The revival of Hegelian Marxism: On Martin Hägglund’s This Life

When a notable philosopher, having established a reputation for rigorous argumentation and scholarship, directs a major new book toward a popular audience, a certain skepticism may be forgiven among those familiar with the earlier work. However welcome an accessible style may be, popular address too often gives way to the popularisation of philosophical concepts and […]

Calls, Invitations, Summons: ‘Gender’ in the aftermath of Politics of Piety

Dossier: Saba Mahmood in memoriam

Da’wa, Saba Mahmood tells us, is ‘a Quranic concept associated primarily with God’s call to the prophets and to humanity to believe in the “true religion”, Islam’. It ‘literally means “call, invitation, appeal, or summons”’. 1 Whilst cognisant of the uncompromising specificity of the demand it places on those to whom the call is addressed, […]

Thinking critically with Saba Mahmood

Dossier: Saba Mahmood in memoriam

Saba Mahmood made immensely important contributions to the critical understanding of secular power and its operations, without which the field would be significantly impoverished. Tragically cut short by her untimely death, her scholarship offers especially powerful insights into the critical turn in secularism studies: first and foremost that secularism is a modality of governance involved […]

Fallen angel: Guy Lardreau's later voluntarism

The French philosopher and erstwhile Maoist militant Guy Lardreau (1947-2008) was the first to admit that much of his work was haunted by a single problem, one posed by the revolutionary political history of the twentieth century. 1 The great revolutions in Russia and China, and several other places inspired by their example, pursued radical […]

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 […]

Cornel West: American Radicalism

INTERVIEW Cornel West American radicalism RP: Perhaps we could begin by asking you about the role of religion in your intellectual and political development. How important was the Church to you in becoming an intellectual, becoming a radical? West: For me, the issues on which religious discourse has traditionally focused, such as death and dread […]

Nietzsche: The Subject of Morality

Nietzsche: The Subject of Morality Ross Poole It is to be inferred that there exist countless dark bodies close to the sun – such as we shall never see. This is, between ourselves, a parable; and a moral psychologist reads the whole starry script only as a parable and signlanguage by means of which many […]

Idealism and the Matter at Hand: George Berkeley and the Prevention of Ruin in Great Britain

8 Ralf Dahendorf, quoted in Musgrove, op. cit. 9 R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure The Free Press, 1968 10 Basil Bernstein, ‘Sociological Aspects of Classifying and Framing Educational Knowledge’, quoted in Musgrove, op. cit. 11 C. Wright Mills, op. cit. 12 Ibid. 13 Anthony Ryle, Student Casualties, The Penguin Press, 1969. 14 […]

Families against ‘The Family’: The transatlantic passage of the politics of family values

Commentary Families against ‘The Family’ The transatlantic passage of the politics of family values Judith stacey Progressive Brits beware. Political campaigns conducted in the name of The Family are now in their third decade in the United States, and there are signs that transatlantic missionaries are finding prominent converts in the UK. Indeed, addressing the […]

‘Questioning Religion’, British Society for Phenomenology, University of Greenwich, 11–13 July 2003

Conference report Quoi? ‘Questioning Religion’, British Society for Phenomenology, University of Greenwich, 11–13 July 2003n some of the hottest days of the summer, amidst the designs of Wren and Hawksmoor at the University of Greenwichʼs Maritime Campus, around forty speakers and many more participants attended the BSPʼs ʻQuestioning Religionʼ conference. Perhaps the surroundings gave a […]

Brian Ferneyhough/Charles Bernstein, Shadowtime, Prinzregententheater, Munich, 25 May 2004

News It could have been worse Walter Benjamin as operaBrian Ferneyhough/Charles Bernstein, Shadowtime, Prinzregententheater, Munich, 25 May 2004. Something about Walter Benjamin − the life, his theory − makes him an obvious candidate for representation or fictionalization. He has been the subject of one novel and has played a walk-on part in a couple more. […]

Jacques Derrida, 1930–2004

Obituary symposium Jacques Derrida, 1930–2004 David Cunningham In an interview with Le Monde published a couple of months before his death at the age of 74 from pancreatic cancer on Friday 9 October 2004, Jacques Derrida confirmed what many already knew, that he was ʻdangerously illʼ, ʻat war against myselfʼ. If questions of ʻsurvivalʼ had […]