CRITICAL THEORY | SOCIAL ANALYSIS | POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
This conversation took place March 16, 2021. Full transcript is provided below. Critical Conversations 8 presents some compelling topics addressed by Jonathan Fardy in his recent text, Althusser and Art (Zer0 Books, 2020). Far from simply being a book about Louis Althusser, the book addresses questions concerning theory in general, and traditional distinctions between theory and praxis. […]
Participants are invited to join us live in the eighth of a monthly series of “Critical Conversations” (Zoom webinars) with eminent scholars from around the globe. If you are interested in joining us, please contact us by email at editor.thenewpolis@gmail.com. If you have not participated in previous seminars, please provide us with a brief sentence or two […]
This essay sprang from an effort to understand one of the more obscure passages in Louis Althusser’s contribution to Reading Capital of 1965. Althusser’s commitment to anti-humanism – inaugurated by Marx according to Althusser – demanded a new concept of theoretical production voided of the humanist concept of the subject (qua consciousness). I argue that this […]
It is easy to debate the usefulness of commenting on the 2019 State of the Union Address. In a media sphere mostly concerned with who said what in a fleeting instance, what is the importance of the decorum and epideictic rhetoric surrounding the occasion of the State of the Union and its “strength”? Donald Trump […]
In this post, I argue that postmodern writer, Raymond Federman’s reluctant commitment to text, his necessity to return to and interrupt narrative and to make text, emphasizing its artificial nature, exhibits a Jewish ethical commitment to resist representation. In doing so, Federman continues longstanding themes in Jewish hermeneutics as well as presenting examples of what […]
This essay is about capitalism. It is not a call for the absolute destruction of it, nor is it a listing and demonstration of its evils and failures. It is a plea for us to heal capitalism rather than abandon it. While rife with opportunities for exploitation and dehumanization, numerous sources reflect a trend of […]
This post is, in a sense, a reply to Derrida’s Post Card. I want to make an attempt at a non-philosophical reply in the sense that François Laruelle has given the term “non-philosophy.” To begin, as many people know, Derrida’s Post Card is one of his most “experimental” texts, especially the Envois section – a selection […]