Reviews archive

Where is capitalism going?

Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, Michael Joseph, London, 1994. xii + 627 pp., £19.95 hb., 0 7181 3307 2. Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, Verso, London, 1994. 416 pp., £39.95 hb., £14.95 pb., 1 85984 915 6 hb., 1 85984 015 […]

178 Reviews: Books Reviewed: Massimilliano Tomba, Marx’s Temporalities Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance Edward Baring, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 1945–1968 Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell, eds, The Dunayevskaya–Marcuse–Fromm Correspondence Louis Althusser, Cours sur Rousseau McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Curious Times and Everyday Life of the Situationist International Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Spectacular Capitalism: Guy Debord and the Practice of Radical Philosophy Julie Stephens, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory and Care Routledge, Security Studies: New Titles and Key Backlist, 2012 After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, BAK, Utrecht, 20 May-15 July 2012

Voyage au bout de l’ennui

After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, BAK, Utrecht, 20 May–15 July 2012; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, 21 September–16 November 2012; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 17 October 2012–7 January 2013. In a darkened room stand seven podiums, like black treadmills at a standstill. Each faces a digitized photo­graph projected onto a bare wall. The […]

Transitional programme

Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2011. 312 pp., £22.95 hb., 978 0 26201 649 0. Salvador Allende was elected as socialist-Marxist president of Chile on 4 November 1970. The USA soon after initiated an ‘invisible’ financial blockade, which would, when combined with a fall in inter­national […]

Flickers

Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis and Religion in Times of Terror, Verso, London and New York, 2012. 326 pp., £19.99 pb., 978 1 84467 755 9. Bruno Bosteels is probably best known to readers of Radical Philosophy as translator of and commentator on the work of Alain Badiou – most […]

She’s just not that into you

Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, trans. Ariana Reines, Semiotext(e), Intervention series 12, Los Angeles, 2012. 144 pp., £9.95 pb., 978 1 58435 108 5. How best to describe the colonization of the body at this particular juncture of capitalist life? Much recent theorizing has focused on a kind of war of […]

177 Reviews: Books Reviewed: Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis and Religion in Times of Terror Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage Catherine Malabou, Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity Frank Ruda, Hegel's Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right' Kari Weil, Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? Samantha Hum, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions Albert Atkin, The Philosophy of Race George Yancy, Look, a White! Philosophical Essays on Whiteness Ash Amin, Land of Strangers Lisa Siraganian, Modernism's Other Work: The Art Object's Political Life Alex Loftus, Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology

How best to describe the colonization of the body at this particular juncture of capitalist life? Much recent theorizing has focused on a kind of war of affects where depression, euphoria and other states of being are read not merely as signs or symptoms, but as directly produced by (and productive of) particular economic relations. […]

Anno Domini MMXII

Simon Critchley, The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, Verso, London and New York, 2012. 302 pp., £16.99 hb., 978 1 84467 737 5. ‘A sustained and fascinating reflection on the place of religion in political discourse’ – as per the review by Rev. Giles Fraser over at the New Statesman – this […]

Grande biog

Benoît Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2012. 603 pp., £25.00 hb., 978 0 74565 615 1. ‘What matter who’s speaking, someone said, what matter who’s speaking?’ Despite post-structuralist philosophies’ association with Beckettian questions such as these, they remain surprisingly bound to what Foucault called that ‘singular relationship […]

176 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Benoît Peeters, Derrida: A BiographySimon Critchley, The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political TheologyClaudia Aradau and Rens Van Munster, Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the UnknownStuart Price, Worst Case Scenario? Governance, Mediation and the Security RegimeMartin Breaugh, L’Expérience PlébéienneTina Chanter, Whose Antigone? The Tragic Marginalization of SlaveryStella Sandford, Plato and SexAlain Badiou, with Nicolas Truong, In Praise of LoveYehoshua Yakhot, The Suppression of Philosophy in the USSR: The 1920s & 1930sJay Lampert, Simultaneity and Delay: A Dialectical Theory of Staggered Time

