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Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 2003"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors chart the emergence since the 1950s of a new value category, staging value, which arises when capitalism moves from addressing people's needs to exploiting their desires.
Abstract: This article charts the emergence since the 1950s of a new value category, staging value, which arises when capitalism moves from addressing people's needs to exploiting their desires. Staging valu...

99 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The enlargement of the European Union to include eventually Turkey and the former communist countries is a major challenge for our understanding of the meaning of Europe as a geopolitical, social and cultural space as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The enlargement of the European Union to include eventually Turkey and the former communist countries is a major challenge for our understanding of the meaning of Europe as a geopolitical, social and cultural space. It is also a question of the identity of Europe as one shaped by social or systemic integration. With the diminishing significance of national borders within the EU, the outer territorial frontier is also losing its significance and Europe will become more and more postwestern. It thus appears that the eastern frontier is more flexible than was previously thought. The EU is now at the decisive point of moving beyond postnationality to a transnational encounter with multiple civilizational forms. Enlargement is not just about getting bigger but is crucially a matter of cultural transformation and therefore it differs from all previous dynamics of Europeanization. Rather than tell the story of Europeanization exclusively as one of national histories and of closure, a civilizational analytic offers the possibility of multiple modernities and thus of a more appropriate theorization of the current situation.

82 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that making the European institutions fully legitimate and accountable requires the development of political identity in a shape which is different from both national and cultural identity and is not merely opposite to diversity and change.
Abstract: The peaceful and democratic integration of the European countries cannot be completed if the EU does not become a true, though not-federal, polity. Making the European institutions fully legitimate and accountable requires the development of political identity in a shape which is different from both national and cultural identity and is not merely opposite to diversity and change. Its contents can be seen in a specific set of constitutional values and principles, including a model of social relations, an international standing and a peculiar and unprecedented system of governance. Identity-formation in the EU goes through several channels, but has still to generate a European public sphere, though the source of this difficulty does not lie in the lack of a European people or demos.

39 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose an invitation to neoclassical sociology, which is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber.
Abstract: This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neoclassical approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities.

36 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article propose a typology of five types of violence: violence as loss of meaning, non-sense, violence as cruelty, fundamental violence, and founding violence, based on the idea that sometimes victims are also perpetrators in other ways.
Abstract: Violence confronts us increasingly, everywhere: how are we to make sense of it? Its ubiquity begs the question of analytical differentiation. This article seeks to open the field by suggesting a fivefold typology: violence as loss of meaning; violence as non-sense; violence as cruelty; fundamental violence; and founding violence. The idea of analytically differentiating between types of violence cannot avoid the fact that sometimes victims are also perpetrators in other ways, and that even violent activity is not conducted only by essentially violent subjects. Violence needs to be connected to modernity and to problems of identity formation and not only to personal or collective risk.

31 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Trevor Hogan1
TL;DR: This paper argued that the dominant ecological imaginary in Australia is suburban, and that the suburbs are the sites of economic, ecological and cultural trafficking about nature, and they used Seddon's insights on Australian ecosystems and Australian interpretations, namings, perceptions and shapings of their natural environment since the beginning of European colonization in 1788.
Abstract: Australia is a suburban nation, with 85 percent of the 20 million people clinging to the coastal fringes of the world's largest island and oldest continent. This article explores Australian suburbia as the `third space' that mediates urbanism to `nature'. It draws on the thought of George Seddon, an important initiator of ecological history, regional geography and sub/urban politics in Australia. Seddon's insights on Australian ecosystems and Australian interpretations, namings, perceptions and shapings of their natural environment since the beginning of European colonization in 1788 are used to think about the `nature of suburbia', `nature in suburbia' and suburbia in Australian `nature'. Its central argument is that nature is always culturally mediated and that the dominant ecological imaginary in Australia is suburban. The suburbs are the sites of economic, ecological and cultural trafficking about nature. It is argued here that the `bush', at least since the Second World War in Australia, has been mor...

30 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Gauchet as mentioned in this paper explores the centrality of the notion of sovereignty in the advent of liberal democracy and conducts this reflection within an overall discussion of the role played by Christianity in the genesis of European modernity.
Abstract: French political philosophy has experienced a renewal over the last twenty years. One of its leading projects is Marcel Gauchet’s reflection on democracy and religion. This project situates itself within the context of the French debate on modernity and autonomy launched by the work of Cornelius Castoriadis. Gauchet’s work makes a significant contribution to this debate by building on the pioneering work of Lefort on the political self-instituting capacity of modern societies and the associated shift from religion to ideology. It thus explores the centrality of the notion of sovereignty in the advent of liberal democracy and conducts this reflection within an overall discussion of the role played by Christianity in the genesis of European modernity. It elaborates an anthropology of modernity which explores the relationship between individualism and democracy and redefines modernity as a project of sovereignty which aims at creating a radically new society, the society of individuals.

16 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
David Roberts1
TL;DR: This paper proposed a double genealogy and a fourfold typology of the spectacle since the French Revolution, drawing on Debord's own undeveloped distinction between the concentrated spectacle and the diffuse spectacle.
Abstract: Debord’s influential theory of the spectacle is vitiated by its lack of historical and analytical differentiation. This article draws on Debord’s own undeveloped distinction between the concentrated spectacle and the diffuse spectacle in order to propose a double genealogy and a fourfold typology of the spectacle since the French Revolution.

15 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the Author-Work-Recipient (AWR) relation is proposed as a framework for the commonality of the two domains of high culture and the sciences, and it allows the disclosure of the paradoxical unity of culture: its two main realms are constituted as polar opposites.
Abstract: The two main domains of high culture - the arts and the sciences - seem to be completely different, simply unrelated. Is there any sense then in talking about culture in the singular as a unity? A positive answer to this question presupposes that there is a single conceptual scheme, in terms of which it is possible to articulate both the underlying similarities and the basic differences between these domains. This article argues that - at least in respect of ‘classical’ modernity - there is such a framework: the normatively conceived Author-Work-Recipient relation. It allows the disclosure of the paradoxical unity of culture: its two main realms are constituted as polar opposites and thus as strictly complementary. Through such an organization, culture could fulfil an affirmative, compensatory role. At the same time however, it also allowed culture to acquire the character of social critique, a function realized through the antagonistically opposed projects of Enlightenment and Romanticism - projects whos...

13 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Habermas's theory of social evolution has been subjected to critique by environmentally motivated sociologists as mentioned in this paper, who argue that his decision to recast social theory in terms of an extended, if selective analogy with biology leads him into a set of practical positions that are irreconcilable with Green politics and inconsistent with the goals of traditional critical theory.
Abstract: Habermas's theory of social evolution has been subjected to critique by environmentally motivated sociologists. They argue that his decision to recast social theory in terms of an extended, if selective analogy with biology leads him into a set of practical positions that are irreconcilable with Green politics and inconsistent with the goals of traditional critical theory. This article argues that these criticisms are based on an inaccurate assessment of the role of evolutionary concepts in Habermas's thought. By drawing out the similarities between Habermas and Kant on the question of the relationship between history and natural history, it is possible to see that Habermas's use of evolutionary metaphors plays a regulative rather than a constitutive role in his thinking on society. This strategy does not save Habermas's position, but shows instead that it may be vulnerable to an immanent critique that pulls out the real underlying antagonisms in his system.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines two key aspects of contemporary culture, both tied to processes of aestheticization and commodification since the 18th century: the progression from the culture industry (Adorno) to the aesthetic economy (Bohme), premised on the creation of aesthetic value in addition to use and exchange value.
Abstract: Integral to the modern paradigm of cultural critique is an entropic vision of the `completion' of modernity reaching from Heidegger and Adorno to Debord and Baudrillard. Are contemporary cultural developments to be grasped in terms of this `completion' or do we need a more open-ended account of capitalism and culture? The article examines two key aspects of contemporary culture, both tied to processes of aestheticization and commodification since the 18th century: the progression from the culture industry (Adorno) to the aesthetic economy (Bohme), premised on the creation of aesthetic value in addition to use and exchange value; the progression from the `age of the world picture' (Heidegger) to culturalism, in which the culturalization of nature and history responds to the reduction of nature and history to standing reserves.

