Marx, Weber and Durkheim are often accredited with being a kind of triadic foundation to classical sociological theory. All three of them dealt with issues pertaining to the historical development of capitalism and the rise of modernity. In this way, sociology was from its inception a discipline oriented toward theorizing
Colorized print of the Flammarion engraving (artist unknown.) The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.1 – Antonio Gramsci For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their
(Here below, the editorial of the n. 4, 2016 of the Journal ‘Polis’, titled ‘The contribution of Critical Theory in understanding society‘, edited by Federico Sollazzo) Abstract Is Critical Theory a part of our knowledge we can access just in a kind of museum of history of ideas, or is
Humanism apparently died somewhere round the mid-nineteen sixties. Now the human is to be resurrected by technocrats and technologists—so-called “transhumanists.” This time not as flesh, as the Christian resurrected body, but through a machine that brooks no mortal coil. This machine will be the flesh of the digital believer. Through
In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.1 — Guy Debord The questions that I am asked more than any others are, “What can we do? What can I do?” In the face of impending doom — which more and more
*The following article by Tim Keane is reposted from Hyperallergic. Around 1925, the Passage de l’Opéra in Paris, a glass-roofed structure housing shops, known as magasin de nouveautés, was slated for demolition. This particular arcade contained a bathhouse, itinerant lodgings, a brothel or two, small restaurants, and Café Certa, a gathering spot
This article by Samir Gandesha is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. It is a much shorter version of a chapter in a forthcoming volume edited by Jeremiah Morelock entitled Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (University of Westminster Press). The version represented here first appeared at openDemocracy on May
Was Marx an environmentalist? My overall position on this is skeptical ambivalence. To argue strongly that Marx himself was specifically concerned with nature in a way that is directly consonant with modern day environmental struggles and concerns is going too far. On the other hand, the assertion that Marx had
Figure 1. A “sign o’ the times” offers terror-relieving propaganda during Hawaii’s recent missile alert scare.1 The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas