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

Thomas Meaney - Normcore

It is sometimes forgotten that Habermas was at the start considerably to the left of his elder colleagues Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He was a student of Wolfgang Abendroth, one of the few other operating Marxists at a German university in the 1950s. His closest kinship philosophically with anyone associated with the Frankfurt School was Herbert Marcuse. Stefan Müller-Doohm, in his biography, quotes an amusing letter from New York in which Habermas jokes with a friend that he’s just met the ‘terrible reactionary’ Hannah Arendt. Indeed, until he broke with the student movement in June 1967, Habermas was much more vociferous than his elders in his opposition to both the Vietnam War and the direction of West German society. Horkheimer found Habermas’s constant crying of fascism overblown, and worried he had an irresponsible radical on his hands, whose idea of ‘revolution’ called for social democracy with the full participation of all German citizens (better not try that again!). They eventually reconciled, but Habermas was always closer with Adorno even though it was Adorno’s thought which came in for a more complete revision in the Habermas programme. In his mature writings, preserving the ‘lifeworld’ meant improving the conditions for democratization and communicative rationality, which he privileged over Adorno’s striving for non-capitalist consciousness.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/normcore

Stuart Elden - Foucault at Buffalo in 1970 and 1972: The Desire for Knowledge, The Criminal in Literature, and The History of Truth

This article provides a survey of the material in the University at Buffalo archives concerning Foucault's two visits in 1970 and 1972. The 1970 visit was Foucault's first trip to the United States, and he gave a course advertised as "The desire for knowledge or the phantasms of knowledge in French literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." On his return in 1972 as the Melodia E. Jones Chair he gave two courses: a seminar on "The Criminal in the Literature of the 18thand 19th Centuries" and a lecture series on "The Origins of Culture," renamed as "History of Truth." Using the personnel files and correspondence with his host John K. Simon, as well as the audio recordings of the 1972 lectures and parts of the 1970 course, this article reports on what we know of his teaching and its role in his initial reception in the United States. Particular attention is given to how much of the 1970 course has been published in different places, without its overall organization and linking theme being previously recognized.

How 21st Century Politics Got So Weird

In the last decade and a half, society has got vastly more politicised: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Me Too Movement and many other movements besides mobilised hundreds of millions of people around the world. So, where are the massive organisations that big mobilisations brought in the 20th century? They don’t exist. For all the increased political activity, society hasn’t become much more organised.

This has produced what Anton Jäger calls ‘hyperpolitics’. He’s the author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicisation without Political Consequences as well as a columnist at The New York Times and a lecturer at Oxford University. He explained to Richard Hames how we got so isolated, why fascism isn’t even the biggest threat right now, and whether the worldwide organising around Palestine, anti-ICE uprisings in the US and the Gen Z Revolutions have already hurtled us into yet another era of political struggle.

00:00 Intro
03:21 Democracy and Mass Violence
09:01 Institutional Longevity and the 2020 BLM Uprising
18:17 - What Is Hyperpolitics?
27:05 - 2008 Financial Crisis and the Global Protest Wave
39:24 - How To Actually Form Coalition
52:12 - The Role of Social Media
01:05:30 - Art & Protest
01:19:45 -20th Century Political Mutation
01:32:11 -Mass Violence, Capitalism, and the Future of the Left

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KCFDp_kxT_4

Г. В. Голосов - Двухпартийность в электоральных исследованиях: количественные индикаторы

В силу их практической и теоретической важности, двухпартийные конфигурации занимают важное место в электоральных исследованиях. Однако в эмпирическом кросс-национальном анализе измерение двухпартийности часто подменяется измерением концентрации / фрагментации партийной системы, что приводит к нежелательным потерям информации. В этом исследовании дается обзор двух мер двухпартийности, уже предложенных, хотя и редко используемых, в политологии, и предлагается новый индикатор, который прозрачен в своем математическом строении и удовлетворяет теоретическим требованиям, которые должны выполняться при измерении двухпартийности. Свойства индексов, как старых, так и новых, тестируются на гипотетическом наборе данных, включающем партийные конфигурации с широко варьирующимися структурными характеристиками, и на реальном наборе данных, охватывающем выборы, проведенные в 75 странах мира в 2001–2023 гг. Анализ показывает полезность нового индекса в сравнительных исследованиях, одновременно подтверждая валидность ранее разработанных мер. Новый индекс удовлетворяет всем критериям, которые могут применяться к мерам двухпартийности, как теоретически, так и с перспективы исследовательской практики. Поэтому он может служить полезным дополнением к инструментарию политических исследований. Важно и то, что требования к полноте данных, предъявляемые новым методом измерения, абсолютно минимальны. Это позволяет использовать его для анализа исторической электоральной статистики, когда все доступные результаты выборов сводятся к долям голосов или мест, полученных двумя крупнейшими партиями.

https://www.politnauka.ru/jour/article/download/1280/1080

How to Read Fredric Jameson

I'm joined by Robert T. Tally, a scholar of Fredric Jameson and professor of literature to explore the main ideas and major works of Jameson. We begin with a discussion on Tally's two major philosophical mentors, the American philosopher Rick Roderick and the Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson. After exploring what it was like to learn from these two thinkers we then discuss the key major books by Jameson and how to understand his main concepts, from cognitive mapping, postmodernism to the poetic of forms.

Robert T. Tally Jr. is a professor of English at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7cHl2b7G9O0

Nancy Fraser - After Habermas

Unlike Foucault, Habermas offered the prospect of a ‘reconstructed historical materialism’. He conceived postwar capitalist society as a totality, riven with contradictions and crisis tendencies, even as he also rejected economic reductionism. Foregrounding ‘communication’ as distinct from ‘labour’, and ‘lifeworld’ as distinct from ‘system’, he posited the relative autonomy of culture, ideas and politics, while also theorising their ‘colonisation’ by bureaucracy. The result was a novel critical theory of welfare-state capitalism – the perils it posed and the prospects it opened for emancipation. A synthesis of Marx, Weber and speech-act theory, Habermas’s theory lent systematic heft to New Left intuitions, on the one hand, and to Foucault’s dazzling figurations on the other.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/march/after-habermas