Who cares?

Reivew of Boris Groys, Philosophy of Care
Boris Groys, Philosophy of Care (London and New York: Verso, 2022). 106pp., £9.99 hb., 978 1 83976 492 9 Boris Groys’ Philosophy of Care is comprised of twelve short, pithy sections that plot an abbreviated history of mainly Western philosophy from ancient to modern times. Also included are two diversions into Russian intellectual thought, Groys […]

Politics in a Tragic Key

In memory of Joel Olson (1967–2012) In the quarter-century or so since the obscure disaster of the Soviet bloc’s collapse, two words have been pinned to that of ‘communism’ with liberal abandon: ‘tragedy’ and ‘transition’. Tragedy, to signify the magnitude of suffering, but not the greatness of the enterprise; the depth of the fall, but […]

69 Reviews

I; REVIEWS The power of negative thinking Roy Bhaskar, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London, Verso, 1993. xvi + 406 pp., £39.95 hb., £14.95 pb., 0 86091 3686 hb., 0 86091 583 2 pb. Roy Bhaskar’s previous writings have belonged to definite regions of philosophy – for the most part the philosophy of science and […]

66 Reviews

REVIEWS RULING PASSION STRONG IN DEATH Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, London, Faber, 1993. 363pp, £9.99 pb, 0 571 169732. David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, London, Hutchinson, 1993. 583pp, £20 hb, 0 09 1753449. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, London, Harper Collins, 1993. 491pp, £18 hb, 0 00 255267 1. ‘Alive,’ claims […]

Birth, love, politics

Properly speaking, the individual and the community should be considered as opposites. The first term refers to something indivisible that stands by itself, while the second term, as can be seen from its root (cum), expresses the very essence of relation. Corresponding to the concept of the individual there should be that of a collectivity […]

The exemplary exception: Philosophical and political decisions in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer

The exemplary exception Philosophical and political decisions in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer Andrew norris rights. More specifically, the Nazi death camps are not a political aberration, least of all a unique event, but instead the place where politics as the sovereign decision on life most clearly reveals itself: ʻtoday it is not the city but […]

The future of fascism

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 […]