postmodernism

The Rise and Fall of Weak Thought – Miguel Amorós

An essay on philosophy since 1848, its decline after WWI, attempts to salvage its valuable contributions and further its development from the 1920s (Korsch) to the 1960s (Debord), and the rise of postmodernism in the late 20th century from the ruins of the revolt of the 1960s, when academic celebrities influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger popularized contempt for truth and reason and de facto submission to Power as part of a fashionable doctrine based on “narcissism, existential void, frivolity, consumerism” and “pseudo-identities” whose purpose, according to the author, was not just to destroy the idea of the revolution but also to disintegrate the revolutionary subject.

Vanishing points in working class culture – Miguel Amorós

A brief discussion of the origins, decline, and fall of modern working class culture as a culture of resistance to capitalism, a process that led to our current condition of “perpetual present” “without time or memory”, concluding with some reflections on the possible reemergence of “communities of struggle” that will rediscover history, as the system can only “overcome its contradictions … by plunging into even greater ones”, thus unleashing new conflicts in a society that has become increasingly more unpredictable due to the proliferation of unhinged, “desperate identities” in search of a remedy for their “feeling of uprootedness”.

The culture industry in the 21st century - Robert Kurz

In this revised and expanded version of a 2010 talk, Robert Kurz examines the continuing relevance, and the limitations, of the concept formulated by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944—the “Culture Industry”—with discussions of “cultural pessimism”, the postmodern “cult of superficiality”, the role of technology in cultural change, the “abstract individual”, advertising, the Internet, “virtualization”, “interactive” media, exhibitionism and narcissistic self-promotion, the pseudo-“gift economy” of the Net, the impact of the current economic crisis on the culture industry, the “depletion of cultural reserves”, “estheticization”, and the impossibility of a separate “cultural revolution”.

Review of Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Vivek Chibber challenges the post-Marxist framework of the Subaltern Studies group.

Contemporary anarchist studies: an introductory anthology of anarchy in the academy

Cover image of Contemporary Anarchist Studies

This volume of collected essays by some of the most prominent academics studying anarchism bridges the gap between anarchist activism on the streets and anarchist theory in the academy.

2009 Interview with IHU Online - Robert Kurz

A wide-ranging and comprehensive summary of Robert Kurz’s views on capitalism, economic crisis, gender relations, the environmental crisis, postmodernism, abstract labor, Marxism, the failure of the left, technological change, the State, etc., transcribed from an interview that took place three years before his death.