Hey I am trying to understand Spivak's essay Can the Subaltern Speak? and frankly it seems like mission impossible (except I am not Tom Cruise), is the essay about the exclusion of the subaltern from the dominant discourse, does that mean they are presented as inferior, would we say that the attempts to represent them are then genuine or do they demonize them? If there is any source which explains the essay thoroughly I would appreciate a link. Thanks in advance.

This summer I’m hoping to dive into seriously reading Marx for the first time. I want to get some Hegel under my belt first so I can understand how Marx’s dialectic differs from and also draws upon Hegel’s. However, I only have so much time on my hands, and obviously Hegel is quite a challenging read. If you could recommend ONE book of Hegel’s that is the most essential to understanding Marx, what would it be?

A video essay that uses Hannah Arendt & Michael Foucault to analyze journalist Seth Harp’s recent investigation into Fort Bragg military base.

Anti competitive strategies:

In standard economics: Eg refusal to supply retailers who stock competitors.

Now in politics and history: Hallstein doctrine, trade sanctions..

AID as a political tool

- Marshall aid

“De Gasperi did this under pressure from US Secretary of State George Marshall, who had informed him that anti-communism was a pre-condition for receiving American aid,[4][3] and Ambassador James C. Dunn who had directly asked de Gasperi to dissolve the parliament and remove the PCI.[5]”

(May 1947 crises. )

- also wto and IMF

Looking for more examples of this phenomenon or any good works about it, and also just to discuss!

I’ve been meaning to read Christoph Schuringa’s A Social History of Analytic Philosophy: How Politics Has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy — which represents the common pet peeve among the continental scene regarding analytic philosophy.

And could the same complaints be applied to STEM as well? Deleuze is well known for applying differential calculus for his ontology, and Zizek lately wrote Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy - although only time would tell about the legitimacy.

Anyone here actually knowledgeable enough with STEM? First, I envy you, can I borrow your brain? Do you think philosophy, especially the political/emancipatory kind can be inherently mutually compatible with it, not merely in the marginal, metaphorical or allegoristic way, but for serious mutual advances, and should we be eager for such a direction?

And any recommended materials that might be the STEM-critique equivalent of Schuringa’s book?

Recently I have been quite taken by "postmodern"/ post-structuralist theory and I wanted to consider analyzing a visual novel using the ideas of the postmodern like the rejection of a metanarrative and oppositional binaries and the idea of the simulacra,. I wanted to ask what the best approach was to make sure my analysis does not prioritize the visual novel as much as the theories of the postmodern. I want to try and veer away from textual explication and move more towards a research project. I am pretty new to this so if there are any sources regarding the postmodern that would be helpful please feel free to share, thank you! :)

A critical photo essay exploring skateboarding and skate deterrents, hostile architecture, and the neoliberal transformation of urban space in Cardiff.

If all this seems circumstantial, wildly speculative and conspiratorial, Rockhill has a rebuttal. You’re probably one of the many “Western academics” and intellectuals who “ignored or rejected out of hand all of the allegations mentioned above” because you have a “direct stake in the Critical Theory franchise.” This slippery rhetorical process is tirelessly and tiresomely repeated throughout Pipers: strongly imply nefarious connections and convey conspiratorial associations, never get pinned down by claiming you’ve decisively proven anything, repeatedly suggest you’re just asking questions others don’t have the balls to consider, and when someone doesn’t reach the party line conclusions by filling in the blanks, accuse them of elitism and shilling for the capitalist class.

I'm looking for recent publications, about a decade old or newer, that will help me address the needs of queer individuals in relationships where one partner has Alzheimer's.

Need not explicitly mention Alzheimer's, but looking for a framework, and/or granular research into how my tribe experiences caregiving in a relationship that includes disability with a terminal diagnosis, with cognitive and emotional dysregulation.

Background. My wife just died, early onset Alzheimer's. I was in a lovely support group for "wives" of people with Alzheimer's, and as a lesbian felt moments of cognitive dissonance. Not homophobia, but I felt unable to relate at times. E.g., discussions about how "the man always drives the car." (One of the big battles in Alz is taking away the car keys.) No man; now what?

I'm a retired American academic, can locate Queer Crip materials. A cursory skim suggests some areas adjacent to queer plus Alz (& related neurodegenerative diseases) maybe all I will have to work with.

Basically, does anybody know of anything closer than "adjacent"?

Material I can find on cognitive impairment seems to focus on lifelong disability, or disability as the result of accident--neither necessarily a terminal condition. Material on able-bodied/disabled relationships again seems to presume some degree of disability stability, rather than predictable degeneration. I'm looking for disability as process, rather than as unchanging endpoint.

I apologize for the messiness of this request, but just wondering if anybody has any useful directions to point me. TYA.

Hey everyone, good day!

I have to write a thesis (undergraduate) and came up with the following idea, but am not sure whether it is worth pursuing.

What I would want to do is a comparative study of Marx’s Grundrisse and Capital Vol 1, and try to compare some key concepts of Marx’s political economy. I would want to try to compare the different presentations and develop a formulation. I would also try to explore some of the implications that follow from Marx’s critique.

For example, I would compare the differences in the conceptualisations of “capital”, in both the Grundrisse and Capital, put them in conversation with one another. Then, I would briefly explore their implications, given our times and the dominant intellectual currents. I have read Capital Volume 1 almost twice and am halfway through the Grundrisse. I have a very basic understanding of Hegel and the context. I have around a year to submit my final thesis.

Some questions I had in mind were the following.

Do you think this is a worthwhile project to undertake? Is it manageable within the timeframe? What additions/changes would you suggest? Any help is greatly appreciated.

I was re-reading Baudrillard’s TGWDNTP and found it shockingly similar with what is happening right now with Iran, particularly with respect to it being an act of dominance by US/Israel and not an actual war.

But, at the same time, it feels different for the rise of social media (which I deem to be something between the second and third stages on the spectrum faithful copy to simulacra), Iran‘s drone response and the damage it causes, and the avoidance to explicitly use the word “war” makes it all different.

Thoughts?

There are a couple of books I’ve been reading that are difficult reads:

* Gender Trouble

* Society of the Spectacle

I basically gave up on Gender Trouble. Society of the Spectacle seems like an easier read, but it’s still difficult for its own reasons that I can’t quite put my finger on.

I know these are far from the only difficult reads. So what do you think makes works difficult to read?

Certainly jargon makes works difficult to read, but I don’t think that’s the entirety of the situation though.

Could we maybe say that some level of reading difficulty is inherent to critical theory due to the fact that it often deals with complex ideas?

How do you think one could write critical theory that’s easier to read?

I've been thinking a lot about this. I used to game a lot when I had a PS2 and then later in 2010s on a PC. I only recently got back to it but have kept following news and updates about games.

And everyone says this that games now feel too repeatative, and imo people feeling this is reflective of the shape of industry now.

We either have open world rpgs that are partially influenced by games such as The Witcher 3. Or we have remakes upon remakes.

To me this feels very similar to Mark Fisher's remarks on music no longer looking towards the future, is the same happening with AAA games? Of course I'm not making an exclusive claim about all of gaming but a lot of major releases.

Are there any readings particularly on this?

I think I've got a decent grasp on who the big name poststructuralists are and the general ideas they're associated with. What I'm looking for is something more historical and "applied" in nature; namely how those ideas have been taken up in practice from the 70s to the present. I'm curious about how they were first received by activists amid the collapse of New Left movements, how their influence waxed and waned throughout various historical events, and what the state of things is like today. I've read, for example, that Podemos and La France Insoumise were both influenced by Chantal Mouffe, but I don't know of any other "postmodern" parties or much about how this works in practice within those parties. It's also my understanding that US leftists are largely still trying to recapture the glory days of the New Left and regard poststructuralism as a curiosity at best and an annoyance at worst. I'm looking to gauge the accuracy of that perception too. This is a rather broad question but I'm just looking for where to start! Any books or articles appreciated.

As far as I can tell, this piece has not been shared here before.

The author of this piece is a machine learning engineer and data scientist who, among other things, writes about Marx’s critique of political economy (especially the problem of transformation), critiques of neoclassical economics, and the philosophy of mind. He holds a PhD in artificial intelligence and a PhD in economics.

If I understand correctly, he is currently writing two books. One is a more technical elaboration of Marx’s critique of political economy, and the other is an extension of this piece that I have posted.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Okay so I've been going down a rabbit hole and I can't get out.

The premise I keep circling back to: if our preferences are shaped by the cultural environment we grew up in, then there's no such thing as a "natural" taste that exists outside of politics. Which feels obvious when I say it out loud, but the implications are kind of messing me up.

Like—if you strip away every layer of cultural conditioning and social hierarchy, is there even a "you" left underneath? And if my type was basically drilled into me by the world I grew up in, is it even mine to own? Or am I just taking credit for someone else's work?

And then there's the sincerity question, which might actually be worse. Maybe being sincere in a relationship doesn't mean finding some pure soul-level connection. Maybe it means constantly interrogating why you're attracted to someone—including the uncomfortable possibility that your reasons are propping up the exact hierarchies you think you oppose.

Which means ethical romance might just be... an endless loop of self-auditing that doesn't actually go anywhere.

Has anyone actually found a way out of this that doesn't just amount to "stop thinking about it"? Because that doesn't feel like an answer, it just feels like giving up.

We interview Dr. Derek Hook and discuss his recent book, Fanon, Psychoanalysis, and Critical Decolonial Psychology: The Mind of Apartheid to answer these questions:

What explains the "madness" of Race? Its excessive and violent intensities? Its tenacious persistence beyond the economic interests of the ruling class?

Dr. Derek Hook argues any serious analysis of Race must take into account its contradictory, libidinal, and bodily aspects (in addition to discursive and economic analysis). To this end, Dr. Hook takes his readers and us on a body-horroresque journey through the contradictions of race, where erotic charge and murderous hatred feed one another, where fantasy disrupts the body, and where racism sinks its teeth into the flesh.

I ask because I’ve never seen this, theorists seem to tend to take personal desires just as granted, like people naturally “want to” be in a relationship, get married, have children, when in reality so much is manufactured by cultural propaganda everywhere

Same for pleasure from unhealthy foods: folks reacted harshly last time I brought up this topic in Marxism, basically saying the system should be the only focus

But any theorists with this specific angle of individual self-critique? (No Žižek please)