Reviews archive

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 […]

Why Keynes was wrong

Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right, Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 2011. 258 pp., £16.99 hb., 978 0 30016 943 0. Paul Mattick, Business As Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism, Reaktion Books, London, 2011. 126 pp. £12.95 pb., 978 1 86189 801 2. Stephen Harper In 2008, as journalists and pundits struggled to account for […]

Squeegee

Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Modern, London, 6 October 2011–8 January 2012. John Timberlake The only comic moment in Gerhard Richter: Panorama comes in the form of a double portrait of the artist with his long-term friend and interlocutor Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, outside the doors of an art school, but titled as if emerging from a […]

171 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall, eds, Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence: Aesthetics, Politics, LiteratureMichael J. Thompson, ed.,Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical EssaysHans-Jörg Rheinberger,On Historicising Epistemology: An EssayHans-Jörg Rheinberger, An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of LifeTerry Eagleton, Why Marx Was RightPaul Mattick, Business As Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of CapitalismFrank Furedi, On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral IndependencePeter John et al., Nudge, Nudge, Think, ThinkGilles Saint-Paul, The Tyranny of UtilityMandy Merck and Stella Sandford, eds, Further Adventures of The Dialectic of SexBruno Bosteels, The Actuality of CommunismColin Cremin, Capitalism’s New ClothesGerhard Richter: Panorama

Reviews Hegelian Leninism today! Timothy Bewes and Timothy Hall, eds, Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence. Aesthetics, Politics, Literature, Continuum, London and New York, 2011. 256 pp., £60.00 hb., 978 1 44115 790 4. ^ Michael J. Thompson, ed., Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics, Continuum, London and New York, […]

Flaubert’s parrot

Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Literature, trans. Julie Rose, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2011. 215 pp., £55.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 74564 531 5 hb., 978 0 74564 530 8 pb. David Cunningham The ongoing role played by French philosophy in underwriting the contemporaneity of anglophone theory has entailed, since the 1970s, the […]

170 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Jacques Rancière, The Politics of LiteratureJudith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Cornell West, The Power of Religion in the Public SphereClayton Crockett, Radical Political TheologyNiilo Kauppi,Radicalism in French CultureHeiko Schmid, Wolf-Dietrich Sahr and John Urry, eds., Cities and Fascination: Beyond the Surplus of MeaningAdrian Mackenzie, Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network CultureEncarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Migration, Domestic Work and Affect: A Decolonial Approach on Value and the Feminization of LaborAndrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush

Reviews Flaubert’s parrotJacques Rancière, The Politics of Literature, trans. Julie Rose, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden MA, 2011. 215 pp., £55.00 hb., £17.99 pb., 978 0 74564 531 5 hb., 978 0 74564 530 8 pb. The ongoing role played by French philosophy in underwriting the contemporaneity of anglophone theory has entailed, since the 1970s, […]

Romanticism of the Multitude

Jon Beasley-Murray, Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2011. 376 pp., £56.00 hb., £15.50 pb., 978 0 81664 714 9 hb., 978 0 81664 715 6 pb. Philip Derbyshire Posthegemony is an ambitious and often pugnacious project, which, as its title indicates, seeks to go beyond neo-Gramscian accounts of the […]

169 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Djurdja Bartlett, FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism Jon Beasley-Murray Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin AmericaRichard Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul WolfowitzJacob Rogozinski, The Ego and the Flesh: An Introduction to EgoanalysisPaul Virilio, The Futurism of the Instant: Stop-EjectDave Eggers, ZeitounTurbulence, What Would It Mean to Win?Team Colours, Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United StatesThe Occupation Cookbook, or, the Model of the Occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb

Reviews Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out…Djurdja Bartlett, FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2011. 300 pp., £25.95 hb., 978 0 26202 650 5. One of the more interesting recent Russian blockbusters, Valeriy Todorovskys 2008 Stilyagi, is a musical set in 1950s’ Moscow. The historical Stilyagi were the Soviet […]

Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out…

Djurdja Bartlett, FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2011. 300pp., £25.95 hb., 978 0 26202 650 5. Owen Hatherley One of the more interesting recent Russian blockbusters, Valeriy Todorovskys 2008 Stilyagi, is a musical set in 1950s’ Moscow. The historical Stilyagi were the Soviet Union’s beatniks, enthusiasts for modern jazz and […]

History flows through some problems

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 2010. viii + 299 pp., £18.50 pb., 978 0 8166 5687 8. Michael Halewood To state that ‘reality is a construction’ might elicit two opposed responses. Certain philosophers and social theorists would welcome the claim, in so far as it appears […]

168 Reviews: Books Reviewed:Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental TheoryPeter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of TimeAndrea Cavalletti, ClasseGail Day, Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art TheoryDavid Toop, Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the ListenerAndrew Finlay, Governing Ethnic Conflict: Consociation, Identity and the Price of PeaceManuel De Landa, Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic ReasonBill Griffiths, Collected Earlier Poems (1966–1980)

Reviews History flows through some problems Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 2010. viii + 299 pp., £18.50 pb., 978 0 8166 5687 8. To state that ‘reality is a construction’ might elicit two opposed responses. Certain philosophers and social theorists would welcome the claim, in so […]

The better half

Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2010. 196 pp.,£60.00 hb., 978 0 74863 863 5. Knox Peden There’s an old Ziggy cartoon that finds the eponymous misanthrope standing waist-deep in water in a flooded basement, remarking to nobody in particular: ‘I wonder if this […]

Radical, like in the eighties

Gail Day, Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory, Columbia University Press, New York, 2011. 320 pp., £34.50 hb., 978 0 231 14938 9. Luke White Dialectical Passions is a book about art and architectural theory in the wake of the New Left. It locates itself in the context of a turning tide in thinking […]