By Telos Press · Thursday, March 1, 2012 Telos Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism by Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt. Purchase your copy in our store, and save 20% off the list price.
 In The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism, Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt examine the ideology and the reality of multiculturalism, assessing the implications of this controversial concept for contemporary politics. They explore many urgent issues, including the responses to the Muhammad cartoons, laws against blasphemy and the hijab, the Islamic ban on apostasy, and the growing restrictions on speech and religion that threaten the freedom that democracy ought to protect. This book is an erudite manifesto for freedom and a confrontation with any kind of attempt—be it left or right—to fence people within their cultures.
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By Marcia Pally · Tuesday, February 28, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
 I was very glad to see the investigatory trinity of this year’s Telos conference, which focused not only on our much-discussed virtual spaces but also on old-fashioned territory and relationality. One aspect of the modern era—meaning everything in the West after, say, 1600—is our fascination with our own modernity and latest gizmos. We ascribe to them enormous power to both spiffy up and ruin our lives. A century ago, the telephone was thought to bring progress, expand information, and to destroy the morals of women who could now received telephone calls from men to whom their fathers had not introduced them. People worried, committees were formed, The Times of London was appalled: “We shall soon be nothing but transparent heaps of jelly to each other.”
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Time and Location
St. Francis College, Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education
180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Wednesday, March 28, 7:00–9:00pm
Free and open to the public
St. Francis College with Telos Press, Encounter Books and The New York Chapter of the National Association of Scholars presents a debate on the virtues of liberal Western Civilization compared to its Islamic rivals, as expressed in author Ibn Warraq’s new book, Why the West is Best, on Wednesday, March 28, at 7:00pm in St. Francis College’s Maroney Forum for Arts, Culture & Education.
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By Matt Applegate · Thursday, February 23, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
The following is an exploration of the relationship shared between space, relationality, and virtuality as it comes to bear on a particular genre of revolutionary expression: the manifesto. My argument here is in opposition to thinkers like Naomi Klein who have asserted the virtual power of the internet and social media to be the end of the manifesto genre; something like, we have twitter, we have Facebook, therefore manifestos are obsolete.[1] Rather, my argument is in favor of a metamorphosis where the genre is concerned and where revolutionary expression is evolving. To put it another way, I am interested in thinking a politics of the manifesto genre that exceeds its own instrumentality. So the manifesto is being treated here as a provocation toward thinking the shape and character of a radical politics. By way of a brief and somewhat simplified characterization of the genre, I want to think in opposition to, or beyond, two primary problems where the genre is concerned. First, I want to think the function of the manifesto against an ought or revolutionary telos that would name its future and provide the political program to manifest it. Second, I want to problematize the Schmittian character of the genre, the bi-partisan, “friend” vs. “enemy” relation that is so often asserted where the manifesto names a revolutionary telos.
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By David Pan · Tuesday, February 21, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
While the current financial crisis in Europe will certainly be a turning point in the development of the European Union, this is not primarily because of the economic consequences of saving or losing the euro. These monetary and fiscal events will almost certainly be overshadowed by the political implications. For the vision of a unified Europe does not just concern economics or regional politics but is built upon larger cosmopolitan hopes that go back at least to Immanuel Kant’s imagination of perpetual peace. As Ulrich Beck argues, for instance, a cosmopolitan vision is being realized today, not so much through ideology but through global economic integration and the consequent decline of regional and national allegiances in favor of transnational identities that have made older political conflicts obsolete.[1] Built upon this vision, the continuing expansion of the European Union promises to gradually widen a zone of free trade and movement that would eventually also clear a space of political freedom characterized by the rule of law and the protection of individual rights. Theoretically, this space of peace and freedom could expand to encompass all of Eurasia and then turn the entire world into a fulfillment of Kant’s original dream.
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By Zoltán Balázs · Tuesday, February 14, 2012 This paper was presented at the 2012 Telos Conference, “Space: Virtuality, Territoriality, Relationality,” held on January 14–15, in New York City.
I shall argue for a distinction made between two concepts of centrality. Both are rather metaphorical but whereas the first is best captured by a concrete symbol, the heart, the second is more abstract and geometrical, to be captured as the “line between.”
I further try to show how they may be interpreted as representations of two strands in the political or, more generally, in the collective thinking of the Western tradition. By referring to collective thinking, I wish to broaden the usually highly abstract perspective of academic political philosophy. For such thinking is scarcely done in scientific terms and concepts but more often in metaphors, images, symbols. Thomas Hobbes was very much aware that the concept of the sovereign needs a powerful image to understand, and he instructed Abraham Bosse how to design it. The resulting title page of the book, with Leviathan, the mortal god, is perhaps a better argument than half a dozen pages from the same book. In times of prevalent illiteracy, images, pictures, statues, coats of arms, costumes, and dynamic images like processions and marches have been an even more important source of inspiration and explanation in collective thinking.
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