The future of post-socialism

The future of post-socialism Michael Rustin This article discusses three contributions to new thinking on the Left. * Two of these, Anthony Giddens’ s Beyond Left and Right: The Future ofRadical Politics and David Miliband’s collection Reinventing the Left (to which Giddens contributes the first chapter), set out to provide the new thinking which the […]

A Just War? The Left and the Moral Gulf

A Just War? The Left and the Moral Gulf Gregory Elliott A striking incidental feature of the Gulf War was the philosophical conflict attending the military hostilities. Norberto Bobbio or Jiirgen Habermas, Noam Chomsky or Ted Honderich, to name only a few of the participants, felt compelled, in their contrasting ways, to adopt and seek […]

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak An Interview Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in Calcutta. She now teaches English and Culture Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her translation of Derrida’ s Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), with a long and authoritative introduction, remains a controversial event in the recent history of philosophy and cultural theory, […]

Old and New Left

Benton’s comments on Ranci~re seem to put forward a rather different view of science than Althusser does, so we are in fact dealing with three positions, and we can discov~r the implications of Ranci~re’s argument by working through them. Ted Benton provides a useful example in his argument that it is possible to separate the […]

Rorty’s nation

Rorty’s nation Jonathan rée I know he has no need of my help, but I sometimes feel rather protective towards Richard Rorty. Especially when I see him being set upon by members of the realist old Left: the salt-of-the-earth socialist internationalists who enjoy looking back to the great days of organized labour, wringing their hands […]

Radicalism and philosophy

Philosophy is popular in Britain at the moment, if the media be the measure; albeit mainly in the guise of a ʻguide to happinessʼ – a television guide and a happiness of a rather minimal sort. [1] Radicalism is not so popular, Ken Livingstoneʼs victory in the London mayoral contest notwithstanding (although we may be […]

Jews in the culture wars

Commentary Jews in the culture wars Lynne segal What will it take to unite the intellectual Left? After decades of internal academic strife on the Left, the moral dilemmas currently faced by Jewish academics have thrown up some unexpected alliances. The 1980s and 1990s were embattled decades in the universities, especially in North America. These […]

Philosophizing post-punk

COMMENTARYPhilosophizing post-punk Ben watson Philosophers are talking more about music than they did in the past. This is partly to do with the rise of Adornoʼs star in the philosophical firmament and the fact that over half of his writings are devoted to music. But it is also because a generation that imbibed punk in […]

157 News: Iran and the Left, Academic freedom in California?, Immigration raid on SOAS

News Iran and the Left Iran’s current rulers are the latest in a long line coming from the peasantry. The small clique of village elders headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei enjoy control over all state activity thanks to a politics of strategic marriages between philosopher kings, a model now reflected throughout Iranian society. With a […]