It was a real pleasure to participate in the book launch for Carlos Garrido’s “The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism” along with Radhika Desai, Alan Freeman, Thomas Riggins, Gabriel Rockhill, Noah Khrachvik, and Eddie Liger.
I was very honored to be invited on Canarias semanal to discuss one of my current book projects, The Intellectual World War, with Tita Barahona. Below you will find both the original version of the interview, where the questions are asked in Spanish and I respond in English, as well as the version dubbed in Spanish. I have also provided links to some of my more journalistic writings on the topic.
Tuve el gran honor de ser invitado en Canarias semanal para discutir uno de mis proyectos de libros actuales, La Guerra mundial intelectual, con Tita Barahona. A continuación encontrará tanto la versión original de la entrevista, donde las preguntas se hacen en español y yo respondo en inglés, como la versión doblada al español. También he proporcionado enlaces a algunos de mis escritos más periodísticos sobre el tema.
“The CIA & the Frankfurt School’s Anti-Communism.” Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Philosophical Salon” (June 27, 2022). This article was translated into Spanish (also here), Romanian, Turkish and French.
“Foucault, Anti-Communism & the Global Theory Industry: A Reply to Critics.” Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Philosophical Salon” (February 1, 2021). This article was translated into Turkish.
“Foucault: The Faux Radical.” Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Philosophical Salon” (October 12, 2020). This article was translated into Turkish.
“The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left.” Los Angeles Review of Books, “The Philosophical Salon” (February 27, 2017). This article was translated into Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, French, Persian, Greek & Kurdish.
I was pleased to share an overview of my book project with the participants in the Critical Theory Workshop‘s 2022 Summer School in Paris and online. We discuss my intellectual and political development, elucidating what has led me from French theory and Frankfurt School critical theory to a historical materialist critique of the global theory industry.
I was very pleased to participate in this book Launch for Domination & Emancipation with Daniel Benson, Rosaura Sánchez & Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo. This was a collaboration between The People’s Forum, the Critical Theory Workshop and RED – Radical Education Department. One of my essays in this book, entitled “Critical and Revolutionary Theory,” is available for download here.
I’m excited to have the opportunity to discuss this extremely important book with the author, William I. Robinson, and Jennifer Ponce de León at 4 p.m. EST on October 24. The discussion will take place online, via the Critical Theory Workshop, and it is free and open to the public. Click here for all of the details.
I will be presenting and discussing chapter two of Counter-History of the Present , entitled “Are We Really Living in a Technological Era?,” at Yale University on Friday April 6th, 2018 at 12 p.m. (Loria, 190 York Street, Room B-50). The event is organized by the Internet Culture Working Group and co-sponsored by the Marxism and culture Working Group. In addition to discussing this chapter and framing it in relation to the overall project of a counter-history of the present, I will outline my current research on the subterranean history of the national security state’s manipulation of the intellectual and cultural means of production.
An author-meets-critics session that will take place on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 from 6-8 p.m. at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. Entitled “Radical Imaginaires,” the discussion will be based on my two most recent books: Counter-History of the Present and Interventions in Contemporary Thought.
Event Description
This symposium brings together leading scholars in the fields of political theory, intellectual history, comparative literature and aesthetics to discuss two recent books by philosopher Gabriel Rockhill: Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy (Duke UP, 2017) and Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Edinburgh UP, 2017 for the paperback edition). These works, whose contents are outlined below, perform a tectonic shift in the theoretical coordinates that frame our understanding of the contemporary. Cutting across multiple fields and debates, they intervene to propose both a novel form of theoretical practice and alternative conceptual models for understanding the multidimensionality of the current conjuncture as a force field of social struggle.
Counter-History of the Present dismantles the widespread belief that we are living in a
democratized and globalized era intimately connected by a single, overarching economic and technological network. Arguing that it fails to account for the experiences of billions of people around the world, Rockhill interrogates the ways this political narratology has emerged in connection with the neocolonial expansion of neoliberalism, which often seeks to mask the oppressive dynamics of global capital behind the value-concept of democracy. He thereby puts into relief the development of a technico-democratic mission that historically mirrors the role played by the civilizing mission during the grand era of colonialism. Proposing a counter-history that simultaneously counters the narratives of this imperial mission and develops a new grammar for historical and political imaginaries, the book creates space for the articulation of futures no longer engulfed in the prison of the colonial present.
Interventions in Contemporary Thought is a collection of essays that rethink the state and stakes of contemporary theory. By resituating theoretical work in a broader force field of culture and power, Rockhill develops an alternative historical model for understanding intellectual developments and proposes incisive, iconoclastic interventions into a broad 
array of current debates. These include a detailed dismantling of the sequential historical narrative leading from the structuralism of Foucault to Derrida’s post-structuralism; a radical critique of the political implications of the philosophy of difference; a meticulous reassessment of the force and limitations of the work of Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, and Cornelius Castoriadis; and a retrieval of architecture and public art, which have been largely excluded from certain contemporary theoretical debates on art and politics. Drawing on and developing his earlier work in Radical History & the Politics of Art, the book as a whole thereby proposes to modify the very framework for thinking the historical relation between aesthetics and politics. Continue reading
GABRIEL ROCKHILL 