Research Network on Dialectics & Society
An International Community of Practice
Dimitri VourosTo continue our conversation from the other day I take it that you subscribe to a form of deontology, or, at the very least, accept the merits of such a perspective within ethics. The way you presented the argument in the specific instance of capital punishment by the state, drew from, and seemed to rest … Read more
Two questions are posed to the writer, and by writer I mean the generalist, the critic, the essayist. First: What task have you set yourself to complete? Second, and following on its heels: What is required of you? The first is posed by writers to themselves. The second is presented to the community of writers … Read more
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 technological wizardry the “soft machine” … Read more
The humble essay, a form of writing allergic to the division of labor and specialization, is the voice of reason. It has come into its own as the preeminent vehicle for thinking clearly in an age of media saturation. No better platform exists for reflection in the “age of information.” The writer readily finds this … Read more
If you are both an avid reader of Frankfurt School critical theory and an omnivorous consumer of Internet chatter then it is more than likely you have encountered the conspiracy circulating about how the Institut für Sozialforschung has been preying on young hearts and minds. Critical theory, it is claimed, has had a deleterious effect … Read more
Slavoj Žižek has finally revealed his cards. Up to this point Žižek has given out various hints in talks and essays—which float in the digital ether like mushroom spore—that what must be theorized is not the exalted moment of revolt but what is to happen the day after. He has expressed this sentiment over the … Read more