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

Suddhabrata Deb Roy - India Comes Onboard: 'Cockroaches and the Global Gen Z Revolts pt. II

Part II of our coverage of India's 'Cockroach' protests.

Dictatorial regimes globally have attempted to crush the Gen Z revolts by a combination of paternalistic care, mansplaining, and abject force everything that satisfies the superego of the establishment. The diversity of measures used by governments to address the Gen Z revolts avoids the institutionalisation of any structural reform in the system. The Modi government  used a similar playbook in their response. An attempt to exhaust the protesters by intentionally distracting them from their cause was the first response, followed by a brutal and inhuman repression exhibited by the police brutalities from the July 20 until July 25. Finally, when those measures failed, the regime made an appeal of affection to emotionally manipulate the protesters. Ironically, one can find equivalences of these strategies scattered among various Gen Z protests globally. The 2025 protests against the Marcos government, accused of being corrupt and authoritarian in the Philippines, largely remained peaceful, with the Marcos government eventually engaging with the protest demands peacefully. In Kenya the first country in Africa to experience Gen Z revolts in June 2024triggered by a Finance Bill that sought to put higher taxes on basic commodities the protesters who demanded the resignation of William Ruto, the Kenyan President, have been repeatedly hounded by the authorities and with many still seeking justice. In Morocco, over 2,000 cases have been filed against young protesters, mostly from the ‘Gen Z 212’-backed mobilisation against the government. In Mozambique, however, Gen Z protests against electoral irregularities and internet blackouts were met with an amnesty deal signed between the protestors and the government, which ended the protests but did not affect the results.

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/india-comes-onboard-cockroaches-and-the-global-gen-z-revolts-pt-ii

How Fredric Jameson became Fredric Jameson

Perry Anderson once wrote that in Fredric Jameson’s account of postmodernism, ‘the vocation of Western Marxism has reached its most complete consummation.’ Praising the ‘spacious rhythms’ of his ‘complex, yet supple syntax’ and ‘sudden bursts of metaphoric intensity’, Anderson also called Jameson a ‘great writer’. As Toril Moi wrote recently in the LRB, he was a great reader, too. Moi, who was recruited by Jameson to Duke University in the mid-1980s and remained his colleague there until his death in 2024, joins Thomas Jones on this episode to look back at Jameson’s earlier work, from Sartre: The Origins of a Style (1961) to The Political Unconscious (1981), and to retrace the intellectual path he took to arrive at that milestone.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/how-fredric-jameson-became-fredric-jameson

Thomas Frank - The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America's Biggest Racket

“Innovation” and “creativity” have been the defining watchwords of American exceptionalism for decades. They’re deployed by business leaders, tech gurus, military strategists, educators, and urban planners to describe our unique standing in the world. While other countries supposedly suffer from regimentation and a fatal lack of imagination, the United States is often portrayed as an unmatched dynamo of new ideas and products. In The Creativity Con, Thomas Frank disabuses us of this notion, offering a provocative account of the way creativity and innovation have been used as a kind of ideological cover for policies that reinforce the class system.

Frank charts the construction of America’s glamorous self-image from Sputnik to Silicon Valley, Apple to Lockheed Martin, Madison Avenue to Main Street, Richard Florida to Donald Trump. He deconstructs the innovation agendas touted by politicians; reads pop psychology; tours SXSW, the mecca of creativity, where musicians mingle with Pentagon officials; and looks in on the cafés, sidewalk murals, and bike lanes that populate the neighborhoods built for the creative class. Along the way, Frank uncovers the insidious effects of centering innovation and creativity in our rhetoric while, in practice, nurturing exactly the opposite. He shows how, in the name of these noble goals, our leaders have reoriented the American economy around white-collar knowledge work, cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulated banks, offshored manufacturing, reoriented cities, and destroyed what is truly creative about this country.

Deeply original, marked by Frank’s signature brilliance and acerbic wit, The Creativity Con is a troubling X-ray of postwar American business and political culture and a crushing indictment of the clichés that have undergirded its many failures.

Кристиан Жамбе (feat. Ги Лардро) о Мишеле Фуко

Теплая ламповая подборка переводов (тексты 1976–2011) по поводу «мысли-Мишеля-Фуко», приуроченная к 100-летию мыслителя: два отрывка, побольше и сильно поменьше, из крупных публикаций Жамбе и Лардро; две заметки из Le Magazine Littéraire о Фуко; интервью, которое у Жамбе взяли на фестивале Книжный пир в Лаграсе в 1997 году; наконец, эссе Жамбе о Фуко и восстании в Иране.

https://syg.ma/@holey-space/kristian-zhambe-feat-gi-lardro-o-mishele-fuko

В. Давыдова-Калашник - Почему тоталитаризм — это не ад

О книге Славоя Жижека «Кто-то сказал „тоталитаризм“?»

Книгу «Кто-то сказал „тоталитаризм“? Пять вмешательств в (зло)употребление понятием» Славой Жижек написал четверть века назад, когда многим казалось, что наступил конец истории, никакой альтернативы либеральной демократии не осталось, а любые попытки критически переосмыслить современный капитализм ведут к тоталитаризму. На русский язык эту книгу перевели только сейчас, но, считает Валерия Давыдова-Калашник, она и сегодня звучит более чем актуально.

https://gorky.media/reviews/pochemu-totalitarizm-eto-ne-ad

Сомнительно канализованные города

Из книги Игоря Орлова «Коммунальная страна: становление советского жилищно-коммунального хозяйства»

Развитие канализационной сети в крупных российских городах и до революции 1917 года шло не очень быстрыми темпами, а революция и Гражданская война и вовсе привели к упадку большого числа городских хозяйств. Молодая советская власть столкнулась с очень сложной задачей — охватить канализацией все 816 городов новой страны. К 1941 году эта задача была выполнена немногим более чем на 10 процентов. Читайте об этом в отрывке из исследования Игоря Орлова «Коммунальная страна: становление советского жилищно-коммунального хозяйства».

https://gorky.media/fragments/somnitelno-kanalizovannye-goroda