Journal ArticleDOI
Suzi Adams1
TL;DR: The ontological turn in Castoriadis' thought is exemplified in The Imaginary Institution of Society (IIS) as mentioned in this paper, which is a seminal work in the history of ontology.
Abstract: The ontological turn in Castoriadis' thought is exemplified in The Imaginary Institution of Society (IIS). Castoriadis did not stop there, however, but was drawn to enquire into more general ontolo...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The sheep role has had a long history, in part Biblical (the Good Shepherd, the episcopal crosier, pastoral care), greatly reinforced by the Enclosures of the 18th century in Britain, promoting an idealized landscape of trees and grass as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The saying that `Australia rode to prosperity on the sheep's back' never had more than a small measure of truth; it is better rephrased as `Australia has enjoyed limited periods of modest prosperity through the near-destruction by sheep of a fragile native vegetation'. Sheep, however, have had a cultural role in Australia that needs to be understood if the failures of the wool industry leadership are to be grasped. This role has had a long history, in part Biblical (the Good Shepherd, the episcopal crosier, pastoral care), greatly reinforced by the Enclosures of the 18th century in Britain, promoting an idealized landscape of trees and grass. Settlers found Arcady in eastern Australia, often prepared for them by Aboriginal land use; in came the sheep, the lawn-mowers of the day, and up went the place names, from Camden Park on. `Parks' had social status. Landscapes of trees and grass were much admired, but lacking an understorey, essentially rather sterile from an ecological point of view. The grassy open...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare Marx and Seddon on nature and second nature, in order to suggest points of contact and traffic between Seddone's project and that of critical theory, not least with reference to problems of place and the peculiarities of the antipodes.
Abstract: Nature and society are dichotomized in much discussion in critical theory or science, largely because of the want of a satisfactory way to connect or combine the problems and prospects involved. Yet the interconnection is nowhere more apparent than in the idea of the social or cultural, or capitalism as second nature. This article, developed from the opening lecture for the Thesis Eleven Conference `Landprints Over Boundaries: in Honour of George Seddon', compares Marx and Seddon on nature and second nature, in order to suggest points of contact and traffic between Seddon's project and that of critical theory, not least with reference to problems of place and the peculiarities of the antipodes. How to connect the two? Marx shifts from the anthropological and historical to the more abstract concerns with capital as second nature; Seddon remains more inquisi-tive, empirical, though comparative and cosmopolitan in nature. Reading the two projects together is an interesting exercise in orientation for critica...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Kearney is a member of the generation of Irish intellectuals who have come to prominence in the wake of Ireland's gradual emergence from its years of national self-enclosure.
Abstract: Richard Kearney is a member of the generation of Irish intellectuals who have come to prominence in the wake of Ireland’s gradual emergence from its years of national self-enclosure. Ireland’s embrace and support for the then European Economic Union in 1973, and its ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, represent its own escape from this legacy, and from its historical subordination to, and dependence on the UK. This orientation towards Europe is part of Ireland’s post-imperial and post-national sensibility. Richard Kearney’s work embodies this postnational sensibility and European orientation, and is represented especially by his Postnationalist Ireland (1997). In his more recent Strangers, Gods and Monsters (2002a), this orientation is given greater critical voice in addressing the forms of demonization towards others, strangers and outsiders that have occurred in the current period. Accompanying his critical engagement with contemporary Ireland, Kearney has also critically engaged with the French hermeneutic,

