One of the fundamental tensions within Marx’s writings arises from the complex relationship between the systematic and historical aspects of his description of capitalist society. 1 A century and a half after the publication of Capital – and in light of the historical adventures of communism that must, for the most part, be considered as […]
Where Marx is closest to the spirit of deconstruction is, arguably, in these formulaic gestures towards a society that had so far transcended existing actuality that its conditions of realization could no longer be conceptualized. Marx is spectral Marx in his refusal to envision communism in his envisaging of it, in his anti-utopian utopianism. Now, […]
The Meaning of Political Ecology Tim Hayward ‘Political ecology’ is an expression which has become quite familiar in recent years, but does not appear to have acquired a clear and settled meaning. * Evidently it is used to point up some kind of connection between politics, or the political, and ecology, yet the project of […]
Debate on Market Socialism Alec Nove Beyond the Market? comments on Boris Frankel The editors have asked me to comment on Frankel’s Beyond the State?, since Frankel devotes several pages to a criticism of the sort of arguments which I advanced in my Economics of Feasible Socialism and in some other works. The key issue […]
Moral Relalions,PoIilical Economy and Class Ilmggle Philip Corrigan & Derek Saver In a critical comment on the Comtists (in a draft for his The Civil War in France) Marx declares: Poor men! They do not know that every social form of property has ‘morals’ of its own~ The strategy of analysis involved in this sharp […]
Recognition and resistance Axel Honneth’s critical social theory Roger foster beginning. Yet, as we shall see, the shortcomings of his own project are also largely due to a continued adherence to the critical framework opened by the ʻKantian turnʼ, of which Habermas remains the chief expositor. Culture and criticism In an early essay, entitled ʻCommunication […]
Oedipus as figure Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe It is probable, or at the very least plausible, that Western humanity now models itself on two figures or types – two ʻexamplesʼ, if you like. They appear to be antagonistic (or are at least supported by antagonistic discourses), but their antagonism also binds together, and founds, their kinship, as […]
One of the rarely noticed historical ironies of the twentieth century was the effort of societies located on the capitalist periphery – outside of Euro-America – to resort to a philosophy which had no place for them in order to explain their entry into and experience of capitalist modernization. Japan led the way in this […]
Theatre and the public Badiou, Rancière, Virno Simon bayly and ‘relational’ turn in contemporary art practice. The claim restaged here is that the theatrical is still what makes a political problem of something like ‘the public’, which in many contemporary philosophical understandings no longer appears at all. Making public The lack of the appearance of […]