Plato, Adorno, and the Dialectic

This essay shows substantial connections between Plato’s dialectical approach in The Republic and Adorno’s 1958 lectures in An Introduction to Dialectics. Although the relationship between Adorno and Aristotle has received some attention, little work has been done either demonstrating or making connections between Plato and Adorno, especially on the topic of the dialectic. This is likely because Adorno himself has little to say about Plato’s dialectic, although he does refer often to Plato’s ideas and forms, and sometimes to his aesthetics. This essay reads against the grain to show how Plato and Adorno conceive of dialectical thinking in strikingly similar ways that run parallel with their discontinuities, and concludes with the suggestion that the figure of chiasmus is well-positioned to push the limits of dialectical thinking.

Reimagining the Oikos

We are currently living through a time in which the line dividing capital and state has dissolved behind repair, where free-market economics and rules of governance have become nothing more than a totality of bio-political control for capitalist and subjective fixes, and, where the distinctions between corporate hegemony, policy making, free-speech and mainstream media have become seemingly non-existent. This text attempts to act as a remedy to this by examining and analyzing some of the key tenets of what must be done in order to create a post-capitalist society, and move towards a reimagined oikos and oikonomia. It focuses largely on the necessity of moving away from subjectivity-centered thought, and towards a new form of materialist universality.

Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014)

The question of the book is how a radical critique of capitalism is possible when critique in the tradition of Kant and Hegel means that the criticized subject itself has to “give” the measure of its critique. The thesis is that, while in Kant this reflexivity is achieved by transcendental subjectivity and reason and in Hegel by self-consciousness, self-relation of the concept and the absolute reason of spirit, in Marx we find a materialist turn. The turn shows that capitalist society became reflexive by a kind of self-measurement, done by the functions of money, on the one hand, and the valorization of labour power and capital, on the other. Money, by its function as the measure of value and the means of its realization and mediation, measures in the commodities the productive relations of their production, thus determining from the past valorization of labour and capital the magnitudes necessary for their further productive valorization — and hence for a productive use of money itself. That is howl, in money’s capital form, the measured magnitudes become reflexive, while money itself becomes in its capitalist self-relation the form to measures the same valorization process which by this form becomes possible in the first place

François Laruelle: Pour une pensée-fiction a Review Essay on François Laruelle’s Tétralogos: Un opéra de philosophies

F. Laruelle soumet à notre attention son Tétralogos, un Opéra de Philosophies. Le but qui est nôtre est de faire justice à l’endroit d’un ouvrage fondamental. L’enjeu est de grande importance, surtout à une époque saturée par les propos historiens—en philosophie précisément. En l’occurrence il importe de s’interroger sur le projet laruellien. L’Essentiel, ici, tient en deux mots. L’invention philosophique est le problème-clef. Telle est la force de cette question, totalement originale. Il est urgent de produire une Fiction, c’est-à-dire un processus qui crée en se créant, ou qui invente en s’inventant. Ce faisant nous reprenons la démarche des grands Romantiques s’exprimant après Kant, en lien avec Kant. Chez ces derniers il faut répéter que le souci d’une esthétique est patent. Et il s’agit de conjoindre alors esthétique et esthésique. Telle est la portée du concept de fiction. Chez F. Laruelle la théorisarion passe par ailleurs, du côté de la connaissance dont on bénéfice ou qu’on ignore. En ce sens et à notre avis, Laruelle échappe au nihilisme passif de nos contemporains. Mais Kant n’est pas adopté tout simplement. Car la fiction, selon F. Laruelle, est positive, et surtout pas fictive. Elle est fictionnante plus que nouménalement ; elle invente dans un réel « écouménal » qui n’est pas ectypal pour autant. Avec Laruelle, nous quittons la psychologie des Facultés, et même celle qui plus tard sera reprise par Modernes et Postmodernes. La fiction, bien entendue, est de ressort créateur. Elle dit inventer du réel et ce dans le réel. Elle est de/dans le réel. Esthésique et esthétique collaborent unement. Et ce encore en brisant la contemporanéité illusoire de la fonction sujet et de la fonction objet. Oui : le fictionnement invente en s’inventant, fait un effect dans l’affect. En termes laruelliens, une Tétralogie, ici très puissante, est un domaine de référence. Par exemple, il convient de dire avec force que la Philosophie non-standard touche à l’immense, alors que la Culture Europe, ou Culture Occident, compose sans broncher ni additivement, ni soustractivement. En résumé, la mesure projective, ou de mensuration, qui est effective, éloigne de l’immensité affective, tandis que la démesure, celle qui mord sur soi, s’effondre dans son soi, mais dans un potentiel non-philosophique, ou en Univers unionnant. Depuis son soi d’Univers, travaille un forcing, comme le conçoivent Cohen et Badiou. Ce dernier modélise scientistement le passage de l’Être à l’Événement. Chez Laruelle, on échappe totalement au scientisme malgré l’avis des tenants idéologisants de notre culture Europe. Nous pensons aux péri-philosophes de l’Institution, en France notamment.

