I am very honored that an article I worked on for years, “The Myth of 1968 & the French Intelligentsia,” was just published in Monthly Review.

Abstract
This article critically examines the widespread assumption that there is such a profound connection between French theory and the political events of 1968 that the former merits the title of “68 thought.” It begins by a materialist analysis of the historical relationship between the most prominent representatives of French theory—ranging from Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida to Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan—and the actual political events unfolding at the time. After demonstrating their distance from the major political mobilizations, which often included an overt rejection of them, the article turns to the larger cultural question of the ways in which the myth of 68 thought was produced, as well as to the issue of its social function in the global theory industry. It is in this light that it proposes an analysis of the historical commodity fetishism around 68, before concluding with a critical assessment of how the presumed radicality of “68 thinkers” serves to police the left border of critique.

My response to Todd Cronan’s book, Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisentstein, was just published in The Tank via Nonsite, along with several others.

Excerpt: “Indeed, art can draw on the full breadth of sense perception to engage with and remodel people’s lived experience, cultivate an accurate comprehension of the social totality, and ultimately bring them into a collective process of world making. Would Cronan agree with the suggestion that this very expansive understanding of an accurate depiction of reality—which includes a dialectically entwined relationship between perception, comprehension, and practice—is operative in red aesthetics? [read more]”

In my latest article, which is part of my book project on the Intellectual World War, I explain how Žižek rose to fame in the global theory industry by promoting pomo radlib theory against “the global solution-revolution” of “Marxism” (his words). He refers to communism as “maybe the worst catastrophe in the history of humanity” (sic). No wonder he’s the (capitalist) world’s most famous “Marxist”! He’s capitalism’s court jester: aping the figure of the Marxist-qua-antisocial-fanatic, he encourages disdain for the real-world project of socialism, while advancing his career by hawking the wares of Western consumer society & the global theory industry through his pop cultural mash-up.