey and Des Freedman, eds, The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance, Pluto Press, London, 2011. 200 pp., £14.99 pb., 978 0 74533 191 1. Matthew Charles The conceptual poles that orient the collection of essays edited by Des Freedman and Michael Bailey in The Assault on Universities are, on the one hand, […]

172 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Fredric Jameson, Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume OneMelissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds, The Affect Theory ReaderMichael Bailey and Des Freedman, eds, The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for ResistanceUniversity for Strategic Optimism, Undressing the Academy, or The Student HandjobDeborah Cook, Adorno on NatureIsabelle Thomas-Fogiel, The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary ThoughtPeter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, DavosSean Sayers, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes

Reviews Inside the factory, and outFredric Jameson, Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume One, Verso, London and New York, 2011. 158 pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 84467 454 1. Fredric Jameson’s latest book, published hot on the heels of a monograph on Hegel’s Phenomenology (The Hegel Variations, 2010) and a large collection of essays on […]

Philosophy for children

Philosophy for children Matthew charles A well‑orchestrated public relations campaign led pri‑marily by educational charity The Philosophy Shop has helped raise the profile of the philosophy for children movement in the UK significantly over the last few years. Whilst The Philosophy Shop has been promoting its ‘Four Rs’ campaign to make ‘Reason‑ing’ a central feature […]

153 Reviews

Reviews AlterliberalismMichel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Col ège de France 1978–1979, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2008. 368 pp., £20.99 hb., 978 1 403 98654 2. Six of Foucault’s thirteen annual Collège de France lecture series have now appeared in English translation in the space of five […]

‘On the Idea of Communism’, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, London, 13–15 March 2009

Conference report Celebrity Come Communism‘On the Idea of Communism’, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, London, 13–15 March 2009 This conference’s political conditions had been staked out in advance, on behalf of all the speakers, by Alain Badiou’s essay ‘The Communist Hypothesis’. These were the collapse of the Old Left of the Communist Party and state, […]

Imaginative mislocation: Hiroshima’s Genbaku Dome, ground zero of the twentieth century

Imaginative mislocation Hiroshima’s Genbaku Dome, ground zero of the twentieth century Matthew charles The average Westerner … was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea, 1906The controversy […]

Dossier On Universities

Dossier: Universities

The immediate causes of the current protests by students, lecturers and academic researchers in Europe are contingent; they are directed at individual educational institutions or administrators, and the demands they make are capable of being met over the short term.* But on a second level, one that cannot be separated from the immediate events, protestors […]

166 Reviews

This thirteen-chapter volume claims to be the first book-length analysis, from a philosophical point of view, of the trend towards the commodification of higher education, combining philosophical analysis with empirical accounts of the current realities facing universities and academics. No longer do philosophers have the luxury of pretending that there might still be time to […]