Sciences, Philosophies, and the Question of Borders

This essay contributes in part to the discussion of the concept of the border [frontière] and its relations between philosophies and sciences present within the work Épistémologie des frontières. It suggests that borders function as both a separation and a union between the domains of philosophies and sciences in their multiplicity. Borders are determinant in the times of interdisciplinarity, and such investigations are necessary because the accustomed links between philosophies and sciences can no longer be assumed. This essay proposes some hypotheses concerning methodology and the relation to the real to exercise a modelization as the articulation of multiple points of view. Modelization allows for the invention of democratic pragmatics of philosophy/philosophies towards a global re-evaluation of the relations that disciplines, such as the sciences and ethics, share with philosophy

Through Exchange: Karatani Compared With Marx

The following paper has as its object the political philosophy of K. Karatani, in particular its relationship with the work of Marx. Japanese philosopher, in fact, reinterprets some elements of Marxian theory in the light of Kantian categories, hybridizing the ethical and moral theory of the latter with the critique of the political economy of the former. The result of Karatani's project can be seen, in particular, in two works. With the first, Transcritique, Karatani moves into the realm of philosophy to construct a method that holds the two theoretical poles together. The concept of 'Transcritique', in fact, represents the junction between Kantian and Marxian insights. With the second work, 'The Structure of World History', the Japanese philosopher shifts the analytical focus from ethics to economics, proposing a different interpretation of capitalism and its historical cycles. The shift of the observation of the capitalist system from the sphere of production to that of exchange represents the analytical novelty. Carrying through to the end the methodology developed in the previous work, Karatani traces back to exchange all the productive, institutional and political dynamics produced over time. Cycles of accumulation thus become cycles of exchange. The author, in fact, determines a correspondence between the specific modes of exchange and the consequent political structures, highlighting the centrality that money occupies, both in the theoretical elaboration and in political reality. The prevailing mode of production, based on the exchange of commodities, relies on the absolute mobility of money and on the strength of the state political institution, which acts as a hinge between the global dimension of exchanges and the territorial need for the appropriation of surplus-value. Karatani's critique is embodied in a political proposal, articulated through two key figures: community and cosmopolitanism. With the first term, the philosopher opposes the materiality of human relationships based on reciprocity to the abstract equivalence of economic relationships. By the second term, he shows the need for an extended political practice in which the pursuit of local freedom goes hand in hand with the realization of global justice. The paper traces these themes both through direct exposure of Karatani's work and by offering critical comparisons with other authors who have addressed similar issues. Finally, the purpose of this paper is to emphasize the originality of the Japanese author's philosophical-historical work, suspended between utopia and pragmatism, also through criticism, in order to highlight its strengths and underline its potential weaknesses.

Ways of Unworlding: Against Aesthetic Inferentialism

I consider and support two claims about aesthetic experience: 1) that it involves encounters with a reality that is not conceptualized via such encounters; 2) that it can generate ruptures in established norms or in the production of shared worlds. This thesis is developed in the teeth of contemporary rationalist inhumanisms that draw on Nelson Goodman’s cognitivist aesthetics and his irrealist account of ‘worldmaking’ to translate the logical insights of inferentialism (or conceptual role semantics) into an aesthetics oriented towards concept-laden practices and their revision through the techniques of experimental art. I employ Derrida’s iterability argument to show that inferentialism presupposes a realist metaphysics that treats repetition and event individuation as independent of constitutive rules, conceptual schemes or ‘world versions’; indicating one way in which aesthetic material remains outside of, even recalcitrant to, the conceptual order. The aesthetic implications of this metaphysics of undecidable events are further explored by considering Jean-Pierre Caron’s recent discussion of Henry Flynt’s idea of ‘constitutive dissociations’ and, finally, the concept as, ambivalently, victim or suicide in the experimental horror of Gary Shipley’s novel Warewolff! and my own Snuff Memories.

Q&A Session Following the Lecture: Marxism without Philosophy and Its Feminist Implications: The Problem of Subjectivity Centered Socialist Projects

Author(s): Katerina Kolozova et al. Title (English): Q&A session following the lecture: Marxism without Philosophy and Its Feminist Implications: The Problem of Subjectivity Centered Socialist Projects Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 48-50 Page Count: 3 Citation (English): Katerina Kolozova et al., “Q&A session following the lecture: Marxism without Philosophy and Its Feminist Implications: The Problem of Subjectivity Centered Socialist Projects,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 48-50. Author Biography Katerina Kolozova, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Dr. Katerina Kolozova is senior researcher and full professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje. At the Institute, she teaches policy studies, political philosophy and gender studies. She is also a professor of philosophy of law at the doctoral school of the University American College, Skopje. At the Faculty of Media and Communication, Belgrade, she teaches contemporary political philosophy. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkley in 2009, under the peer supervision of Prof. Judith Butler. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the New Centre for Research and Practice – Seattle, WA. Kolozova is the first co-director and founder of the Regional Network for Gender and Women’s Studies in Southeast Europe (2004). Her most recent monograph is Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals: A Non-Marxist Critique of Capital, Philosophy and Patriarchy published by Bloomsbury Academic, UK in 2019, whereas Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy, published by Columbia University Press, NY in 2014, remains her most cited book.

Q&A Session Following the Lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies

Author(s): Nina Power et al. Title (English): Q&A session following the lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 36-39 Page Count: 4 Citation (English): Nina Power et al., “Q&A session following the lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 36-39. Author Biography Nina Power, Independent Researcher Nina Power is a philosopher and writer, and the author of many articles on politics, feminism and culture. She is the author of One-Dimensional Woman (2009) and the forthcoming What Do Men Want? (2021). She is currently teaching at Mary Ward and has previously taught at the University of Roehampton and many other institutions.