http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news http://www.telospress.com/main/includes/templates/classic/images/news_rss_logo.gif http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news Copyright (c) Telos Press PHP RSS Feed Class, (c) 2005 Joshua Dechant <dechantj@pop.belmont.edu> http://feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:54:23 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=386 <p> From the beginning of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, Italian Communism&mdash;represented by the biggest Communist political party in the West&mdash;lost its propulsive force. The myth of "revolution" expired; the crucial social and economic role of the industrial working class disappeared; the capitalistic system consolidated itself as a mass consumerist society. In addition, there were important sociological changes in the leadership of the Italian Communist Party. First, we must specify who the Italian Communist militants were at the beginning, especially in the immediate years after World War II and in the first twenty years of the Republican period (1945-1965). During these years the Communist Party presented itself as an organization with a clearly defined identity and sense of purpose toward both outsiders and its own militants: the militant's everyday life was dominated by the so-called "Stalinist metaphor" ("metafora staliniana," a term coined by the Italian scholar Giuseppe Carlo Marino). What does that mean? To Communists, words such as "Stalin" and "USSR" signified an "ideal of absolute happiness, synthesis of moral standards and welfare, in opposition to the disturbing and corrupting promises of the American capitalism." </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=386"> [Continue reading]</a> Danilo Breschi <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=386#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=386 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=385 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> Telos 151 (Summer 2010), a special issue on China, edited Russell&nbsp;A. Berman and Ban Wang, is now available for purchase. <a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=393">Click here</a> to order. Read Berman and Wang's introduction <a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=382">here</a>. </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS151.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> Telos turns its attention to China and a set of diverse encounters between Critical Theory and contemporary Chinese society and culture. How does the Chinese experience shed a new light on the questions that have been at the core of Critical Theory for decades: bureaucracy and domination, innovation and particularity, capitalism and its metamorphoses, reification and democracy, art and emancipation. The essays collected in this issue of Telos try to explore these questions from the Critical-Theoretical tradition in relation to the Chinese present, which in turn puts pressure on Critical Theory to recalibrate its inherited metrics. Since the work of Lukács, Adorno, and Benjamin, the western Marxist tradition has involved systematic reflection on capitalism and culture: to continue that project today demands reflection on China. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=385"> [Continue reading]</a> Telos Press <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=385#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=385 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=384 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> On Tuesdays at the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Jennifer Wang looks at Dominic Moran's <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2002/123/107">"Decisions, Decisions: Derrida on Kierkegaard and Abraham,"</a> from Telos&nbsp;123 (Spring 2002). </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS123.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> In <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2002/123/107">"Decisions, Decisions: Derrida on Kierkegaard and Abraham,"</a> Dominic Moran attempts to use deconstructive critique on Derrida's notion of decision as it is relevant to ethics, justice, and political responsibility. In particular, Moran's is a critique of how practicable the sort of decision advanced by Derrida is, if at all. In the end, he concludes that it is not: a deconstructive ethics cannot even be considered paradoxical but rather is strictly contradictory in its relation of theory to practice. Moran sets Derrida's engagement with politics in the aftermath of the de Man scandal and the ensuing criticism that deconstruction's political possibilities tend toward nihilism and radical relativism. He is generous, however, in granting that Derrida is not entirely reactionary, for engagement with the political is the final stage in deconstruction's development. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=384"> [Continue reading]</a> Jennifer Wang <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=384#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=384 Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=383 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> On Tuesdays at the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Lev Marder looks at Aniruddha Chowdhury's<a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2008/143/22">"Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin's History,"</a> from Telos&nbsp;143 (Summer 2008). </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS143.