philopapers

Abdelkader Aoudjit thinks about postmodern political thinking. Enlightenment thinkers were optimistic. They thought that the application of the scientific method to all aspects of life would not only liberate humanity from bondage to nature, but also inaugurate a new era of happiness, justice and emancipation. Jean Antoine de Condorcet declared, “one day, the sun will …

Political Philosophy After Metaphysics: Habermas & Lyotard Read More »

Christophe Bruchansky asks if we’re living in a global themepark. Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971. It was the second theme park built by Disney, the first being Disneyland in California in 1955. Disney World is not one theme park, but a group of four theme parks, two water parks, and many hotels, …

The Heterotopia of Disney World Read More »

Review of Martin Jay, Genesis and ValidityMimi Howard Can ideas transcend the context of their appearance? Can concepts depose the particularity of their origin to achieve validity? In the opening pages to a new collection of essays on the theory and practice of intellectual history, Martin Jay argues that such questions have been around ‘at …

Between context and transcendence Read More »

Review of Sebastian Truskolaski, Adorno and the Ban on Images Hedy Cohen These notes are from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor, written between 1804 and 1808. Even listeners who do not read music can easily recognise the melody. It is so easy to understand and memorable, that, as a joke, in a season 16 episode …

Cracks and crevices Read More »

Review of Jack Z. Bratich, On Microfascism: Gender, War, and DeathTakin Raisifard Unacquainted readers may think that ‘microfascism’ is perhaps analogous to contemporary terms such as ‘microaggression’: the prefix ‘micro’ implying a simple reduction in scale and scope for actions representing larger systems. But microfascism is not just small fascism. If fascism is a certain arrangement …

Witchcraft as praxis Read More »

Review of Thomas Lemke, The Government of Things: Foucault and the New Materialisms Deren Ertas Cars that measure and signal fuel efficiency, expanding markets for weather derivatives, and ‘vital systems security’ infrastructures, among other similar developments, indicate significant transformations in contemporary governmentality at varying scales. New materialist strands of thought have been developing novel understandings of …

Governing the non-human Read More »

The experience of the Popular Unity government in Chile During the twentieth century, the concept of development galvanised a wide variety of popular struggles for democratisation, agrarian reform, socialism, and economic sovereignty across the global South. In social theory, the question of development also sparked major intellectual debates that shed new light on the nature …

Development as national liberation Read More »

What makes a good parent? Most would say a good parent loves and nurtures their child with the ultimate aim of helping them flourish – now and into the future. A good parent will feed their child, give them space to play and time to use their imagination, make sure they get an education and …

What makes a good parent? Is acting on climate change as important as love and bedtime stories? Read More »

Slavoj Žižek on Wittgenstein and Cancel Culture. “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.”(‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’)Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921 In this final proposition of his Tractatus, Ludwig Wittgenstein prohibits the impossible. But why should one prohibit something that is already in itself impossible? The answer is relatively easy: if …

Saying, Keeping Silent & Showing Read More »

Anarchism has long been ignored or misunderstood. Academics routinely make factual errors about anarchism, like claiming that all anarchists reject organisation, that anarchists care only about state oppression, or that anarchists have never organised any major social movements. More than a few throw out all pretensions of charity, or even commitment to doing the reading, …

Zoe Baker Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States Read More »