Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

Claus Offe - Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno in the United States

At a time when so many cracks have emerged within the imagined community of ‘the West', this important new book, by one of the leading social scientists in Europe, examines the intellectual history of comparing Europe and the United States. Claus Offe considers the perspectives adopted by three of Europe’s greatest social scientists – Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno in their comparative writings on Europe.

While traveling, studying and working in the US, all three constantly looked back to their European origins, trying to decipher from their American experience what the future may hold for Europe, be it for better or worse. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat, observed the functioning of American democracy with a mix of admiration, envy and deep concerns about the fate of liberty in the ‘democratic age'. Max Weber, the German sociologist, reported enthusiastically about the youthful energy he found in the United States, which, however, he saw as gradually succumbing to the stifling tendencies of European bureaucratization. Theodor W. Adorno, the critical theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany, observed with a sense of despair the workings of the American ‘culture industry’ which he equated to the totalitarian experience of Europe, only to switch to a much more favorable picture upon his return to Germany.

Europe and the US are conventionally assumed to share the same trajectory and develop according to some common pattern of ‘occidental rationalism', with the observed differences resulting from mere lags and relative advances on one side or the other. In this insightful book, Offe questions the relevance of this paradigm to transatlantic relations today.

Foucault’s Visit to McGill University and his meetings with Quebec separatists

Stuart Elden and Marcelo Hoffman dive into Foucault's 1971 visit to Montreal

Foucault arrived in Montreal only months after the October Crisis of 1970. The crisis was triggered by the separate kidnappings of the British Trade Commissioner James Cross and the Deputy Premier of Québec Pierre Laporte by cells of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) in early October. The FLQ sought to use the kidnappings as leverage to force the federal government to meet various demands, including the release of imprisoned FLQ members. The FLQ cell that had kidnapped Laporte executed him a week after his kidnapping. In response to the kidnappings, the federal government invoked the War Measures Act for the first time in peacetime in Canadian history. The Act prohibited the FLQ, suspended civil liberties, and resulted in hundreds of arrests without charges. In December, the House of Commons overwhelmingly passed an emergency powers measure, the Public Order (Temporary Measures) Act, as a replacement for the War Measures Act. The new act remained in place until the end of April 1971. Foucault’s arrival in Montreal coincided with a time when Canada was still experiencing the effects of emergency powers stemming from the October Crisis. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that he had an interesting political experience in Québec.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/foucault-s-visit-to-mcgill-university-and-his-meetings-with-quebec-separatists

Dictatorships and Democracies in Greece, Spain and Portugal. Transitions and their legacies, fifty years on

Half a century after the fall of the dictatorships in Greece, Portugal, and Spain, the meanings and legacies of Southern Europe’s democratic transitions remain contested.

This volume revisits those transitions not as linear passages from authoritarianism to democratic “normality”, but as uneven and conflictual processes shaped by social mobilisation, institutional continuities, political compromise, and competing memories.

Bringing together scholars working on Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the book examines authoritarian rule, resistance, the politics of transition, the role of the Left, and the longer afterlives of democratisation in labour relations, policing, citizenship, decolonisation, public memory, and political culture.

Линия разлома в кибернетике в 1979 году

Не вошедшая в русское издание глава из «Кибернетики» Раймона Рюйера

«Ад Маргинем» и HylePress выпустили русский перевод «Кибернетики и происхождения информации» (1954) французского философа Раймона Рюйера (1902–1987). Уже после выхода книги из печати выяснилось, что для одного из изданий этого труда, выпущенного в Мексике, автор написал дополнительную главу, которую сегодня публикует «Горький».   

https://gorky.media/fragments/liniya-razloma-v-kibernetike-v-1979-godu

Jon Elster, Claus Offe, Ulrich K. Preuss - Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (1998)

This book examines the problems and issues facing formerly communist states as they seek to develop a new democratic political order and a market economy. Studies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia provide detailed empirical data concerning constitution making, the shaping of democratic institutions, marketization of the economy, and social policy. This new research is then linked to innovative theoretical material to offer a unique assessment of the difficulties of creating a new political order in the region.