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors discusses the work of George Seddon as a significant Australian intellectual whose writing on postcolonial settler-descendant relations with land and nature is a major contribution to academic and public life.
Abstract: This article discusses the work of George Seddon as a significant Australian intellectual whose writing on postcolonial settler-descendant relations with land and nature is a major contribution to academic and public life. Seddon’s originality lies partly in his bridging knowledge and expertise in both the humanities and sciences. However, while there is a reliance upon factual data drawn from geology, botany and zoology, Seddon’s analyses of language and culture can appear idiosyncratic and unsystematic in terms of social science methods. Based on introspection, the work might be considered ‘autoethnography’, though Seddon seeks to do more than tell stories about himself. In acknowledging both the brilliance and shortcomings of Seddon’s work, I present some examples of how it has stimulated my own research on the cultural implications of naming species and places in Australia.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Kusno's "behind the postcolonial" as discussed by the authors is a pisstake on the hubris of the many "posts" and "beyonds" found in contemporary social and political theory publishing catalogues, which makes a mockery of the intertextural, "death of the author" manifestoes of the past three decades.
Abstract: Once in a while a book comes along that reveals an informing intelligence on every line. Such books make a mockery of the intertextural, ‘death of the author’ manifestoes of the past three decades. The authorial presence in Behind the Postcolonial is immediately apparent in the title itself. Kusno’s ‘behind’ is a cheeky pisstake on the hubris of the many ‘posts’ and ‘beyonds’ found in contemporary social and political theory publishing catalogues. The range of punning meanings is left implicit by the author but might include the refusal of the depth imagery of structuralism (‘beneath the postcolonial’). ‘Behind’ certainly raises again the temporal anxiety that is associated with the breathless search for more, faster, bigger and longer in the uneven development of modern capitalism as a world system of competing nation-states and regional blocs. Kusno doesn’t claim to provide a historical sociology, but it is one of sorts. The book appears as part of the excellent ‘Architext’ series with its manifesto to bring ‘the social’ back into the discussion of architecture and the built environment, to treat them as more than artistic and technological expressions of human culture. Kusno’s approach reinserts the importance of space and the built environment to the social sciences and humanities as well. The language of sexuality and the body, gender, race and identity politics is that of contemporary social and cultural theory but history lurks in

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take its cue from Seddon's more recent critical observations on sense of place and consider the temporal and spatial dimensions of everyday experience in the informational age.
Abstract: A pervasive theme in George Seddon's extensive oeuvre is sense of place. Over a number of decades he has explored and reworked the conceptual and phenomenological aspects of this theme. This article takes its cue from Seddon's more recent critical observations on sense of place and considers the temporal and spatial dimensions of everyday experience in the informational age. Recent trends in gardening and garden theory are examined in the context of certain pathologies associated with this experience, and in particular cultural simultanagnosia: `unable to see the forest for the trees'. A key argument is that as contemporary experience tends to differentiate into discrete modules there is paradoxically also a tendency to reengage with the ecocultural world in the form of place-making, in symbolic performances of milieu.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Agnes Heller's work has long been caught up with the idea of History and history, histories, the big world pictures and also the small personal stories which run alongside and under their hypostatized versions in the politics of state or in popular culture and its mythologies as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Agnes Heller’s work has long been caught up with the idea of History and history, histories, the big world pictures and also the small personal stories which run alongside and under their hypostatized versions in the politics of state or in popular culture and its mythologies. Modernity, or the modern, is the other big theme in Heller’s work, this again with the matching emphasis on the experience of modernity and its core value of contingency. Together with this enthusiasm for the value of contingency, Heller insists on the necessity of pluralism. Having learned her Marxism from Lukács, as Weberian-Marxism, Heller’s theory has always had Marx as its guide, even as her personal project becomes detached from Marx after The Theory of Need in Marx (1976). The angel of history who persistently shadows her work into the more recent period, however, is that of Weber. Weber’s spirit is closer to that of our own times, and his perspectivism and methodological pluralism better reflect postmodern sensibilities, a life after high modernism, after Fordism, after the big dreams and nightmares of totalitarianism. The best statement of this methodological pluralism in Heller’s work in its sociological form came in 1983, with the publication of the programmatic Fehér-Heller statement ‘Class, Democracy, Modernity’, in Eastern Left, Western Left. Marx’s temptation is to reduce modernity to capitalism, to sidestep civil society and to leave the state in the background, as epiphenomena. Fehér and Heller, in the 1983 text, begin rather with the Weberian-Marxism ambit, that modernity is the period and the region in

