Dialectical Thought

Vygotsky’s project needs to be grasped as a yet unnamed type of an approach which, in continuing the revolutionary spirit of Marxism, moved beyond the old divide between theory and practice and instead, embodied their unity in a peculiar blend with distinct philosophical, theoretical and ethical/ideological underpinnings. The goal of creating
new psychology for a society that itself needed to be created on principles of social justice and equality guided this approach and turned it into a critical-practical project of social transformation and change. The main argument advanced in this paper is that at the core of Vygotsky’s method is the novel transformative onto-epistemology, coupled with the socio-political ethos of equality and justice, which challenge ideology of adaptation and control. I discuss this set of issues in light of a transformative activist stance that puts premium on researchers’ commitments and value orientations.

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943

Abstract
The main construens inheritance of One-Dimensional Man is to leave open the chance for a radical change in the possible continuation of our civilization towards a two-dimensional society, and this may be possible thanks to the level of development reached by current technology. Indeed, there is already a two-dimensional society in our past that Marcuse defines as led by pre-technological culture. This seems to be a paradox and a contradiction: how to realize a two-dimensional society through and thanks to advanced technology, if the only example we have of such two-dimensionality is given by the pre-technological culture?

Keywords: Marcuse, Technology, Society, Culture.

Resumen: Este artículo expone la posición frente al concepto de utopía adoptada por una serie de pensadores de la tradición dialéctica, de Hegel a Bloch y Ellacuría. Persigue poner de manifiesto y reivindicar el modo característico en que dicha tradición afronta la cuestión de la utopía. un lugar especial en nuestra exposición lo ocupa el pensamiento de Ellacuría, pues en él resulta significativo que lleva a cabo toda una reivindicación de la utopía entendida como ideal en el marco de una filosofía muy próxima al marxismo hegeliano. Ello nos permitirá poner de manifiesto la especificidad del planteamiento de Ellacuría y, al mismo tiempo, la pluralidad de posiciones respecto a esta problemática existentes dentro de la tradición de pensamiento hegeliano-marxista.

The complete Lightning Storm Mind: Pre-Ancientist Meditations, extensively illustrated with images by Michel Varisco, is forthcoming from Autonomedia.  The few excerpts included here were published in Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, Vol 6, No 1 & 2 (2016): 55-56 in an issue on "The Mediterranean Imaginary."

Los seres humanos en cuanto sujetos participantes de la dinámica de las interrelaciones entre humanos y con el entorno ambiental, constituimos grupos identitarios desde las particularidades que nos caracterizan.
En esta dialéctica relacional y posicional, ha sido conceptualizado lo cultural como el ámbito que configura el sentido de la existencia del sujeto colectivo. Así, lo cultural queda atrapado por las propias condiciones que lo hacen visible, dificultando el proceso de construcción de conocimiento.
Criticamos la asociación vinculante que se hace entre la cultura de un grupo específico con los rasgos de permanencia, estableciéndose como condición ontológica y legitimación política la pertenencia a un espacio territorial determinado, acuñándose nociones como raíces culturales o etnogénesis.
Enfrentado al desafío de proponer una ampliación de la categoría de cultura, postulamos que lo cultural se configura principalmente en situaciones contextuales definidas desde el movimiento relacional, evidenciado en grupos que viven en el desplazamiento por entornos espaciales diversos y que establecen interacciones con grupos distintos, como los pueblos transhumantes y los migrantes.
En síntesis, desde la teoría de la dialéctica de la praxis, interpretamos la construcción identitaria desde el conocimiento de pueblos originarios como los Mapuche actuales y desde la herencia de los Chono y Kaweskhar (alacaluf), como del pueblo Rom y desde los grupos de clase trabajadora como los campesinos de Chiloé, comunidades costeras australes, pastores cordilleranos y desde la condición de exiliados, para afirmar que su praxis cultural y socioambiental la viven y la explican dialécticamente.

A critique of "The Politics of Cosmology," a thousand-page manuscript by social ecologist and political theorist Murray Bookchin, based on his study of the history of philosophy and his lectures on that topic. It appears on my PM Press blog and my "It Is What It Isn't" blog from Changing Suns Press.

In Enjoy your Symptom (2007), Slavoj Žižek's notion of "trauma" is critical to understanding the scope and meaning of the "symptom." This "symptom," conceptually, is construed through the manner in which identity, authority, and phallophany come to bear psychologically on the meaning of being. Because of this, the definition of "symptom," when viewed in a Heideggerian way, becomes an ontical representation of that which is oriented primordially. The symptom, as we experience it, is more than just at the level of its ontics, but, instead, has a primordially to it, which is only revealed (or unconcealed, as Heidegger would argue) through the presence of trauma.

