Nihilists with Good Imaginations

In what may be her most ambitious piece yet, Chiara Bottici recently published a call for a continuation of debates around intersectional oppression along the lines traced out by anarchist thought. Somewhat surprisingly, though, Bottici avoided making explicit reference to some of her previous work, which, though it may be ...

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Nihilists with Good Imaginations

Creating Compliant Subjects

What is permitted by whom?

This post is in relation to the Gender and Domination course in OOPS. Reading excerpts from Spinzoa’s Theological-Political Treatise, I am reminded of one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fundamental anxieties in The Brothers Karamazov, namely, that without the presence of God “everything is permitted.” Perhaps an even more apt quotation would be Dmitri Karamazov’s ...
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Creating Compliant Subjects

Althusserians Anonymous (the relapse)

1. Old versus Young Marx I am a recovering Althusserian. For decades now I have been Althusser-free, for the most part, but we all have our lapses. The first step to becoming a recovering Althusserian is to recognize that you have no control and are unconsciously always a little bit Althusserian ...
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Althusserians Anonymous (the relapse)

Claims to Populism, Danger to Democracy?

No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many invocations of “populism” as this one. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are labelled as “populists;” the term is regularly used as a synonym for “anti-establishment,” irrespective of any particular political ideas; it is also associated with particular moods ...

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Claims to Populism, Danger to Democracy?

Spinoza in Love

In Part III of the Ethics, Spinoza begins to diagnose more deeply what it means to be a finite mode (e.g., a human being). In his attempt to address “men’s way of living” and contravene the erroneous conception of “man in Nature as a dominion within a dominion” (III Preface), ...

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Spinoza in Love

Refugee Resettlement Is a Church-State Enterprise

If Rand Paul supports church efforts to aid refugees, then he should support government efforts, too.

During the last Republican debate, Senator Rand Paul expressed opposition to resettling Syrian refugees because of his concern about government spending. “Charity is about giving your own money,” Paul declared. “Charity isn't giving someone else's money.” Paul lavished praise on private efforts to aid refugees, ...

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Barbarism or Barbarism?

Timothy Morton proposes an ecology without nature. In Molecular Red I thought it made more sense to think a nature without ecology, as nature is the more capacious and historically variable term, whereas a logos of the oikos – ecology – is precisely what can no longer be said to ...
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The Paris Climate Deal: Just Words?

Or just enough to move the earth?

As the world leaders read through endless scripted statements about making history and saving the planet for our children, environmental critics were already denouncing the Paris climate deal as a fraud. It is not difficult to see why. First, the deal contains no legal obligations for countries to cut ...

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Against “Charm”

The Uses of Autobiography for Philosophy

Moreover, how other philosophers lived and died is not the most important thing about them either: while life and work are inseparable, the latter takes pride of place. Heidegger went too far in saying that all one needs to know about Aristotle, for philosophical purposes, was that he lived, then ...
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