Showing papers in "Thesis Eleven in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, Derrida complained that he had been read less and less well over almost twenty years, like my religion about which nobody understands anything, which was the trick.
Abstract: Toward the end of his life, Derrida complained that he had been ‘read less and less well over almost twenty years, like my religion about which nobody understands anything'. Derrida, ever the trick...
121 citations
TL;DR: The authors build on the literatures on biocapitalism and informationalism to develop the concept of "bio-informational capitalism" in order to articulate an eme...
Abstract: This essay builds on the literatures on ‘biocapitalism’ and ‘informationalism’ (or ‘informational capitalism’) to develop the concept of ‘bio-informational capitalism’ in order to articulate an eme...
45 citations
TL;DR: In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history as discussed by the authors, and the topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial pol...
Abstract: In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial pol...
41 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate Michel Foucault's 1978-79 lectures, published as The Birth of Biopolitics, to consider how he used the term neo-liberalism, and how this equates with its current uses in critical social and cultural theory.
Abstract: Neo-liberalism has become one of the boom concepts of our time. From its original reference point as a descriptor of the economics of the ‘Chicago School’ or authors such as Friedrich von Hayek, neo-liberalism has become an all-purpose concept, explanatory device and basis for social critique. This presentation evaluates Michel Foucault’s 1978–79 lectures, published as The Birth of Biopolitics, to consider how he used the term neo-liberalism, and how this equates with its current uses in critical social and cultural theory. It will be argued that Foucault did not understand neo-liberalism as a dominant ideology in these lectures, but rather as marking a point of inflection in the historical evolution of liberal political philosophies of government. It will also be argued that his interpretation of neo-liberalism was more nuanced and more comparative than more recent contributions. The article points towards an attempt to theorize comparative historical models of liberal capitalism.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors call attention to some basic problems and inner contradictions in the German sociologist Ulrich Beck's theory of the "world risk society" or reflexive (second) modernity, addressing the theoretical ambiguities that seem to characterize Beck's at the same time "social constructivist" and "realist" notion of risk.
Abstract: This paper calls attention to some basic problems and inner contradictions in the German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of the ‘(world) risk society’ or reflexive (second) modernity. A main thread in the critique is that of addressing the theoretical ambiguities that seem to characterize Beck’s at the same time ‘social constructivist’ and ‘realist’ notion of risk – ambiguities that seem to be repeated on the one hand in Beck’s view on the relation between knowledge and unawareness in reflexive modernity and on the other hand in his view on the role of the mass media in the ‘(world) risk society’. Moreover, Beck’s notions of second modernity, reflexivity, rationality and critique are critically examined. With the alternative positions discussed in the paper – represented by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Niklas Luhmann and Mitchell Dean – some indications are given as to how one might fruitfully elaborate on the problem of risk. Thus, rather than a mainly technology-driven new type of social reality, the ‘(world)...
34 citations
TL;DR: In the case of a social minefield, however, an explosion is likely to spread instantaneously, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in real time and prompting the "copy-cat" effect.
Abstract: Britain’s August riots were an explosion bound sooner or later to happen. Just like a minefield: one knows that some of the explosives will, true to their nature, sooner or later explode, but one doesn’t know where and when. In the case of a social minefield, however, an explosion is likely to spread instantaneously, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in the ‘real time’ and prompting the ‘copy-cat’ effect. This particular social minefield was created by the combination of consumerism with rising inequality. This was not a rebellion or an uprising of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority but a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers, people offended and humiliated by the display of riches to which they had been denied access.
31 citations
TL;DR: The concept of civilization is increasingly being used to capture the plurality of routes to and through the modern world order, however, the concept of civilisation betrays a colonial legacy.
Abstract: Civilizational analysis is increasingly being used to capture the plurality of routes to and through the modern world order. However, the concept of civilization betrays a colonial legacy, namely, ...
20 citations
TL;DR: In the early 20th century, male homosexuality emerged as a central theme of Weimar social and cultural crisis as it became possible for homosexual men to imagine an identity and a "life" for the first time.
Abstract: The perception of the Weimar Republic as the high-point of ‘classical modernity’ in which all areas of society were permeated by a fatal sense of crisis has been revised as an explanatory model in recent historiography. Historians have returned to this period with a new sense of the openness of the crisis environment, particularly in areas of social and cultural history. Male homosexuality emerged as a central theme of Weimar social and cultural crisis as it became possible for homosexual men to imagine an identity and a ‘life’ for the first time. These men began to understand their lives as a continuum in terms of their sexuality and to express their lives in writing. The discourse of masculinist homosexuality, which emerged during the first decades of the 20th century, was used by some homosexuals as a means to self-identification and self-validation in the open environment of post-war early Weimar. However, this speculative framework of masculine comradeship and warrior ethos became less and less tenab...