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> Reaching into the Telos archive to retrieve Aniruddha Chowdhury's essay "Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin's History" proves to be a troubling task. In the article, Chowdhury masterfully treats Benjamin's concept of history, which I prefer to an extent to conflate with historiography. The more attentively one reads Chowdhury's work, the more apparent it becomes that it resists being mundanely archived and treated just as another artifact. Sticking out of the archive, it also defies the reader who wonders where to start reading the text. Accustomed to starting from the beginning, the reader rarely questions the method of reading, the method of interpreting, and the mode of historiography. Without a doubt these questions relate to the (mis)understanding of temporality and its limits. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=383"> [Continue reading]</a> Lev Marder <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=383#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=383 Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=382 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> Telos 151 (Summer 2010), a special issue on China, is now available for purchase. <a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=393">Click here</a> to order. </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS151.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> In this issue, Telos turns its attention to China and a set of diverse encounters between Critical Theory and contemporary Chinese society and culture. Recent issues of the journal have focused on various theoretical or thematic topics, in order to explore aspects of particular conceptual problems. The alternative editorial choice, evidenced here, to organize a discussion of a single country has, frankly, been rare in the history of Telos. When all is said and done, theory can have a hard time focusing on a particular case and its materiality, rather than trying to deduce an account of an abstract problem from some internal logic. Therefore the decision to organize a collection of essays defined in this way&mdash;the China issue&mdash;has epistemological consequences and poses questions regarding the relationship between theory and its material object. This choice also invites a certain heterogeneity of perspectives, in terms of both methods and values. At stake here is less the internal consistency of theoretical paradigms than the agility of addressing the complex and inconsistent movements&mdash;changes, breaks, fragments, returns, developments&mdash;in the aggregate of experiences circumscribed by the name of the empirical place. Those experiences and that place, moreover, should also call the purist presumptions of theory into question or at least allow for scrutinizing implicit ideological commitments. Theory cannot be oblivious to the particularities of historical experience: so Telos turns to China. Nor however can experience evade examination by Critical Theory. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=382"> [Continue reading]</a> Russell A. Berman and Ban Wang <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=382#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=382 Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=381 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> On Tuesdays at the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Timothy Stacey looks at Peter Schneider's <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/1999/115/145">"Intervention in Kosovo,"</a> from Telos 115 (Spring 1999), and Gábor Rittersporn's <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/1999/114/179">"Humanitarian Intervention?"</a> from Telos 114 (Winter 1999). </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS114.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> As NATO operations in Iraq whittle down to a bare minimum and debate rages on over the worth of continued involvement in Afghanistan, it is worth reflecting on the arguments surrounding the initial intervention. So some media pundits argue. The problem many had with the intervention in Iraq and continue to have with the intervention in Afghanistan is that they very quickly departed from the initial objectives conveyed to the public, becoming campaigns with no clear mission and no end in sight. Foul play is suspected. The (non)intervention in Kosovo and Rwanda helps to clarify this point. Kosovo was a clear case of humanitarian intervention at its most black and white. The military option was a last resort and when used was proportional. Likewise, Rwanda provides a black-and-white example at the opposite end of the spectrum: clearly military intervention was missed. To summarize: Kosovo and Rwanda clear, Iraq and Afghanistan not so clear. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=381"> [Continue reading]</a> Timothy Stacey <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=381#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=381 Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=380 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> On Tuesdays at the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Michael Gorup looks at Hans Sluga's <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2008/142/91">"The Pluralism of the Political: From Carl Schmitt to Hannah Arendt,"</a> from Telos&nbsp;142 (Spring 2008). </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS142.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> The ostensibly simplest questions are always the most deceiving. Socrates, of course, knew this quite well. His childlike questioning, more often than not met with awestruck confusion, has continued to animate philosophical discourse for well over two millennia. The Socratic inheritance&mdash;mostly evidently exemplified by the "what is&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;?" question structure&mdash;forms the implicit grounding for Hans Sluga's comparative study of the political thought of Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt. The key question here, of course, is that of politics: namely, "What is politics?" The writings of Arendt and Schmitt form the two most significant twentieth-century corpuses that attempt to answer precisely this question. In Sluga's account, the primary issue at hand in thinking the political is, for both Arendt and Schmitt, the question of pluralism (or in Arendt's idiom, plurality). For both thinkers it is fundamental for politics that we are both many and different, though this ontological grounding plays out quite differently in either case. