The concept of abolition of labour ( Aufhebung der Arbeit) appeared in some of Marx’s posthumously published works. Few of his notable successors highlighted this concept as key to opposing the Fordist stage of capitalism. Marcuse viewed this stage as a new peak in the repression of imagination and free instincts, bound to ‘the performance principle’. However, the rise of neo-liberalism presents unforeseen challenges to the criticism of labour. While the Keynesian welfare state is collapsing, its universal services are commodified (...) and inequality rates are skyrocketing – some factors of the abolition of labour are surprisingly uplifted. This article will examine the evolution of some factors of abolition of labour that thrive with the spread of neo-liberalism and the erosion of other vital factors; we will elucidate the diminishing role of Marcuse’s performance principle, unravel the reality principle replacing it and discuss the relevance of the concept ‘abolition of labour’ today. (shrink)

Audre Lorde’s account of the erotic is one of her most widely celebrated contributions to political theory and feminist activism, but her explanation of the term in her brief essay “Uses of the Erotic” is famously oblique and ambiguous. This article develops a detailed, textually grounded interpretation of Lorde’s erotic, based on an analysis of how Lorde’s essay brings together commitments expressed across her work. I describe four integral elements of Lorde’s erotic: feeling, knowledge, power, and concerted action. The erotic (...) is a way of feeling in the work a person does, which makes possible new knowledge about the self and the social environment— particularly to counteract epistemic oppression imposed by an unjust society. The erotic is a source of power by providing vision and energy for actions integrating a person’s multiple commitments and political interests. It facilitates concerted action and coalition by enhancing a person’s appreciation of their interests and values, while fostering embodied, personal connections that build trust on the basis of shared vulnerability. Thus, the erotic helps build coalitions where genuine differences of perspective and experience can be examined, in resistance against an oppressive society’s epistemic distortions. (shrink)

This thesis analyses Deleuze & Guattari’s notion of becoming through certain performative encounters in contemporary political art, and re-conceptualizes them as “art(s) of becoming”. Art(s) of becoming are actualizations of a non-representational –minoritarian– mode of becoming and creation as well as the political actions of fleeing quanta. The theoretical aim of the study is, on the one hand, to explain how Platonic Idealism is overturned by Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche and Leibniz, and on the other hand, how Cartesian dualism of (...) mind and body is surpassed by following a Spinozistic theory of affects. In this respect, the dissertation has both theoretical and practical dimensions. Since art(s) of becoming are bodies without organs which constitute their own lines of flight through a process of minoration, the concepts of body, affect, becoming, and intensity are central to this study. For the same reason, this is an attempt to show the intersections of philosophical, political and aesthetic domains in Deleuze’s theory of sensation which is part of his general practice of philosophy, that is, a quest for establishing an ontology of immanence as opposed to identitarian metaphysics. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore the value of psychoanalysis in the early twenty-first century through reference to Freud, Lacan, and Stiegler’s work on computational madness. In the first section of the article I consider the original objectives of psychoanalysis through reference to what I call Freud’s ‘normalisation project’, before exploring the critique of this discourse concerned with the defence of oedipal law through a discussion of the post-modern ‘individualisation project’ set out by Deleuze and Guattari and others. (...) Tracking the development of ‘the individualisation project’ in history, I consider its connections with the cybernetic theories of Wiener and Shannon in the psycho-cyber-utopianism of the 1990s, before moving on to consider the other side of the psychoanalytic-cybernetic interaction through a discussion of Jacques Lacan’s rereading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in the second section of the article. In reading Lacan’s seminar on Freudian drive in terms of the cybernetic repression of death, I set up the conclusion to the article which involves a discussion of Bernard Stiegler’s ‘survival project’ that relies on a recognition of the limit of death in order to produce human significance and oppose the madness of our contemporary computational reality. (shrink)

This monograph sets out from the idea of an obscure and perverted relationship between environmentalism, understood as a 21 st century green and popular movement, and pornography, understood as a traditionalist and conservative art form. Both sides seem to come together in the interest of what has been called the Anthropocene. Somehow the same groups that rely on a fierce defense of the planet and demand a collective awareness of the risk the entire humanity faces do not do it any (...) longer on behalf of an unknown future or revolutionary goal, but for the conservation of a still image of Earth: a positive conviction on how the future is going to look like. This aporia is dissolved into an oxymoron when environmentalist practices are put at work. (shrink)

