Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capita... more Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Yet the nature of its relevance and some of its key tenets remain poorly understood. This bold intervention brings together the work of leading Marx scholars Slavoj Žižek, Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda, to offer a fresh, radical reinterpretation of Marxism that explains the failures of neoliberalism and lays the foundations for a new emancipatory politics. Avoiding trite comparisons between Marx's world view and our current political scene, the authors show that the current relevance and value of Marx's thought can better be explained by placing his key ideas in dialogue with those that have attempted to replace them. Reading Marx through Hegel and Lacan, particle physics and modern political trends, the authors provide new ways to explain the crisis in contemporary capitalism and resist fundamentalism in all its forms. This book will find a wide audience amongst activists and scholars.
Ky libër është kompozuar nga shtatë ese të shkurtëra. Secila ese tenton që në mënyrë të thjeshtë ... more Ky libër është kompozuar nga shtatë ese të shkurtëra. Secila ese tenton që në mënyrë të thjeshtë (dhe relativisht skematike) të prezentojë disa nga tezat më të rëndësishme të filozofisë së Althusserit. Libri nuk përmbanë ndonjë tezë jashtëzakonisht origjinale në raport me filozofinë e tij. Qëllimi i këtij libri është prezentimi i Althusserit në Kosovë e Shqipëri, dhe posaqërisht për lexuesit e filozofisë dhe filozofët. Këta janë adresa primare dhe më e rëndësishme e këtij libri.
This paper addresses some of the philosophical and political challenges we face following two imp... more This paper addresses some of the philosophical and political challenges we face following two important events: 150 years after the publication of Das Kapital and 100 years after the Great Bolshevik Revolution. It begins with discussing these great events of the previous century to the insufficiency of socialism through an elaboration on the ways one can read Marx's critique of political economy as the most correct theoretical basis. It is at this conjuncture that we can outline a possible form which can succeed in breaking up the political and ideological deadlocks of contemporary capitalism.
Brief introduction to the interview We want to give the readers of the following pages a few poin... more Brief introduction to the interview We want to give the readers of the following pages a few points of in-advance orientation. As for the last issues of " Crisis and Critique " , we sought to include an interview into the issue on Hegel, an interview with someone whom we (obviously) consider to be pertinent to our topic. So, we tried to entice Fredric Jameson into doing this with us. Not only because he more or less recently published a short book on Hegel (more specifically on his Phenomenology of Spirit), and not only because he has been one of the most vivid and eloquent contemporary defenders of a (reworked and historicized form of) dialectics, but also because to us, his own project overall appears to be in very close proximity to certain aspects and maybe even to the overall thrust of Hegel's thinking. Fredric Jameson agreed and kindly replied – in the form of " free association " , as he himself charmingly puts it – to some of our questions. These were structured into four larger fields: we raised questions concerning the status of Hegel's thought today in general, in relation to politics, to art. Finally, we tried to decipher where precisely and of what kind there is a Hegelian substratum or surface appearance in Jameson's thought. You will find Jameson's freely associating and thus somewhat generic answer below. We do not wish to reproduce the questions here, as Jameson's answers stand on their own and because we hope that (comparable to philosophical jeopardy) that his answers will allow you to imagine questions that are much more brilliant than the ones we actually raised. We agreed with Jameson to continue this form of conversations in the coming months and make the outcome of them accessible in the form of a collective book.
In this paper, I will explore the consequences of rethinking the alliance and relation between Ma... more In this paper, I will explore the consequences of rethinking the alliance and relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis, and more concretely between Althusser and Lacan. It is part of an ongoing investigation and study on the contemporary relevance of Louis Althusser's project. This study is driven by the following question: is Althusser's work at all repeatable (in the Žižekian understanding of the term)? And if the answer is yes, then what is it in his project that remains thinkable in our conjuncture?
Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capita... more Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Yet the nature of its relevance and some of its key tenets remain poorly understood. This bold intervention brings together the work of leading Marx scholars Slavoj Žižek, Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda, to offer a fresh, radical reinterpretation of Marxism that explains the failures of neoliberalism and lays the foundations for a new emancipatory politics. Avoiding trite comparisons between Marx's world view and our current political scene, the authors show that the current relevance and value of Marx's thought can better be explained by placing his key ideas in dialogue with those that have attempted to replace them. Reading Marx through Hegel and Lacan, particle physics and modern political trends, the authors provide new ways to explain the crisis in contemporary capitalism and resist fundamentalism in all its forms. This book will find a wide audience amongst activists and scholars.
Ky libër është kompozuar nga shtatë ese të shkurtëra. Secila ese tenton që në mënyrë të thjeshtë ... more Ky libër është kompozuar nga shtatë ese të shkurtëra. Secila ese tenton që në mënyrë të thjeshtë (dhe relativisht skematike) të prezentojë disa nga tezat më të rëndësishme të filozofisë së Althusserit. Libri nuk përmbanë ndonjë tezë jashtëzakonisht origjinale në raport me filozofinë e tij. Qëllimi i këtij libri është prezentimi i Althusserit në Kosovë e Shqipëri, dhe posaqërisht për lexuesit e filozofisë dhe filozofët. Këta janë adresa primare dhe më e rëndësishme e këtij libri.
This paper addresses some of the philosophical and political challenges we face following two imp... more This paper addresses some of the philosophical and political challenges we face following two important events: 150 years after the publication of Das Kapital and 100 years after the Great Bolshevik Revolution. It begins with discussing these great events of the previous century to the insufficiency of socialism through an elaboration on the ways one can read Marx's critique of political economy as the most correct theoretical basis. It is at this conjuncture that we can outline a possible form which can succeed in breaking up the political and ideological deadlocks of contemporary capitalism.
Brief introduction to the interview We want to give the readers of the following pages a few poin... more Brief introduction to the interview We want to give the readers of the following pages a few points of in-advance orientation. As for the last issues of " Crisis and Critique " , we sought to include an interview into the issue on Hegel, an interview with someone whom we (obviously) consider to be pertinent to our topic. So, we tried to entice Fredric Jameson into doing this with us. Not only because he more or less recently published a short book on Hegel (more specifically on his Phenomenology of Spirit), and not only because he has been one of the most vivid and eloquent contemporary defenders of a (reworked and historicized form of) dialectics, but also because to us, his own project overall appears to be in very close proximity to certain aspects and maybe even to the overall thrust of Hegel's thinking. Fredric Jameson agreed and kindly replied – in the form of " free association " , as he himself charmingly puts it – to some of our questions. These were structured into four larger fields: we raised questions concerning the status of Hegel's thought today in general, in relation to politics, to art. Finally, we tried to decipher where precisely and of what kind there is a Hegelian substratum or surface appearance in Jameson's thought. You will find Jameson's freely associating and thus somewhat generic answer below. We do not wish to reproduce the questions here, as Jameson's answers stand on their own and because we hope that (comparable to philosophical jeopardy) that his answers will allow you to imagine questions that are much more brilliant than the ones we actually raised. We agreed with Jameson to continue this form of conversations in the coming months and make the outcome of them accessible in the form of a collective book.
In this paper, I will explore the consequences of rethinking the alliance and relation between Ma... more In this paper, I will explore the consequences of rethinking the alliance and relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis, and more concretely between Althusser and Lacan. It is part of an ongoing investigation and study on the contemporary relevance of Louis Althusser's project. This study is driven by the following question: is Althusser's work at all repeatable (in the Žižekian understanding of the term)? And if the answer is yes, then what is it in his project that remains thinkable in our conjuncture?
The present contribution seeks to provide an Althusserian analysis of the most common narrative c... more The present contribution seeks to provide an Althusserian analysis of the most common narrative concerning Stalinism, the one proposed by Trotsky. A Marxist investigation of this narrative must, on the one hand, allow us to reconstruct the soviet disaster from a historical and conceptual standpoint and, on the other, clarify the political and ideological usefulness of the narrative that has otherwise established itself in place of a real analysis.
