Social scientists have long grappled with ideas about race. In recent years, discussion on the significance of these ideas – particularly in exploring notions of identity, and the cultural and political options these appear to make available – have penetrated other areas of the humanities. A spate of recent publications signals that it is philosophyʼs […]

In his appraisal of mass societies, Theodor W. Adorno briefly discussed those changes in Western economies that had helped to transform the earlier liberal phase of ʻfree marketʼ capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Responding in part to these changes, governments legislated into existence social welfare institutions and agencies that quickly became more […]

Philosophy in Germany Simon critchley and axel honneth SC: Simply as a way of initially organizing our discussion, we both agreed to read a short article by Dieter Henrich that appeared in Merkur in his philosophy column, ʻEine Generation im Abgangʼ (ʻA Passing Generationʼ). [1] Henrich rightly claims that a change of generations is coming […]

Jane Gallop is an American academic whose writings on psychoanalysis, feminism and related topics are as dazzling in their intelligence as they are scintillating in their wit. Their humour is part of the thought processes embodied in her texts. A careful argument, proceeding by tentative steps, will finally reach an explosive and paradoxical conclusion, inducing […]

News Anniversary blues Social Emancipation: One Hundred and Fifty Years After The Communist Manifesto 17–20 February 1998, Centro Capitolio, Havana. From Enlightenment to Dialectics: Dialectic of Enlightenment 26–28 February 1998, Columbia University/New School for Social Research/Goethe Institute, New York. Integral to this argument is the critique of such notions as ʻsocial controlʼ and ʻlabour aristocracyʼ, […]

Letter Critical social science and psychological explanationI would like to thank Andrew Collier for his interesting review (ʻMind, Reality and Politicsʼ, RP 88, pp. 38–43) of my book Agency, Health and Social Survival (Taylor & Francis, 1996). There is no space here to acknowledge all I have learnt from it, or to address more than […]

Symposium Cornelius Castoriadis, 1922–1997Last of the Western Marxists Perhaps it was most of all the personal presence and vitality of this great intellectual of the European Left which impressed people, indeed could overwhelm them: the mighty bald head, out of which blinked two alert and sensitive eyes; the mouth which was always shaped by an […]

The institutionalization and codification of Cultural Studies continue apace. This is evident, for example, in the recurring debates and anxieties about disciplinary boundaries, artistic and ethical values, and the de-radicalization of Cultural Studies itself. Meanwhile, an apparently endless stream of publications – readers, textbooks and collections of (more or less) concrete analyses – feeds the […]

ʻWe do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other peopleʼs.ʼLouis Althusser, 1963ʻWhat use is Althusser?ʼ The question rhetorically posed on the Left Bank in 1968, as structures took to the streets, invites reactions other than the blunt rien of (some of) those who recently marked the […]

INTERVIEW Arthur C. Danto Art and analysis RP: Your philosophical work appears to be made up of two fairly distinct strands: what one might call a mainstream analytical strand and a more unconventional aesthetic strand. The second strand is dissident, first because itʼs about aesthetics – it takes art seriously, philosophically – and second because […]

Reviews A gender lens to the centurySheila Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States, Viking, London and New York, 1997. xiv + 753 pp., £20.00 hb., 0 670 87420 5. The briefest reflection on the scale of this undertaking is enough to produce vertigo, induced not so […]

News Affectivity British Society for Phenomenology Conference, 3–5 April 1998, OxfordWebbʼs critical questioning focused on the issue of whether Heidegger is able to think radically enough the differentiation – which occurs in and through the saying of language – between a thing and its horizon of givenness, which is thereby the dimension of the thingʼs […]

Commentary Dependency culture? Welfare, women and work Mary mcintosh Like many in Britain, I have watched the New Labour government with fascination. I have felt eager welcome and revulsion, hope and despairing resignation. We have seen huge progress in democracy, with hope at last for a political settlement in Northern Ireland, devolution for Wales and […]

Time and the working mother Kristeva’s ‘Women’s Time’ revisited Carol watts why it should be women, and indeed certain women, who come to the fore in a part-time, low-wage economy, and why their acceptance of ʻflexibleʼ working conditions makes them a model for the future. The possibility thus arises for a renewal of a feminist […]

It was a matter of analyzing … the problemizations through which being offers itself to be, necessarily thought – and the practices on the basis of which these problemizations are formed. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure1Michel Foucault is well known for having periodically redescribed his previous studies in light of his current project. [2] […]

Left Rawlsianism and social philosophy A response to ‘Philosophy in Germany’ Alessandro ferrara Reading ʻPhilosophy in Germanyʼ, the exchange between Simon Critchley and Axel Honneth in Radical Philosophy 89, I found myself perplexed by a basic assumption the participants appear to share: namely, that so-called ʻLeft Rawlsianismʼ and ʻsocial philosophyʼ are alternative paths for the […]

In his defence of Richard Rorty against various ʻsalt-of-the-earth socialist internationalistsʼ such as Norman Geras, Roy Bhaskar and Terry Eagleton (ʻRortyʼs Nationʼ, Radical Philosophy 87) Jonathan Rée confesses himself puzzled by Rorty on one point. He ʻcannot quite understandʼ Rortyʼs ʻaffectionʼ for the bureaucratic collectivist utopia of the nineteenthcentury American socialist and novelist Edward Bellamy. […]

Marxism has differed from most other bodies of radical political thought in its conviction that its political radicalism is inseparably connected to a philosophical radicalism – a conviction that underlies the name of this journal. Engels, Kautsky and the orthodox Soviet Marxists all saw Marxism as distinguished from mainstream (ʻbourgeoisʼ) social thought by the dialectical […]

Obituary Jean-François Lyotard, 1924–1998As a boy, he wanted to be a Dominican monk, a painter, or perhaps a historian. Whilst he was not afraid of poverty, chastity was not for him. He had no artistic talent, and his poor memory made him an unlikely historian. And so he became the philosopher who died of cancer […]