Reviews Grande biogBenoît Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2012. 603 pp., £25.00 hb., 978 0 74565 615 1.‘What matter who’s speaking, someone said, what matter who’s speaking?’ Despite post-structuralist philosophies’ association with Beckettian questions such as these, they remain surprisingly bound to what Foucault called that ‘singular […]

The future is subhuman

Malcolm Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, Verso, London & New York, 2011. 256 pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 85984 574 5. This is an intriguing book, and its principal thesis is highly provocative. My reaction to it is an ambivalent one: there are aspects of the book that are to be greatly welcomed, such as its exposition of […]

175 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Malcolm Bull, Anti-NietzscheHasana Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of RenaturalizationDaniel Loick, Kritik der SouveränitätMick Smith, Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural WorldMark Neocleous and George S. Rigakos, eds, Anti-SecurityKathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork ImaginariesMatt Ffytche, The Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern PsycheKeston Sutherland, Stupefaction: A Radical Anatomy of PhantomsSteven Connor, A Philosophy of Sport

Reviews The future is subhumanMalcolm Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, Verso, London & New York, 2011. 256 pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 85984 574 5. This is an intriguing book, and its principal thesis is highly provocative. My reaction to it is an ambivalent one: there are aspects of the book that are to be greatly welcomed, such […]

Technoreformism

Bernard Stiegler, The Decadence of Industrial Democracies, trans. Daniel Ross, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2011. 200 pp., £55.00 hb., £16.99 pb., 978 0 74564 809 5 hb., 978 0 74564 810 1 pb. Bernard Stiegler’s work addresses the relationship between philosophy, technology and culture. This combination has proved popular, and has been furthered by Stiegler’s impressive output: […]

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 […]

Deprovincialized Marxism

Tosaka Jun, Ideologie, Medien, Alltag: Eine Auswahl ideologiekritischer, kultur-und medientheoretischer und  geschictsphilosophischer Schriften, ed. Fabian Schaefer, Leipziger Universitatsverlag, Leipzig, 2011. 230 pp., €29.00 pb., 978 3 86583 581 9. It is a paradox of Western Marxism that it insisted on its own geopolitical specificity – the West – and yet made its particularity a universal […]

Elementary

Ben Watson, Adorno for Revolutionaries, Unkant, London, 2011. 217 pp., £10.99 pb., 978 0 95681 760 0. David Cunningham In a much-cited March 1936 letter to Walter Benjamin, Adorno famously remarks of the separation between autonomous art and mass culture that, while both ‘bear the stigmata of capitalism’, and ‘both contain elements of change’, they […]

What’s left of biopolitics?

Patricia Ticineto Clough and Craig Willse, eds, Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death, Duke University Press, Durham NC and London, 2011. 400 pp., £75.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 82235 003 3 hb., 978 0 82235 017 0 pb. François Debrix and Alexander D. Barder, Beyond Biopolitics: Theory, Violence and Horror […]

173 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Patricia Ticineto Clough and Craig Willse, eds, Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and DeathStephen J. Collier, Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, BiopoliticsRoberto Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of LifeBen Watson, Adorno for RevolutionariesTosaka Jun, Ideologie, Medien, Alltag: Eine Auswahl ideologiekritischer, kulturund medientheoretischer und geschictsphilosophischer SchriftenJussi Parikka, Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and TechnologyArthur Bradley, Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to DerridaCostas Panayotakis, Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic DemocracyDominic Pettman, Human Error: Species-Being and Media MachinesDonna V. Jones, The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and ModernityTimothy Bewes, The Event of Postcolonial ShameClaudio Calia and Antonio Negri, Antonio Negri Illustrated: Interview in Venice

Reviews What’s left of biopolitics? Patricia Ticineto Clough and Craig Willse, eds, Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death, Duke University Press, Durham NC and London, 2011. 400 pp., £75.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 82235 003 3 hb., 978 0 82235 017 0 pb. François Debrix and Alexander D. Barder, Beyond […]

Inside the factory, and out

Fredric Jameson, Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume One, Verso, London and New York, 2011. 158pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 84467 454 1. John Kraniauskas 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 the dialectic (Valences of […]

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 […]