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 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.
The Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique will host its 2021 Summer Program online from June 28 to July 16. Invited guests include Pierre-Antoine Chardel, Annie Lacroix-Riz, Michael Löwy, Jennifer Ponce de León, Gabriel Rockhill and Sophie Wahnich.
Click here for additional information, including how to apply.
I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to present my research on a counter-history of liberalism and fascism at this conference at UC Santa Cruz on October 10th and 11th:
Je suis ravi de pouvoir participer — par visioconférence, malheureusement — à ce colloque sur les théories critiques franco-allemandes, qui aura lieu le 18 février à l’Université Paris Nanterre. Un grand merci à Pauline Julien et à Aurélia Peyrical pour avoir établi ce beau programme. Si vous êtes à Paris, n’hésitez pas à venir !
On October 18, 2018, I was very pleased to have had the opportunity to present, with Jennifer Ponce de León, our collaborative book project on “Revolutionizing Aesthetics” at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP).
Here is the discussion that I had with David Palumbo-Liu at the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique in Paris on June 13, 2018, entitled “1968-2018 aller-retour: Student Uprisings, Fascist Violence & Antifascism Today”:
Le 21 juin, 2018, j’ai eu l’occasion de présenter mes recherches pour mon prochain livre, La CIA et les intellectuels, dans le cadre du séminaire que je co-dirige à l’EHESS avec Pierre-Antoine Chardel et Valérie Charolles : “Socio-philosophie du temps présent. Enjeux épistémologiques, méthodologiques et critiques“.
I was very pleased to have had the opportunity to present “Aesthetic Revolution” at the Marxism and New Materialisms Conference at Depaul University on April 27, 2018. A special issue of Philosophy Today is being prepared with papers from the conference.
I was very pleased to participate in the conference “Critique in German Philosophy” at Depaul University in Chicago from November 9th to 11th. Click here for the program. An abstract of my paper, entitled “Making a Specter Out of Marx: The Reformist Agenda of Contemporary Critical Theory,” can be found below.
Krzysztof Bednarski, “The Ghost Is Wandering,” 2013
Abstract
This paper examines the demise of Marxism in contemporary critical theory. It begins by foregrounding the central importance of Marxist critique to the early Frankfurt School, which was explicitly dedicated to mobilizing theoretical tools for social emancipation from capitalism. By marshaling and reinvigorating the reflexive strategy of the first generation of critical theorists, which consists in resituating subjects and knowledge claims in the objective social world, it explores the need for a social critique of contemporary ‘critical reason,’ and more specifically of the ways in which the second and third generations of the Frankfurt School have made a specter out of Marx. It is in this light that it examines whether the combined decrescendo of certain Marxist discourses within the academy and the ear-piercing crescendo of imperial neoliberalism has many self-proclaimed critical theorists working at counter-purposes: paying rhetorical lip service to a vague Marxian heritage while defanging its critical bite and realigning ‘critique’ on a reformist agenda within the dominant system of capitalism and corporate political rule under liberalism. The taming of critical theory in the age of neoliberal hegemony leads, in conclusion, to a broader conjunctural question: can critique be radicalized in order to shake it out of its neoliberal academic slumbers?
GABRIEL ROCKHILL 