A Letter on Skepticism and Ethics

To 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

Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism

My edited volume Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (University of Westminster, 2018) is now available. You can download a digital version (or purchase a physical copy) by clicking here.  Contributors include: John Abromeit, Lars Rensmann, Samir Gandesha, Douglas Kellner, Stephen Eric Bronner, Charles Reitz, Jeremiah Morelock, Felipe Ziotti Narita, Christian Fuchs, Panayota Gounari and Forrest … Read more

“Teoria crítica como fundamento para análise do populismo e do autoritarismo” e “Neoliberalismo progressista e o momento populista”

Unesp, Franca, Sao Paulo, Brasil, 11/8/2018. “Critical theory as foundation for the analysis of populism and authoritarianism/Teoria crítica como fundamento para análise do populismo e do autoritarismo” (Jeremiah Morelock) e “Neoliberalismo progressista e o momento populista” (Felipe Ziotti Narita)

Culture, ideology and consent: on contemporary myths

Culture, ideology and consent: on contemporary myths*   by Vasiliki Papageorgiou Ethnologist-Social Anthropologist, PhD     In this article I start by discussing Rolan Barthes’ contribution in the development of cultural studies, particularly focusing on his early and pioneering work “Mythologies”. Barthes elaborates an analysis of the mythical system and its function in cultural communication, … Read more

Understanding Right and Left Populisms, by Samir Gandesha

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 23, 2018. Neoliberal globalization has … Read more

We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction

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 of infinity, and it was … Read more

The Imperative to Love Death and Hate Eternity

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

Was Marx an Environmentalist?

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 no concern with the environment, … Read more