Jack Z. Bratich, On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death (Philadelphia: Common Notions, 2022). 240pp., $20 pb., 978 1 94217 349 6 Unacquainted readers may think that ‘microfascism’ is perhaps analogous to contemporary terms such as ‘microaggression’: the prefix ‘micro’ implying a simple reduction in scale and scope for actions representing larger systems. But microfascism is […]
The crisis of the legitimacy of the liberal democratic state is being posed today with an urgency and acuity not seen since the debates over the legitimacy of Weimar parliamentary democracy. Its constitutive claim to be able to satisfy both the values of justice and pluralism appears to be coming apart at the seams. Far […]
Total social crisis and the return of fascism Elsa papageorgiou In memory of Sahtzat Loukman, 27 years old, murdered on 17 January 2013 in Athens, and Clément Méric, 18 years old, murdered on 5 June 2013 in Paris.This contribution seeks to mobilize certain concepts in order to symbolize what, in part, always resists symbolization. What […]
Friend or enemy? Reading Schmitt politically Mark Neocleous The debates concerning a ‘crisis’ in social theory in recent years have been partly generated by those socialists for whom old certainties now appear naive and the theoretical foundations of a socialist approach to history and society obliterated. In this context some have looked to new approaches […]
The German as pariah Karl Jaspers and the question of German guilt Anson Rabinbach A great deal has been written about Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism, and still more about his notorious silence about the crimes of the regime to which he lent his support and enthusiasm. Much has been and will continue to be […]
Tactics, ethics, or temporal ity? Heidegger’s politics reviewed Peter Osborne There are moments in the reception of particular thinkers – especially in translation – when the literature about them, building up a critical mass, explodes, giving rise to whole new subdivisions of the academic industry. It happened to Hegel and Marx in the 1970s and […]
tially pragmatic form. However, he does insist that normative assent is often surprisingly widespread, and that a shared belief in reciprocal service between dominant and dominated lies at the heart of symbolic consensus. It is not clear whether Godelier holds this to be true transhistorically, or whether he thinks that there must always be some […]
very often suggested a pro-Derrida line, but one could hardly call it a case of unqualified support. It was a fascinating experience to observe him wrestling with deconstructionism in his conference-ending lecture, as it is too in his recent book on Samuel Richardson, The Rape of CZarissa (Oxford, 1982). Eagleton clearly feels there are major […]
RACISM – THE NEW INIIIRITORS Martin Barker PART I – THE NEW RACISM “1 think the nation can expect that, when they are announced, the Conservative proposals on immigration will be common-sense proposals. ” (William White law , March 1978) “Common-sense is the practical ideology of the ruling class. ” (Gramsci) 1 Introduction The resurgence […]
Philosophy of Mind is presently regarded as one of the most productive areas of comtemporary analytic philosophy. A number of recent introductory works (here those by Jackson and Braddon Mitchell, Crane, Kim and Rey) give us a chance to reflect on the dominant paradigms in terms of which the subject is taught. These texts display […]
The question of Martin Heideggerʼs Nazism, and its potential relevance to an appreciation of his philosophy, has been discussed over several decades. But most accounts of the debate assume that it began after the Second World War, in particular with the articles published in Sartreʼs journal Les Temps Modernes in 1946. Indeed, it is often […]
Letters Levinas and the Right Itʼs amazing what can pass for a ʻradicalʼ philosophy nowadays. Howard Caygillʼs article, ʻLevinasʼs Political Judgement: The Esprit Articles 1934–1983ʼ in RP 104 raises a number of questions about Caygillʼs own political judgement, and, indeed, about the judgement of the RP collective. Caygill tells us that ʻit is necessary first […]
Whatever happened to the idea of the body politic? For those interested in social and political thought this is a pertinent question, since these fields have in recent years become saturated with discussions of the body. The loss of confidence in previously established categories has provoked a widespread return to the body as the basis […]
The parliamentary incantation of the ʻnewʼ is now neatly matched by both popular and academic fascination with the ʻoldʼ. ʻThe pastʼ, as Andreas Huyssen quips, is simply ʻselling better than the futureʼ. [1] In the personal arena, it evokes a comforting nostalgia, when not calling up the sorrows of what might have been, as time […]
Since the collapse of actually existing socialism and the abrupt ending of the Cold War that had polarized the world along the lines of contending theories of modernization, there has been a steady attempt to recover historical intensities that had been displaced by the reduction of political differences to a dyadic struggle between ʻtotalitarianismʼ and […]
On 30 October 2007, Giovanna Reggiani, a 47-year-old Italian woman, was robbed and murdered in a deserted area of northern Rome. The man accused of murdering her was a Romanian Roma, Nicolai Romulus Mailat, who had been living in one of the ‘unauthorized’ settlements in Rome. The media immediately reported horrific stories of torture and […]