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

Gerhard Richter - Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers' Reflections from Damaged Life

In this book, Gerhard Richter explores the aesthetic and political ramifications of the literary genre of the Denkbild, or thought-image, as it was employed by four major German-Jewish writers and philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Siegfried Kracauer. The Denkbild is a poetic mode of writing, a brief snapshot-in-prose that stages the interrelation of literary, philosophical, political, and cultural insights. Richter's careful analysis of the linguistic characteristics of this mode of writing sheds new light on pivotal concerns of modernity, including the fractured cityscape, philosophical problems of modern music, the experience of exiled homelessness, and the disaster of Auschwitz. Thought-Images not only reorients our understanding of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in important ways but also establishes significant links between these writers and contemporary French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida.

T. Čerkez - AI interregnum

Review of Nick Srnicek, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2026)

Nick Srnicek’s new book, Silicon Empires, responds to the global struggle for computing power. The demand for computing power is driving new economies of scale – hyperscaling that are reconfiguring relations between the transnational capitalist class and the state, in addition to upending the well-established neo-liberal principles of global trade. Srnicek’s book is a serious and systematic attempt at unravelling the complex ‘geopolitical economy of contemporary AI’. But what exactly is the geopolitical economy of contemporary AI? To elaborate, Srnicek first turns to setting up his thinking around AI’s value.

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rp221_cerkez.pdf

Richard Maxwell, Toby Miller - How Green is Your Smartphone?

Every day we are inundated by propaganda that claims life will be better once we are connected to digital technology. Poverty, famine, and injustice will end, and the economy will be “green.” All anyone needs is the latest smartphone. In this succinct and lively book, Maxwell and Miller take a critical look at contemporary gadgets and the systems that connect them, shedding light on environmental risks. Contrary to widespread claims, consumer electronics and other digital technologies are made in ways that cause some of the worst environmental disasters of our time conflict-minerals extraction, fatal and life-threatening occupational hazards, toxic pollution of ecosystems, rising energy consumption linked to increased carbon emissions, and e-waste. Nonetheless, a greener future is possible, in which technology meets its emancipatory and progressive potential. How Green is Your Smartphone? encourages us to look at our phones in a wholly new way, and is important reading for anyone concerned by the impact of everyday technologies on our environment.

Rebecca Comay - Lumpendialectic

‘Disappointment’ might be too mild-mannered a word to capture the horrors of relentless counterrevolution militant despair might be more apt but it captures the untimeliness and illegitimacy of the current epoch: disappointment as belatedness (a missed appointment or assignation); diappointment as symbolic disinvestiture (the delegitimation of authority and office); disappointment as disillusion (the demystification of progress and other Enlightenment canards). Within the Marxist tradition, the Eighteenth Brumaire is the locus classicus for thinking about revolutionary failure, defeat, setback or impasse, which should be distinguished from each other. More people are reaching for the Eighteenth Brumaire these days; in an epoch of farcical imposture and authoritarian populism, it’s an easy reach, and this is so regardless of whether one joins the chorus of laments over a working class that has yet again failed to meet its historical appointment. These are analogies and possibly not the most apt ones for the current moment. But why the compulsion to analogise at all?

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rp221_comay.pdf

Lorna Finlayson - Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims

German philosopher Jürgen Habermas both inheritor and critic of the Frankfurt School, best known for his theories of discourse ethics, communicative action, and deliberative democracy died in March at the age of ninety-six. One of his last public political acts, five weeks after the beginning of Israel’s war of annihilation against the people of Gaza following the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was to publish a statement, entitled “Principles of Solidarity,” with three colleagues at Normative Orders, a research network based at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The statement sought to identify “some principles that should not be disputed” amid the “cascade of moral and political statements and protests” following “Hamas’ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response to it.”

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/normativity-from-the-standpoint-of-its-victims/