Sustainability is a property of the complex system of which our species is only a part. We have come to know a great deal about that system, but still understand little about it. All of these ranking systems come from our knowledge, but fail to represent the kind of understanding critical to guiding our actions in such a way as not to undermine the security and coherence of the system. The more we try to expand and rely on our knowledge, the farther from understanding we tend to go. Such is the fundamental context of our modern age where science rules the roost. John Ehrenfeld (2009)

After having returned from exile in April 1917, Lenin used the notion of “dual power” (двоевластие) to characterize the phenomenon of political polarization stemming from the February Revolution
“The main feature of our revolution, a feature that most imperatively demands thoughtful consideration, is the dual power  which arose in the very first days after the triumph of the revolution. ”
While it is an original concept, in that it does not appear in any of Marx’s historical texts (even those related to the Paris Commune), “dual power” is nevertheless a dialectical concept, which not only expresses the antithetical opposition between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet (that is to say, for Lenin, between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat and the peasantry), but the unity of their opposition. Indeed, “dual power” embodies the fundamental contradictions of the Russian Revolution: a bourgeois revolution which, lacking a revolutionary bourgeoisie, was accomplished without the bourgeois liberals, and even in spite of them; but where, at the same time, the workers’ leadership, caught short and overwhelmed by the spontaneity of their own base, voluntarily yielded power to the parties of the bourgeoisie. Hence the dialectical relationship between Provisional Government and Soviet (at once antagonistic and complemen-tary) that conceptualizes the notion of “dual power”. This real contradiction, which paralyzed the regime of February, was at the same time the driving principle of the dynamic that would lead seven months later to the October Revolution.
Although Lenin seems to have restricted his notion of “dual power” to the Russian Revolution, it raises the question of whether the scope of the concept could not be adequately extended to other revolutions in history, even – as Trotsky suggests  – to any revolutionary situation: “(...) this dual power is a distinct condition of social crisis, by no means peculiar to the Russian Revolution of 1917, although there most clearly marked out.”  Thus, concerning the insurrection of August 10th 1792, which overthrew the French monarchy in spite of the Legislative Assembly, historian Albert Mathiez rightly observes the “new situation” which had been created: “A revolutionary power arose in the face of the legal power.”  And it could be argued that, to a certain extent, the actors of the French Revolution were aware of this “dual power”, as evidenced by a decree of the Insurrectional Commune, drafted by Robespierre, which accuses the Assembly of trying to form “an authority rivaling that of the people itself”.

RESUMEN El panlogismo abelardiano filosóficamente considerado coadyuvó de un modo positivo al campo dialéctico, aunque metodológicamente desbocaría su elemento formal, con patentes consecuencias éticas y teológicas, por ser los campos en los que lo aplicó. La exploración de Abelardo y sus incursiones intelectuales, le posicionan como uno de los más grandes dialécticos de todos los tiempos, y una de las más grandes luminarias de la filosofía medieval. Problematizar el talante de su investigación, lleva a un franco balance tanto de lo infortunado que sus conclusiones en materias aplicadas pudieran tener, como de la pericia innegable de su polémica intelectual, de claros frutos en el campo lógico. Se exploran evaluativamente los alcances de este tipo de filosofía, y se destaca su propia índole que, pese a la caída existencial de su persona dado el contexto en el que se enmarcaba, y pese a su espíritu contestatario y rebelde, su pujanza filosofante nos lleva a considerar y a situar en un sutil encuadre, tanto las fortalezas como las limitantes de su pensamiento. Palabras clave: Dialéctica, Dialecticismo, Razón, Método. ABSTRACT Abelardian panlogism, considered philosophically, contributed positively to the dialectical field, although methodologically its formal elements would get out of control, with patent ethical and theological consequences, due to its fields of application. Abelard's

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo presentar la complejidad de la noción orteguiana de creencia desde algunos pares conceptuales, en principio contrapuestos, como son lo social y lo individual, lo real y lo ficcional o lo racional y lo irracional.

Se presenta un texto que describe una breve
historia de la dialéctica, así como una justificación de su
sentido y pertinencia para nuestro contexto contemporáneo.
Además, puede utilizarse como una introducción al significado
de la dialéctica filosófica, pues su contenido versa principalmente
sobre el desarrollo de esta disciplina argumentativa.
Finalmente, se argumenta porque es necesaria una dialéctica
para la función docente, pues es el método argumentativo que
más se acerca a una interacción y retroalimentación entre
dos o más personas.

This presentation will focus on highlighting the outcomes of a high school music classroom during an academic year, and reference research outcomes that result from a year long study of hip-hop (music, culture and pedagogies) impact and uses in the domain of the school , within a small group (community of practice) populated by musicking educators using hip-hop as a lens, practice or a way of knowing. Participants will walk away with activities that teachers can use with students, information (websites) handouts and discourse to bring back to individual educational spaces.

Paper presented at 'Practicing Theory - ASCA International Workshop and Conference 2011', Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 2nd-4th March 2011 https://asca.uva.nl/programme/archive-conferences/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory.html?1583659550967

El presente articulo tiene como objetivo presentar la complejidad de la nocion orteguiana de creencia desde algunos pares conceptuales, en principio contrapuestos, como son lo social y lo individual, lo real y lo ficcional o lo racional y lo irracional.

The purpose of this paper is to present the complexity of the Orteguian notion of belief, based on some conceptual pairs that are in principle opposed, such as the sociality or individuality, the reality or ficcionality, and the rationality and the irrationality.

[In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore helps to resuscitate the barely-breathing body of the dialectic in the so-called Anthropocene. Now four years after its release, this book continues to be relevant and spark extensive debates. As a World-Ecology method book and environmental history of the system of capitalism, it has been maligned by some and heralded by others. In this essay, I attempt to give not just my view of it, but also an overview of some of the major debates that have arisen since its publishing.]