An invariance which binds together most theories of ideology is the assumption that ideology func... more An invariance which binds together most theories of ideology is the assumption that ideology functions in such a way as to prevent us from thinking and experiencing what a real community would actually be. As an operator of distortion, mystification, occultation or neutralization, ideology is always conceived as that which stands in the way of actual democracy acceding to its notion. In sum, ideology is that which objects to the Idea - and in the current political horizon, it is what objects to the Idea of a truly democratic community.
This well-established assumption is certainly an important and guiding aspect of any conception of ideology critique. However, this should not prevent us from also tackling the obverse question: what is the role of true collective organization - understood here as a social link bound together by something other than identification - in the critique of ideological formations? That is, how does the practical and conceptual work involved in bringing about new collective forms intervene in the ideological situation these forms inscribe themselves? Our wager is that this second step supplements the first “invariance” with an inverse vector - moving from the Idea to ideology, from what does not exist to the world as it is - which allows us to distinguish the Idea of Communism from the Idea of Democracy. We could perhaps venture the formulation that democracy is what comes after ideology critique, while communism is what is presupposed by it: democracy is always to come, while communism is always already here.
In order to investigate some of the basic tenets of this wager, the contributions gathered in this panel take as their departing point one specific text by Jacques Lacan, the Proposition of 9th of October of 1967, one of the clearest and most profound attempts to develop a collective and institutional logic that would be capable of subsisting beyond identity and predication in the contemporary world. The three texts brought together in this panel seek to render legible some of the consequences which can be derived from Lacan’s institutional inventions for the critique of ideology. The first text will focus on the political implications of this collective project, through an analysis of the institutional logic proposed by Lacan in a comparison with the Kantian concepts of moral law and the public use of Reason. The following text will concentrate on the place of the Proposition within the psychoanalytic procedure itself, in an attempt to discern a problematic guideline which runs through Lacan’s different attempts to bind the clinic to the institution and to its conceptual framework. Finally, the third contribution will provide us with the first elements for a formalization of the logic of the analytic School and the passe using Badiou’s philosophical theory of the subject and of subjective incorporation.
Ultimately, each text should serve both as an examination of Lacan’s collective logic and as a preliminary proof of the role played by collective organization in the critique of ideological formations.
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This well-established assumption is certainly an important and guiding aspect of any conception of ideology critique. However, this should not prevent us from also tackling the obverse question: what is the role of true collective organization - understood here as a social link bound together by something other than identification - in the critique of ideological formations? That is, how does the practical and conceptual work involved in bringing about new collective forms intervene in the ideological situation these forms inscribe themselves? Our wager is that this second step supplements the first “invariance” with an inverse vector - moving from the Idea to ideology, from what does not exist to the world as it is - which allows us to distinguish the Idea of Communism from the Idea of Democracy. We could perhaps venture the formulation that democracy is what comes after ideology critique, while communism is what is presupposed by it: democracy is always to come, while communism is always already here.
In order to investigate some of the basic tenets of this wager, the contributions gathered in this panel take as their departing point one specific text by Jacques Lacan, the Proposition of 9th of October of 1967, one of the clearest and most profound attempts to develop a collective and institutional logic that would be capable of subsisting beyond identity and predication in the contemporary world. The three texts brought together in this panel seek to render legible some of the consequences which can be derived from Lacan’s institutional inventions for the critique of ideology. The first text will focus on the political implications of this collective project, through an analysis of the institutional logic proposed by Lacan in a comparison with the Kantian concepts of moral law and the public use of Reason. The following text will concentrate on the place of the Proposition within the psychoanalytic procedure itself, in an attempt to discern a problematic guideline which runs through Lacan’s different attempts to bind the clinic to the institution and to its conceptual framework. Finally, the third contribution will provide us with the first elements for a formalization of the logic of the analytic School and the passe using Badiou’s philosophical theory of the subject and of subjective incorporation.
Ultimately, each text should serve both as an examination of Lacan’s collective logic and as a preliminary proof of the role played by collective organization in the critique of ideological formations.