Author Archives: RED

Interview on Critical Theory in Retreat

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The Critical Theory Workshop Blog at Jindal University just published “Pulling the Emergency Break on Critical Theory in Retreat: Interview with Gabriel Rockhill.”

CT in Retreat


Q: Briefly, what is Critical Theory according to you?
GR: Critical theory, as I understand it, is an attempt to invent alternative theoretical practices, communities and institutions that radically reconfigure the institutionalized power structures that we have inherited, as well as the parameters of action and thought that they condone and maintain. [read more]

Lecture at Winter Theory Institute

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I will be presenting a lecture entitled “Writing Revolution: Whitman’s Literary Democracy” at the Society for Critical Exchange‘s Winter Theory Institute, which will take place at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia on February 4-7. The flyer for the conference, which is on “American World Literature,” can be downloaded here.

Book Discussion Online

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Final Cover
The audio recording of a book discussion that took place at the Slought Foundation in the fall of 2014 was recently posted here on their website. Entitled “Art and Politics in the Time of Radical History: A Conversation with Gabriel Rockhill and Others about the Social Dimension of Aesthetic Practices,” the discussion brings together insightful views and incisive questions by Kevin M. F. Platt, Jean-Michel Rabaté and Annika Thiem. A special thank you to all of them for their thoughtful engagements with the book, as well as to Aaron Levy and the Slought Foundation.

Book Reviewed in “Modernism/modernity”

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“Radical History and the Politics of Art by Gabriel Rockhill (review)” was recently published by Sophie Seita in Modernism/modernity 22:4 (November 2015): 835-837.

Final Cover

 

Excerpt:
“Radical History is an engagingly written book that is full of insight, and which judiciously and forcefully combines readings of some of the most cited critics on art and politics in the twentieth century. As such, it makes a new, demanding inquiry into the appropriate methodology for rethinking politicized aesthetic practices… [read more]”

 

Forthcoming Book Announced

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Edinburgh University Press has announced that my next book, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics, will by published in July 2016. Please find below the cover–with a link to EUP’s announcement and description–as well as the table of contents. Oxford University Press’s announcement can be read here.

Rockhill_1

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction
What Is an Intervention?
Metaphilosophical Critique and the Reinvention of Contemporary Theory

§I History
Chapter 1
How Do We Think the Present?
From Ontology of Contemporary Reality to Ontology without Being

Chapter 2
The Right of Philosophy and the Facts of History
Foucault, Derrida, Descartes

Chapter 3
Aesthetic Revolution and Modern Democracy
Rancière’s Historiography

§II Politics
Chapter 4  
Is Difference a Value in Itself?
Critique of a Metaphilosophical Axiology

Chapter 5
Castoriadis and the Tradition of Radical Critique

Chapter 6
The Hatred of Rancière
Democracy in the History of Political Cultures

§III Aesthetics
Chapter 7
The Art of Talking Past One Another:
The Badiou-Rancière Debate

Chapter 8
The Hermeneutics of Art and Political History in Rancière

Chapter 9
The Forgotten Political Art par excellence?
Architecture, Design and the Social Sculpting of the Body Politic

Lecture on Photography

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The presentation below, which took place on October 26, 2015,  was recently posted as part of Penn State’s Comparative Literature Luncheon Series. It is a work in progress that will likely become part of a larger book project on recording technologies, so comments and suggestions are very welcome. A special thanks to Jonathan Eburne for the invitation and the very productive dialogue.

Abstract
“Remaking Machines: Pragmatics and Politics of Photography”
“The only sensible weapon against the cops,” Chris Marker presciently claimed in the 1960s, is “a film camera.” Exploring the ramifications of this statement in the context of the current struggles around the racial violence perpetrated by the police and vigilantes, this paper proposes a broad reflection on the social pragmatics of photography and its consequences. It begins by revisiting the question ‘what is photography?’ by inquiring into its supposed privileged relationship to the objective world. It argues that photography, far from simply capturing reality, is a powerful remaking machine that recomposes the very nature of the real. By resituating the photographic apparatus in a broad social pragmatics, it thereby seeks to elucidate its political power as a “sensible weapon.”

Tribune dans Mediapart

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Je viens de publier dans Mediapart une tribune sur la situation en France: “La France au carrefour du Diable. Ne suivons pas la voie impitoyable des Etats-Unis dans la guerre sans fin.” Un grand merci à Claire Thierry, Pierre-Antoine Chardel, Alice Canabate, Ekaterina Delvig, Charles Siemiatycki, Annika Thiem, Anthony Gledhill, Avi Alpert, Patrick Vauday et d’autres pour leurs suggestions et conseils.

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First Book Published in Series “Reinventing Critical Theory”

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Commercium
Brian Milstein’s Commercium: Critical Theory From a Cosmopolitan Point of View, with a preface by Nancy Fraser, is now in print. It is the first book published in the series “Reinventing Critical Theory,” which I am co-directing with Annika Thiem. For forthcoming titles, click here.

Farsi Version of Op-Ed on Refugee Crisis

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A Farsi translation, by Rahman Boozari, of my op-ed “Western Nations: Beacons of Hope or Sources of Destruction?” was just published in Shargh Newspaper. Click here to read.