#Theory21c (part 2)

It is quite scandalous how much theory-talk still retails metaphors based on 19th century worldviews. As if what we can know about the world had not undergone several revolutions since. Hence if one were to look for a #Theory21c it would have to start with people who at least engage with ...

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Put out the FIRE (in GDP)!

No one can escape discussions about the state of "the economy." They inform political campaigns in the U.S., debt and austerity battles in the Eurozone, and development efforts in the poorest countries in the world. Our ideas about "the economy" -- how it works, what it involves, and how it ...

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Hope and its Discontents in Greece

The impressive victory of Syriza in the January 25th Greek elections was the direct result of increasing popular discontent with the Greek political elites and years of self-defeating austerity. The party, which symbolized a break with the past, ran on a platform based on hope, in contrast to ...

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Arendt, Eichmann, and Thoughtlessness

According to Arendt’s emphatic and paradoxical thesis, [Eichmann] was an enemy of humanity from “thoughtlessness.” “It was a sheer thoughtlessness -- something by no means identical with stupidity -- that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period” (285; G: 57).* This (and only this) is ...

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Arendt, Eichmann, and Thoughtlessness

Virno and History

He could have been talking about something that goes by many names in Paolo Virno’s Déjà Vu and the End of History, (Verso Futures, 2015). Sometimes Virno calls it potential, or the virtual, or memory, or faculty, or disposition, or even labor-power. This unquenchable fire is for Virno the source ...
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Rethinking Capitalism: Class 4

I think what Moishe Postone gave us Wednesday was a rather dazzling reading of Volume 1 of Capital, which can be best approached by contrasting it to other readings. Postone rejects the idea that in Capital Marx saw himself as unveiling the “real” secret of capitalism in the hidden abode ...
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