This essay explores Foucault’s conception of the historical a priori through the lens of an archival ethics of eros. Highlighting the paradoxical nature of the historical a priori as both constitutive and contingent, it harnesses the temporal dynamism of experiences of the untimely as erotic. Drawing on the work of Anne Carson, the essay brings out the strangeness of eros as an ancient Greek word that remains unintelligible to us. That strangeness signals an ethics of dissonant attunement to the untimeliness (...) of the historical a priori. Such an ethics of eros names those experiences of connection and rupture that both bind and unbind us in relation to a biopolitical present that is radically unstable. Reading eros as strange thus ultimately allows us to find resources for an ethics of self-transformation in Foucault’s reflections on the temporal instability that the historical a priori names. (shrink)

While Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is concerned with psycho-sexual development, it concomitantly presents a novel historical-political imagination. This article compares the post-Oedipal self with the selves envisioned by Nietzsche and Marx, suggesting that while these 19th-century theorists constructed selves that are able to transcend the normalizing and subjugating circumstances of modernity, Freud’s theory defines a healthy self as irredeemably embedded in the prevailing culture and life-orders. In making his case, Freud spurns the quests of Nietzsche and Marx for (...) wholeness of the individual and for self-authorship, and presents the self as structurally agonistic, riven and thoroughly molded by society. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics and, (...) focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

Essay Review of New Waves in the Philosophy of Technology (Olsen/Selinger). Treats issue of difference of technology in Marx and Heidegger at some length.

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these (...) readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical. (shrink)

Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the (...) end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference? (shrink)

This paper questions the nature and existence of the ego and I from a Western and Eastern viewpoint, which has been a question for 2,500 years when the Buddha rejected the Brahman idea of ātman. The answer for an ego depends partly on the state of consciousness; the existence of the Western objectifying ego is undeniable in ordinary consciousness, but not in extraordinary consciousness with no objectifying. The subtle question remains about the existence of an I that is distinct from (...) the ego and that is best represented by most meditative or contemplative states. Here a subjectified, witnessing, consciousness-maintaining I still seems to exist. This may be called the "High-I," which appears to provide for all states of consciousness a constancy and awareness not provided by the ego. This finding has implications for psychology and religion as well as philosophy. (shrink)

: Based on the premise that ugliness looms large in both cultural and women's consciousness of vaginas, I create a representation of the vagina's beauty as rich and sweet. Smell, taste, and touch play predominant roles as I use scholarly analysis and my own autobiographical narratives and poems and poetic language in order to redress the vagina's culturally inherited ugliness.

This paper reconsiders Marcuse's Eros and Civilization from the perspective of Gayle Rubin's classic article “The Traffic in Women.” The primary goals of this comparison are to investigate the social and psychological mechanisms that perpetuate the archaic sex/gender system Rubin describes under current conditions of post-industrial capitalism; to open possible new avenues of analysis and liberatory praxis based on these authors’ applications of Marxist insights to cultural interpretations of Freud's writings; and to make clearer the role sexual repression continues to (...) play in all forms of oppression, even in a public world seemingly saturated with sex. (shrink)

It is a hallmark of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory that it has consistently made philosophical reflection a central component of its overall project. Indeed, the core identity that this tradition has been able to maintain arguably stems from the fact that a number of key philosophical assumptions have been shared by the generations of thinkers involved in it. These assumptions form a basic ‘philosophical matrix’, whose main aim is to allow for a ‘critique of reason’, the heart (...) of the critique of modern society, which emphasises the collective, historically situated and naturalistically grounded nature of rationality. In this matrix, Feuerbach's place has been only a minor one. This paper aims to show that there is more to be retrieved from Feuerbach for critical theory than at first meets the eye. The first section identifies key conceptual features that are shared by the central authors of the Frankfurt School. They signal a collectivist and materialist shift from Kant to Marx via Hege.. (shrink)