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=380"> [Continue reading]</a> Michael Gorup <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=380#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=380 Tue, 18 May 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=379 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> This text was presented in January at the 2010 Telos Conference, "From Lifeworld to Biopolitics: Empire in the Age of Obama." </p> <p> Walter Benjamin's famous statement, in the eighth of his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940), "the state of exception in which we live is not the exception but the rule," has become as normalized as its proposition asserts. The phrases turning on the elements "the exception" and "the rule," have become, in Michael Marder's terms, matters of "metonymic abuse of modernity." It plays itself out in the debates in constitutional law and political theory in the 1920s and 1930s. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=379"> [Continue reading]</a> Ulrike Kistner <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=379#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=379 Wed, 05 May 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=378 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> Who's got the X-Factor in UK Politics? A playful look at the debate between <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2006/134/6">John Milbank</a> and <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2006/134/22">Alain de Benoist</a> in Telos 134 (Spring 2006) against the backdrop of the UK general election and other more popular voting shows. </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS134.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> Voting for pleasure is by no means a new phenomenon, but with the advent of TV reality competition shows the trend has seen exponential growth. Consider this alongside a malaise in British voting trends and a general disaffection with politics, and you begin to see why Simon Cowell, reality TV mogul, is testing the water for a reality politics competition show. The premise: if only we could make politics fun, even silly, then people would be more inclined to vote. It seems an obscure jump to make. But disaffection from politics is inversely proportionate to an increase in ratings for entertainment television. In 2005 more people voted for Big Brother than in the UK general election. Nor is the move unprecedented. The dumbing down of British politics is everywhere. Over the last few months, Dermot O'Leary, host of the X-Factor, has been looking to a host a politics show on the run-up to the UK general election. (Can we hope that it is by now too late?) In February, Pierce Morgan, former host of Britain's Got Talent, held an unprecedented interview with Gordon Brown regarding his personal life. And in 2005 June Sarprong, originally MTV UK host, got much coveted access to Tony Blair. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=378"> [Continue reading]</a> Timothy Stacey <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=378#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=378 Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=377 <p> <strong>Rituals of Exchange and States of Exception:</strong> <strong>Continuity and Crisis in Politics and Economics</strong> </p> <p> January 15-16, 2011 New York City </p> <p> Whether they allow the circulation of ambassadors or of capital, exchange networks provide the basis for global cross-cultural relationships. Though liberal democratic governments pride themselves on the rationality of their procedures, diplomatic protocols and the give-and-take of parliamentary politics attest to complex customs that lie at the heart of such practices. Similarly, recent crises have demonstrated that international financial markets cannot be reduced to a numbers game, however complex, but function on the foundation of a network of promises whose dependability is a matter of habits. Focusing on the contemporary world, this conference will investigate the rituals and protocols that regulate political and economic relations in areas of stability and the underlying forces that come to the fore in periods of crisis. We encourage submissions of paper proposals from scholars in a variety of disciplines including critical theory, philosophy, literature, politics, theology, anthropology, political economy, and cultural studies. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=377"> [Continue reading]</a> David Pan <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=377#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=377 Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=376 <p> In partnership with the Telos Institute, Telos is launching a new annual essay prize competition, inviting graduate students and post-graduate researchers in the humanities to tell the world about their work. </p> <p> The competition offers young scholars the opportunity to be published in one of the leading international interdisciplinary journals. The panel of judges, which includes the editorial board of Telos as well as outside judges, is looking for creative, fresh, and original contributions in the area of politics, philosophy, critical theory, theology, culture, and the arts. There is no specific question or theme. </p> <p> The winning essay will be published in a regular issue of Telos in the course of 2011. The winner will be given a free annual subscription to the journal as well as a free copy of a book published by Telos Press of his or her choice. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=376"> [Continue reading]</a> Telos Press <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=376#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=376 Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=375 <p> <img src="images/ZASLAVSKY_ClassCleansing.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> Saturday's airplane crash killing Poland's president, Lech Kaczy&#324;ski, alongside more than ninety other Polish senior civilian (and military) figures happened in Smolensk, near Katyn&mdash;the same site where more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war were murdered by the Soviet secret police NKVD in 1940 on Stalin's orders, as Victor Zaslavsky's <a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=366">Class Cleansing: The Massacre at Katyn</a>, published by Telos Press, vividly documents. But last week's tragedy is no "second Katyn"&mdash;contrary to what liberal commentators such as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/12/glimmer-polish-gloom-second-katyn" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;">Timothy Garton-Ash</a> would have us believe. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=375"> [Continue reading]</a> Adrian Pabst <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=375#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=375 Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=374 <p class="blogTopNoteSummary"> On Tuesdays at the TELOSscope blog, we reach back into the archives and highlight an article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Lev Marder looks at Kai Evers's <a href="http://journal.telospress.com/cgi/content/abstract/2005/132/109">"The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction,"</a> from Telos 132 (Fall 2005). </p> <p> <img src="images/TELOS132.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> Totalitarianism drives people to silence, to defend their positions, to speak out, to cry out, and even to turn on themselves. Out of totalitarianism come some of the most incredible witness accounts, histories, and stories about these stories. Eventually theories about the theories of those stories, such as Kai Evers's essay "The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction," emerge and peek through their holes. Juxtaposing Benjamin's firm position that only silence could follow a catastrophe and Arendt's rejection of this stance after accepting it, Evers questions whether or not storytelling is dead. Is it possible that the holes of oblivion designated by Arendt as the core of totalitarianism, where people and their traces seem to disappear, exist and totally efface? </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=374"> [Continue reading]</a> Lev Marder <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=374#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=374 Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=373 <p> <img src="images/BreakingBread300.gif" style="float:right; padding: 10px;" /> The founder and long-time editor of Telos, Paul Piccone, was born in Italy on January&nbsp;17, 1940, in the city of L'Aquila, the capital of the Abruzzo. He combined philosophical passion with an irrepressible instinct for hospitality, and this was nowhere clearer than in the way he would generously gather friends and strangers together for meals that celebrated both food and thought. His culinary skills, of which he was legitimately proud, were only enhanced when he married Marie Filice, an accomplished chef in her own right. Since Paul&mdash;ever the traditionalist&mdash;and Marie made many trips to L'Aquila, the menu in their New York home was constantly renewed through those returns to the ancestral source. That profound connection to the past provided the foundation for the welcoming hospitality, where a set table was always a celebration. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=373"> [Continue reading]</a> Russell Berman <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=373#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=373 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=372 <p> It is widely accepted today that the modern concept of citizenship has become defined as biological or biomedical citizenship. Current perspectives on the practices of health and illness underestimate the effects of two increasing trends, hyperspecialization and universalization, which combine into a process of virtualizing biomedical practice and research toward the production of practitioners, patients, and medical concepts of normalcy and pathology that fit in with the demands of an information- and knowledge-based economic regime. The process has led to the emergence of the ideal type of the virtual patient. As a virtual patient, a suffering individual is reduced to a bureaucratically manageable case file. I suggest that we need to provide a conceptual framework that can account for the developments in biomedical and mental health research and enable patients, doctors, and caregivers to cooperate in favor of the individual patient's health, autonomy in his/her decision, and his/her positive development of life-course&mdash;understood to be the modern meanings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in matters of health care. </p><a href="http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=372"> [Continue reading]</a> Alexander I. Stingl <telosscope@telospress.com> http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=372#comment http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=372 Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT