Obituary archive

Joseph McCarney, 1941–2007

Joseph McCarney, 1941–2007 Joe McCarney, who has died in a tragic road accident at the age of sixty-six, was a unique voice in the resurgence of Marxist theory and philosophy that took place in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. He joined the Radical Philosophy group in 1976, and he was prominent thereafter as a […]

André Gorz, 1923–2007

Obituary The writer’s malady André Gorz, 1923–2007 When André Gorz committed suicide with his wife last September, even President Sarkozy felt obliged to pay tribute to ‘a major intellectual figure of the French and European Left’. Gorz never courted fame or celebrity, but the dramatic manner of his death created a storm of publicity and […]

J.G. Ballard, 1930–2009

Obituary J.G. Ballard, 1930–2009 I always suspected that eternity would look like Milton Keynes. J.G. Bal ard (1993) With the recent outpouring of tributes to the late J.G. Ballard on the part of mainstream literary culture, it is easy to forget that he was in the 1970s the recipient of a reader’s report that read […]

Sara Ruddick, 1935–2011: A Mother's Thought

Obituary A mother’s thought Sara Ruddick, 1935–2011 ‘i speak about a mother’s thought’ wrote the feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick, who has died in New York at the age of 76. ^ Along with Adrienne Rich, Ruddick was probably the most important philosophical thinker to address the issue of mothering and motherhood since second-wave feminism, and, […]

Colin Ward, 1924–2010: The incremental anarchist

Obituary The incremental anarchist Colin Ward, 1924–2010 Colin Ward, who died on 11 February 2010, was the leading anarchist thinker and writer of postwar Britain. Ward’s anarchism was at once constructive, creative and immensely practical. It drew critical but sympathetic attention from many outside the anarchist movement, and arguably it still holds lessons for contemporary […]