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The concept of worldviews gives a visual sense to the notion of a shared ideological frame, but misleadingly suppresses the visual itself as mentioned in this paper, and it is argued that the notion makes sense in connection with particular technologies of representation, notably newspapers, and is no longer informative about political beliefs.
Abstract: The concept of worldviews gives a visual sense to the notion of a shared ideological frame, but misleadingly suppresses the visual itself. Against the standard image of worldviews, it is argued that the notion makes sense in connection with particular technologies of representation, notably newspapers, and is no longer informative about political beliefs. The example of Kristin Luker's work on abortion politics is used to show how weak the evidential base is for claims about worldviews. It is then argued that the kind of solidarity produced by ideological or `word', politics is different from the solidarities produced by the visual. Acts of political violence with strong visual representation produce sympathetic responses and are particularly effective in creating a sense of common victimhood. However, images also produce complex and conflicting responses that are less controllable. The visual impact of the World Trade Center attacks is a startling example of the differences between a politics of the eye ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that close attention to the temporality of change and novelty within fashion may allow an insight into a conception of interruption and the new, however, it cannot yield a politics.
Abstract: Walter Benjamin’s writings on fashion need to be read as engagements with the problem of historical time and a related politics of time. The aim of this article is to develop this position. Its point of orientation is Thesis XIV from the Theses on the Philosophy of History. What is argued is that close attention to the temporality of change and novelty within fashion may allow an insight into a conception of interruption and the ‘new’, however, it cannot yield a politics. Moreover, the link between fashion and utopianism allows for the development of a critique of the utopian dimension of Benjamin’s thought. The basis of that critique is the inherent politics of time in his own writings.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A comparative essay on two types of love: the Christian or Romantic type of love that equates love and death; and classical or amicable love with rhythmical rituals and conjugations is presented in this paper.
Abstract: This is a comparative essay on two types of love: the Christian or Romantic type of love that equates love and death; and classical or amicable love that equates love with rhythmical rituals and conjugations. The essay explores the role of instincts, desire, aggression, ecstasy, oblivion, pneumatics, meters and eternal recurrence in love. The question of the relation between love and marriage, love and adultery is posed. Historical forms of love are reviewed, from pederasty and renunciation to courtly and companionate love.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the analysis of the antinomies of modern culture in the work of Agnes Heller and Gyorgy Markus and argue that some weaknesses in Heller's account are intimately linked to the utopian aspiration of her understanding of philosophy.
Abstract: This paper compares the analysis of the antinomies of modern culture in the work of Agnes Heller and Gyorgy Markus. It is particularly concerned with Heller’s innovative introduction of a third optative concept of culture as cultural conversation. The rationale, contours and diagnosis linked to this normative concept are explored and contrasted to the historicising alternative presented in Markus. It is argued that some weaknesses in Heller’s account are intimately linked to the utopian aspiration of her understanding of philosophy.

Journal ArticleDOI
Trevor Hogan1
TL;DR: The authors read Carlyle as a reader of Goethe to recover why he proclaimed Goethe as the ''benignant spiritual revolutionist' of modernity and ''first of the moderns'.
Abstract: This article reads Carlyle as a reader of Goethe to recover why he proclaimed Goethe as the `benignant spiritual revolutionist' of modernity and `first of the moderns'. As Goethe's first major Engl...