This article assesses a realm of psychoanalytic social theory that is relatively under-discussed – existential psychoanalysis – in order to gain further insight into the relationship of psychoanalytic ideas to humanism. I offer a reading of certain influential thinkers in this tradition, namely Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss, presenting conceptual clarifications while highlighting a cluster of important aspects of their respective repertoires relevant to humanism. I do so with the intention of teasing out how contributing voices to existential (...) psychoanalysis negotiate humanism’s foundational ideas, specifically the notion of ‘the individual subject’, with the bed-rocks of psychoanalytic thought, namely the unconscious. Finally, I conclude with critical commentary on the existential-psychoanalytic project drawn from what is often thought of as the anti-humanist tradition, with specific attention paid to Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. (shrink)

This essay examines how psychoanalytic conceptions of the subject and the object in the works of Freud and Lacan may contribute to a re-examination of the vexed issue of the subject–object relationship in science, philosophy and epistemology. For Freud, the ego is the essential subject, yet he regarded it as an always already objectified subject, which is objectively thinkable yet never subjectively knowable qua subject. Lacan conceptualised this Freudian principle of subjectivity with his notion of the divided (barred) subject, which (...) he initially designated as an effect of the symbolic order of language. As to the object, both Freud and Lacan emphasized its constitutive partiality, which explains why no object is ever fully capable of providing full satisfaction and why each and every object is flawed and cracked, thus triggering desire. Extending Freud’s idea of the ‘shadow of the object,’ Lacan captured the fundamental inadequacy of the object with his concept of the object a. As such, for Freud and Lacan, the subject–object relationship is problematic, because it concerns a relationship between a divided subject and a non-object (object a). In this relationship, the subject is not purely object and the object is not merely subject (in the Kantian sense), nor is the Hegelian subject–object identity more than an idealist aspiration. For psychoanalysis, the subject is always traversed by the object, yet the object can never be fully integrated into a subjectified structure of knowledge. The only way to conceive of an adequate subject–object relationship is at the level of fantasy. (shrink)

Historians have linked the emergence of contemporary lesbian/gay identities to the development of capitalism. A materialist approach should also look atdifferentforms of sexual identity, and their connections with specific phases of capitalist development. Marxist long-wave theory can help us understand how the decline of Fordism contributed to shifts in LGBT identities, speeding the consolidation of gay identity while fostering the rise of alternative sexual identities. These alternative identities, sometimes defined as ‘queer’, characterised by sexual practices that are still stigmatised, by (...) explicit power-differentials and above all by gender-nonconformity, are particularly common among young and disadvantaged working-class strata. The growing diversity of identities is a challenge to any gay universalism that neglects class, gender, sexual, racial/ethnic and other differences, to the currently dominant forms of lesbian/gay organising, and ultimately to the prevailing division of human beings into gay and straight.1. (shrink)

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

Bu makale Herbert Marcuse ve Ernst Bloch'un bellek ve sanat üzerine düşüncelerini ve Freud’un bu düşünceler üzerindeki etkilerini inceliyor. Marcuse’nin Eros ve Uygarlık: Freud Üzerine Felsefi Bir İnceleme’si ve Bloch'un Umut İlkesi bu yazının temel referans noktaları olacaktır. Ayrıca, Marcuse'nin ve Bloch'un bellek ve sanat üzerine düşüncelerini şu edebi metinlere referans vererek inceleyeceğim: Rainer Maria Rilke'den Orpheus’a Soneler ve Johann Wolfgang von Goethe'den Faust I ve II. Bu makale iki bölümden oluşmaktadır. İlk bölüm Marcuse ve Orpheus’a Soneler’e ayrılmıştır. İkinci bölüm (...) Bloch ve Faust I ve II ile ilgilidir. Tüm alıntıları Bloch'un Das Prinzip Hoffnung ve Geist der Utopie, ve Rilke'nin Sonette an Orpheus metinlerinden çevirdiğimi bilgilerinize sunarım. (shrink)

When Susan Sontag addresses the problem of pornography and relates it to Hegel, she is not merely describing a path in European philosophy aimed to construct a new language, but she is also committing this aim to the importance of re-reading culture. The fashion in which pornography describes reality is meaningful when we are trying to approach Hegel in his aim to construct a post-religious language that finally will make ready-to-hand life as life. Politics, and society, being two essential elements (...) to understand reality, become singularly interesting when analyzed through the gaze of Sontag in combination of Hegel’s philosophy. The conservative morals that reign over what we understand as pornography, and the cultural moment of Europe since the most progressive moments of the 19 th century, describe a fatalist landscape for the future of society and politics. Yet, the learnings from Hegel remain meaningful. In this paper I examine how a post-religious philosophy, aimed long ago by Hegel’s contribution to philosophy, can serve to the understanding of a post-pornographic society: a society that is able to learn from the contributions of Frankfurt’s school with regards to an efficient cultural tissue, and defeat the old religious morals that are inserted in the backbone of politics and philosophy still today. (shrink)

