Illusion and Non-Identity Thinking in Nietzsche’s Critical Theory

The paper attempts to bring to the fore the radical character of Nietzsche’s critical theory. It argues that behind Nietzsche’s consideration of suffering lies both a critique of one-dimensional mass culture and fetishism, and a theory of alienation that is much closer to Marx’s critique of alienation in capitalism than is usually believed. Uniquely, it will also support the idea that Nietzsche holds a theory of a dialectics between content and form, that is of non-identity thinking, very similar to that of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and will attempt to connect it to an attempt to doubt the core values sustaining capitalism.

Consumer Identity and Loyalty in Electronic Product Offline Brand Operation: The Moderator Effect of Fanship

Continuous enhancements of the intelligence of electronic products can lead to the homogenization of products and innovation of offline experiential marketing modes. The diversified development of brand sales channels is inevitable, to fulfill the diversified shopping demands of consumers. Based on 226 valid questionnaires, this study conducts empirical research with SPSS and AMOS to examine the impact of experience characteristics on consumer brand identity and brand loyalty. Then, the fanship consumer attribute is added to conduct path-moderating analysis. The results illustrated the following: (a) consumers act and relate experiences, which affects brand cognitive identity; thinking, acting, and relating experiences positively affect brands’ emotional identity; (b) cognitive identity and emotional identity can jointly create brand loyalty, and play a partial mediating role between offline experience and brand loyalty. Finally, the higher the fanship, the higher the consumer identity and the higher the brand loyalty. Overall, this study provides a certain basis for decision-making and suggestions for the offline operation of electronic brands.

Troubled Origins: Accounting for Oneself (Derrida with Botho Strauß and Didier Eribon)

Even after the concept of ‘origin’ has been called into question, a troubling wish to speak of origins persists, especially in the narrative act of accounting for one's own origins in confessional discourse. Here, the self encounters the limits of its narratibility, even as it interrogates how, in the Nietzschean sense, it became what it is. This essay explores the question of troubled origins by placing Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is and Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin in syntactical relation with Didier Eribon's Returning to Reims and Botho Strauß's Herkunft ( Origin). The essay meditates on the ways in which a world-oriented longing for identification persists long after the ideas of identity and self-identity have been bid farewell. If there is a kind of survival to be espied in textual acts of confronting one's troubled origins, such survival would have to travel through a language that unfolds on the far side of any conventional identity-thinking. By the same token, this language could never simply resist the conceptual and rhetorical temptation powerfully exerted by the seductive processes of identification. Derrida, Strauß, and Eribon, each in their own idiomatic way, implore us to question just what such textual acts of commemorative survival imply for a thinking to come.

Opportunity and impasse: social change and the limits of international legal strategy

A diverse range of actors, from practitioners and academics to civil society groups and activists, appear to see hope in international law for the advancement of their causes. This paper examines whether this optimism is well-founded. It explores whether international law can serve as an agent of social change, and whether it can accommodate radical changes in social order. It begins by exposing a formalist stance that is immanent to much ‘legal activist’ discourse. It then explores links between this mode of jurisprudential thought and idealist epistemology. Drawing from the philosophy of Theodor Adorno, and in particular his notion of ‘identity-thinking’, it uncovers structural connections between formalism, idealism, law, and economy that call into question international law's socially-transformative potential. The perspective advanced in this paper falls somewhere between the polarities of opportunity and impasse, seeking to acknowledge the importance of legal strategies in safeguarding the disenfranchised, while remaining alive to their potential dangers and limitations.

Book Reviews

Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey, by Salih Can Açıksöz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. 272 pp. 19 illus. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-5203-0530-4. For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, by Ayça Çubukçu. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 240 pp. 7 illus. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-8122-5050-3. Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics, by Ilana Feldman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. 320 pp. 20 illus. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-520-29963-4. Peaceful Selves: Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda, by Laura Eramian. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. 202 pp. 3 illus. Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-78920-493-3. Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right, by Walden Bello. Blackpoint: Fernwood Publishing, 2019. 196 pp. Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-77363-221-6. Critique of Identity Thinking, by Michael Jackson. New York: Berghahn Books., 2019. 207 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-1-78920-282-3.

Struggling beyond the paradigm of Neoliberalism

Whilst the Neoliberal alludes to an array of very real material practices and axioms of contemporary capitalism, the concept of Neoliberalism itself has arguably become moribund. Worse, perhaps it has become an asphyxiating and enervating monolith, a ‘ptolemization’ from which our critical thinking cannot escape. The key strategy of the article is to explore the Neoliberalism concept as a ‘mode of telling’, and how the constitutive moments of that concept have been discursively constructed into a hegemonic discursive formation. Whilst the resultant paradigm of Neoliberalism has ironically been constituted out of the identity-thinking and the synthetic historicizing of its very critics, the article searches for alternative avenues of reconstitutive deconstruction, so as to offer both critical optimism and a more effective means of struggle against the material practices of contemporary capitalism. To this end, I shall indicate how overdetermination in conceptualization provides the opportunity to break down identity-thinking and how articulation can translate the material elements of contemporary capitalism into fresh moments of a counter-hegemonic discourse.

Percepções e experiências do usuário no Parque Municipal de Belo Horizonte: estrutura, uso e manutenção.

CConhecer os valores experiência dos em áreas verdes de lazer urbano implica em uma análise do espaço geográfico onde esta prática se realiza. A observação das práticas urbanas da população se distingue no espaço-tempo (CERTEAU, 1994) no vivido e no percebido: conceitos apresentados por Lefebvre (1991). Com base na relação existente entre espaço-tempo e vivido-percebido, 30 coletas, por meio de observação participante, foram realizadas no Parque Municipal da cidade de Belo Horizonte. De forma exploratória o objetivo deste artigo é conhecer o cotidiano vivido e as experiências dos usuários neste espaço gratuito de lazer que podem ser observadas para o meio de relatos de percepção e da experiência vivenciada pelo visitante de um parque verde urbano. Os resultados confirmam (i) a contemporaneidade do pensamento da identidade no espaço (FOUCAULT, 1977), (ii) confirmam que as práticas espaciais influenciam as representações, (iii) a organização do espaço urbano (BOURDIEU, 1996) e (iv) as práticas urbanas no espaço e no tempo (BACHELARD, 1929). Este estudo contribui para evidenciar as avaliações positivas e ou negativas dos usuários perpassam por três parâmetros: Estrutura, Usos e Manutenção. Perceptions and user experiences in the Municipal Park of Belo Horizonte (MG, Brazil): structure, use and maintenance AABSTRACT In order to knowing the values experienced on green áreas of urban leisure implies to analysis of the geographical-spatial since where this practice takes place. The observation of those population practices, it is distinguished in the space-time (Certeau, 1994); in the lived and the perceived: concepts presented by Lefebvre (1991). Based on the relationship between space-time and lived-perceived, 30 collections, through participant observation, were carried out in the Municipal Park of the city of Belo Horizonte. In an exploratory way, the objective of this article is to know the daily life and the experiences of the users in this free space of leisure. Oserved to the means of reports of perception and the experience lived by the visitor of an urban green park. The results confirm (i) the contemporaneousness of identity thinking in space (Foucault, 1977), (ii) confirm that spatial practices influence representations, (iii) urban space organization (BOURDIEU, 1996) and (iv) urban practices in space and time (BACHELARD, 1929). This study contributions take place on how it can evidence the positive and negative evaluations of users mesured by three parameters: Structure, Uses and Maintenance. KEYWORDS: Public Leisure Space; Perceptions; Experiences; Structure; Use; Maintenance.