In this short video introduction, Telos editor Russell A. Berman discusses the themes and concerns of Telos 167 (Summer 2014): Are We Postsecular? You can read Russell’s full introduction here, and the issue itself is available for purchase in our online store.
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This month we’re celebrating 46 years of publishing the journal Telos by offering a 10% discount on all books and back issues purchased at our website. It’s been a long road since that fateful summer of 1968, back when the first issue of Telos appeared on the scene, but we’re still going strong thanks to the loyalty and support of our dedicated readers. Thank you for being a part of our continuing journey in worlds of philosophy, politics, and critical theory. You can take advantage of this month’s discounts by shopping in our online store. Just a reminder that the deadline for abstract submissions for this year’s Telos in Europe conference has been extended until June 15. If you plan to submit your paper for the conference, please be sure to email your abstract (no more than 250 words) to laquila@telosinstitute.net by that date, and place “L’Aquila 2014 conference” in the email’s subject line. For complete details about the conference, as well as the full call for papers, visit the conference page on the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website. Telos Press is pleased to announce the 2014 Telos student essay competition, inviting graduate students and post-graduate researchers in the humanities to tell the world about their work. The competition offers young scholars the opportunity to be published in one of the leading international interdisciplinary journals. The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2014. For complete information about submitting your paper, click here. |
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The terrorist attacks on 9/11 created a chain of events that has led not only to the “othering” of Islam and its followers, but also to an increase in the securitization of society as a whole. In “Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror,” John Milbank examines the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing intervention of governments into the privacy of their respective populations. He questions the wars and the increasingly illiberal turn by the government in regards to dealing with terrorists and criminals and the elimination of due process and, in some cases, habeus corpus. He writes that, “the question that one should ask in response to the immediate aftermath the events of September 11 is why there was outrage on such a gigantic scale” (146). He goes on to identify two reasons: first, the threat against the sovereign, and second, the increasing legitimization by Western governments to intervene in so-called “rogue or failed states,” to ensure the spread of the neoliberal market and prevent the defection of these states from the Western dominated capitalist system. Although there are indeed questions concerning the delineation between national security and the democratic process, the answers to these questions are harder to come by. 
In China as in the Soviet Union, it seemed particularly cruel to “political” prisoners that thieves, rapists, and murderers should be placed higher in the camp hierarchy than they were. From the perspective of the CCP, this often touched on the point of class origins, for of course the intellectual class often emerged from the urban bourgeoisie, whereas the common criminals come from the dodgy, poor neighborhoods or, in their rural equivalent, poor, burned-out villages. However, what the victorious revolutionaries sought to achieve was the laborious process of lifting the world off of its axle and inverting it, like a gigantic bureau drawer; of course all sorts of things fall out, and if they are delicate, shatter. The intellectual class was, and is, that class which had already begun lifting themselves out of the material world, on their own terms, with thought. For those authorities who wish to arrange a collective transfer of all resources and persons from the old world into a still unimaginable new one, this individualistic secession from the world is a most dangerous form of treason, in comparison to which the rapes, knifings, stolen bread, and liquor of the underclass are all too easy to forgive. For the latter are simply operating the system in their own disadvantaged way, with the same objectives, finally, as the capitalists and lords, whereas the thinkers seek to float away entirely. It is for this reason that in the camps, the political prisons were considered “external contradictions,” the criminals, “internal contradictions.” 