This article investigates the changing justifications of one of the hallmarks of orthodox psychoanalytic practice, the neutral and abstinent stance of the psychoanalyst, during the middle decades of the 20th century. To call attention to the shifting rationales behind a supposedly cold, detached style of treatment still today associated with psychoanalysis, explanations of the clinical utility of neutrality and abstinence by ‘classical’ psychoanalysts in the United States are contrasted with how intellectuals and cultural critics understood the significance of psychoanalytic abstinence. (...) As early as the 1930s, members of the Frankfurt School discussed the cultural and social implications of psychoanalytic practices. Only in the 1960s and 1970s, however, did psychoanalytic abstinence become a topic within broader intellectual debates about American social character and the burgeoning ‘therapy culture’ in the USA. The shift from professional and epistemological concerns to cultural and political ones is indicative of the changing appreciation of psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline: for psychoanalysts as well as cultural critics, I argue, changing social mores and the professional decline of psychoanalysis infused the image of the abstinent psychoanalyst with nostalgic longing, making it a symbol of resistance against a culture seen to be in decline. (shrink)

Adorno and Levinas argue from distinct yet intersecting perspectives that there are pathological forms of freedom, formed by systems of power and economic exchange, which legitimate the neglect, exploitation and domination of others. In this paper, I examine how the works of Adorno and Levinas assist in diagnosing the aporias of liberty in contemporary capitalist societies by providing critical models and strategies for confronting present discourses and systems of freedom that perpetuate unfreedom such as those ideologically expressed in possessive individualist (...) and libertarian conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

We argue that the gap between an authentically ethical conviction of sustainability and a behaviour that avoids confronting the terrifying reality of its ethical point of reference is characteristic of the field of business sustainability. We do not accuse the field of business sustainability of ethical shortcomings on the account of this attitude–behaviour gap. If anything, we claim the opposite, namely that there resides an ethical sincerity in the convictions of business scholars to entrust capitalism and capitalists with the mammoth (...) task of reversing, the terrifying reality of ecological devastation. Yet, the very illusory nature of this belief in capitalism’s captains to save us from the environmentally devastating effects of capitalism gives this ethical stance a tragic beauty. While sincere and authentic, it nevertheless is an ethical stance that relies on an “exclusionary gesture of refusing to see”, what in psychoanalysis is referred to as a fetishist disavowal of reality. We submit that this disavowal is fetishistic because the act is not simply one of repressing the real. If it was, we would rightly expect that we could all see the truth if we only provide more or better information to fill the subject’s lack of knowledge. The problem is that the fetishist transfers a fantasy of the real as the real. In the case of destructive capitalism, the fetishist disavows that particular reality by believing in another, thus subjectively negating the lack. Therefore, from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, we submit that the gap between attitude and behaviour is best understood not only as an ethical flaw, but also as an essential component of an ethics that makes possible the field of business sustainability. (shrink)

This article aims to present some of the main results of contemporary French psychodynamics of work. The writings of Christophe Dejours constitute the central references in this area. His psychoanalytical approach, which is initially concerned with the impact of contemporary work practices on individual health, has implications that go well beyond the narrow psycho-pathological interest. The most significant theoretical development to have come out of Dejours's research is that of Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute the second reference point in (...) this article. The article attempts to demonstrate that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot operate with, as a result of their focus on its psychological function, speaks directly, in substantial and critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in work, to philosophers, social theorists and social scientists, including economic theorists. (shrink)

This article seeks to analyze the theory of technology formulated by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). It shows the ways in which the author repurposes fundamental concepts of classical aesthetics in order to formulate a theory of technology aimed at liberating both nature and humanity. To this end, we argue that Marcuse mobilizes the theories of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). In the first part of the article, we tackle some important aspects of Kant’s and Schiller’s aesthetic theories. (...) We begin with an analysis of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), focusing on central concepts that would later be absorbed by Schiller and Marcuse. Next, we try to show the reception of the Third critique in Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) and this author’s contribution to aesthetic studies within political thought. In the second part, we focus on Marcuse’s work, highlighting two key moments in his analysis on technology. We show that his theory undergoes transformation and development until it reaches its stable form in the 1960s and 1970s, during which the author proposes a new theory of technology based on human aesthetic possibilities whose goal is the liberation of nature. (shrink)

This article examines the turn to the aesthetic dimension in early 20th century critical theory, particularly in the work of Lukács, Benjamin and Adorno. It focuses on the concept of play, which garnered particular attention as a possible form of aesthetic resistance to the reification of reason in modern society. The article traces the concept of play from the work of Lukács, who engaged with Schiller’s notion of the play-drive but ultimately viewed it to be an inadequate form of aesthetic (...) resistance, to the work of Benjamin, who optimistically embraced the revolutionary possibility of play. In contrast, the article argues that Adorno’s work tacitly advances a critical concept of dark play that offers a third perspective between Lukács’s pessimism and Benjamin’s optimism, thus avoiding both the retreat into an apolitical aesthetic dimension and the uncritical embrace of play’s revolutionary potential. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to investigate the connection between the Frankfurt School and the events of 1968. Accordingly, the paper focuses only on those important members of the School whose philosophical, ideological or practical influence on the events is clearly detectable. This means dealing with four thinkers in three sections: the influence of Adorno and Horkheimer is treated in the same section, whereas the work of Marcuse and Habermas is examined in separate sections. The three sections represent three (...) different approaches. Adorno and Horkheimer are passive onlookers of the events their passivity being rooted in their skeptical philosophical thinking. The initially also passive and pessimist Marcuse slowly rises to the role of the ’prophet’ of the students. And the early Habermas’ critical analysis paves the way for his initially pessimist, but later more optimistic reformist attitude. The paper is structured accordingly: after introductory thoughts, the mentioned thinkers are treated in separate sections that contain historo-philosophical analysis of their relevant works. (shrink)

Though the term “commodification” is used broadly, a theory of the processes by which goods become exchangeable and in fact objects of monetized exchange reveals a key site for technological politics. Commodities are goods that are alienable, somewhat rival, generally with low exclusion costs, and that are often consumed in use. Technological advances can affect all of these traits for certain goods, effectively bringing about a process of commodification by technological means. However, in order to function with specific contexts, technologies (...) are designed and manufactured according to technical standards, standards that in turn take on features of what David Grewal ( 2008 ) has called “network power.” As such, standard setting processes become the potential locus for political argument over the legitimacy of a commodification process. Theorists hoping to develop more democratic theories of technological governance should thus recognize the significance of standards and the role they play in either promoting or controlling social relations organized according to the norms of monetized exchange. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to reconcile two seemingly conflicting theorisations of love, the one elaborated by Roy Bhaskar as part of his philosophy of meta-Reality and Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s historical materialist-radical feminist theory of love power. While Bhaskar emphasises the essentially non-dual character of love, envisioning it as a ‘no-lose situation’, Jónasdóttir stresses the antagonistic features structuring love relations by conceptualising love as a productive power that men tend to exploit women of. Rather than seeing these accounts as mutually (...) exclusive I show that they can be reconciled by aid of the general ontology elaborated by Bhaskar in his philosophy of meta-Reality. (shrink)

This paper examines Henry Giroux’s critical pedagogy, and explores the interconnections among education, democracy, and hope. Whereas critical pedagogy rejects foundationalism, it still requires a normative foundation to criticise oppressive situations and pose a vision of the future. Giroux rejects foundationalism and regards oppressive force such as neoliberalism as an enemy of both hope and democracy. He regards hope as an act of imagination, something to be cultivated, which can be regarded as a medium of mobilisation. This seems inconsistent with (...) the tenets of critical pedagogy, as mobilisation is often thought to suppress individual human agency, which Giroux and other critical pedagogues have emphasised heavily. This paper solves this inconsistency via the radical democracy advocated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and Gramscian insights regarding hegemony and education, and redefines the role of hope in Giroux's theory. Giroux’s framing of hope moves us towards certain normative claims and mobilises people to desire democracy as a normative foundation for society. (shrink)

The central ideas of early object relations theory are heavily inflected with Christian anti-Judaism, particularly as found in the work of Ian Dishart Suttie, now credited as the founder of this tradition. The critique of Freud launched by Suttie repudiates Freudian theory as a “disease” inextricably connected to Freud being a Jew. Suttie’s portrayal of Judaism both conforms to and replicates those theological commitments that privilege a triumphalist, supersessionist Christianity that breaks with Judaism, understood as devoid of love, ethics, and (...) social justice interests. The paper argues that the elements organizing the central concepts that structure Suttie’s Christian prejudice constitute distorting ideological interests that circulate and shape important strands of contemporary object relations theory. Central to the authors discussed is a repudiation of Freud’s theory of unconscious drives on the basis of privileging love and intersubjectivity as the motivators of human psychological development made possible by Jesus and Christianity. The paper demonstrates that contemporary object relations theory remains heavily indebted to Suttie while remaining oblivious to his explicit anti-Judaism. (shrink)

In his article Potentialism and the experience of the new, Jasinski argues for the use of a potentialist approach in education by relating it to a line of thought that starts with Dewey and is fulfilled by Agamben and Lewis. Although the reading that Jasinski offers on potentialism is interesting, his understanding of Dewey is problematic. In this paper, I argue that much of what Jasinski claims as worthy of pursuit in education is already contained in the Deweyan questions of (...) newness, openness, and radical possibility. Even the Agambenian notion of ‘coming community’ falls under a Deweyan understanding of society and democracy, which, in Deweyan thought, always exist in suspension and connectedness. Given such premises, the idea of education that emerges from Deweyan thought is that of a leap. The question regarding what education is and entails is left radically open by Dewey, for education belongs to the not-yet. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe history of psychology, like other human science subjects, should attend to the meaning of words understood as relationships of reference and value within discourse. It should seek to identify and defend a history centered on representations of knowledge. The history of the word “inhibition” in nineteenth-century Europe illustrates the potential of such an approach. This word was significant in mediating between physiological and psychological knowledge and between technical and everyday understanding. Further, this word indicated the presence of a (...) common discourse structuring ways of thought about order, whether in technology, moral activity, or experimental psycho-physiology. Writing history as the history of discourse suggests several difficulties; these are considered briefly. Nevertheless attention to language and meaning makes it possible to integrate the history of psychology with intellectual history and thereby to broaden its potential audience. (shrink)

The Epiphenomenal Mind is both a deflationary attack on the powers of the human mind and a defence of human subjectivity. It is deflationary because in the thesis I argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenal consequence of events in the brain. It is a defence of human subjectivity because I argue that the mind is sui generis real, irreducible, and largely an endogenous product (i.e. not dependent on society or its resources). Part I is devoted to arguing that the conscious (...) mind is epiphenomenal. Arguing from, the irreducibility of mental states, the causal closure of the physical domain, and the principle of causal explanatory exclusion, I seek to demonstrate that all theories of mental causation necessarily violate one or more of these premises. Contemporary approaches to mental causation come under two broad categories, those that argue that mental events are supervenient on physical events (such as Davidson, Kim and Horgan) and those (like Haskar) who argue that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. Supervenience based theories, I argue, end up reducing mental states in their search for a theory of mental causation and emergence based theories end up violating the principle of the causal closure of the physical. In part II, I explore some of the consequences of epiphenomenalism for social theory. This exploration comes in the context of a defence of human subjectivity against (i.) those sociological imperialists who view the mind and self as a 'gift of society', and (ii.) social situationalists who have abandoned the concept of action and an interest in 'what's in the head' of the actor, in favour of a concept of social action which views behaviour as action only to the extent that it is socially meaningful. The conclusion is that the social sciences should return to an interpretative style (Weberian) methodology. (shrink)

Sociologists of religion have recently focused on the growth of religious individualism in Western societies. Whether seen as a new religious trend or as a cultural correlate to the general weakening of civic organizations in the contemporary era, it is often presented as the growing tendency in religious life. It is also frequently presented in a positive light. This article explores a different alternative. Based on the work of Herbert Marcuse, it asks whether religious individualism heightens or undercuts the possibility (...) of opposition to the status quo. Marcuse’s underlying argument implies that when religion becomes a lifestyle choice, it becomes just another consumer good—one that encourages a one-dimensional “happy consciousness” that lacks the depth to support true social critique. In this view, religious individualism undercuts human emancipation. (shrink)