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that many operational defects of the concept of crisis arise from the concept's constitutive link to human perception and from its subsumption of complex interconnections of historical processes within different subsystems.
Abstract: Both in scholarship on the Weimar Republic and in historical research in general, many conceptions of ‘crisis’ tend to remain vague and difficult to operationalize. These operational defects of the concept of crisis arise inevitably, we argue, from the concept’s constitutive link to human perception on the one hand and from its subsumption of complex interconnections of historical processes within different subsystems on the other. Frequently today, in both ordinary and historiographical usage, this basic openness of the concept of crisis is foreclosed when it is deployed with a solely negative connotation of ‘downfall’ and ‘decline’, or of something being thrown into question or jeopardy. Such uses obscure a way in which a crisis can evoke not only the pessimistic sense of a threat to the old order but also the optimistic scenario of a chance for renewal. A one-sidedly negative understanding of crisis as prelude to calamity, we argue here, is problematic for historical research for two reasons. Firstly, ...
15 citations
TL;DR: The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida's thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA as discussed by the authors, and the strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative...
Abstract: The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida’s thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA. The strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative...
14 citations
TL;DR: Benjamin and Barthes provide the starting point for a series of inter-connected propositions which seek to return the theorization of photography to the primacy of the pro-filmic as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Benjamin and Barthes provide the starting point for a series of inter-connected propositions which seek to return the theorization of photography to the primacy of the pro-filmic. The index is recl...
TL;DR: Theodor Adorno as discussed by the authors argued that Adorno's pedagogical interventions are not a footnote to his social theory, but a key to understanding his entire oeuvre, and argued that the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one hand, and Adorno as a committed public educator should be understood.
Abstract: This article suggests reading Theodor Adorno not as a notoriously pessimistic sociologist but as a committed public educator. Partly drawing on still unpublished transcripts of lectures, public talks and radio broadcasts from the 1950s and ’60s, the article offers an account of Adorno’s concept and practice of a ‘democratic pedagogy’. The key question is how we should understand the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one hand, and Adorno the educator, on the other. It is argued that Adorno’s pedagogical interventions are not a footnote to his social theory, but a key to understanding his entire oeuvre.
TL;DR: The authors examines the process by which tea, a plant and product introduced into the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century as a colonial cash crop, became indigenized and popularized as chai, often regarded today as India's ‘national drink’.
Abstract: This essay examines the process by which tea, a plant and product introduced into the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century as a colonial cash crop, became indigenized and popularized as chai, often regarded today as India’s ‘national drink’. This process mainly occurred during the 20th century and involved aggressive and innovative marketing by both British and Indian commercial interests, advances in the technology of processing Assam tea, and changes in social space and practice, especially in urban areas.
TL;DR: Manila is one of the world's most fragmented, privatized and un-public of cities as mentioned in this paper, where poor and rich alike have their own government, infrastructure, and armies, shopping malls are the simulacra of public congregations once found in cathedrals and plazas, and household order is matched by streetside chaos, and personal cleanliness wars with public dirt.
Abstract: Manila is one of the world’s most fragmented, privatized and un-public of cities. Why is this so? This paper contemplates the seemingly immutable privacy of the city of Manila, and the paradoxical character of its publicity. Manila is our prime exemplar of the 21st-century mega-city whose apparent disorder discloses a coherent order which we here call ‘neo-patrimonial urbanism’. Manila is a city where poor and rich alike have their own government, infrastructure, and armies, the shopping malls are the simulacra of public congregations once found in cathedrals and plazas, and where household order is matched by streetside chaos, and personal cleanliness wars with public dirt. We nominate the key characteristics of this uncanny approximation of chaotic and discordant order – a polyphonous and polyrhythmic social order but one lacking harmony – and offer a historical sociology, a genealogy that traces an emblematic pattern across the colonizing periods of its emergent urban forms into the contemporary imposi...
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of Australian rock musician Lobby Loyde has been overlooked by Australia's popular music scholarship, and his role as a producer in the late 1970s until his death.
Abstract: This article contends that the influence of Australian rock musician Lobby Loyde has been overlooked by Australia’s popular music scholarship. The research examines Loyde’s significance and influence through the neglected sphere of his work (1966–1980) with The Coloured Balls, The Purple Hearts, The Wild Cherries, The Aztecs, Southern Electric, Sudden Electric and Rose Tattoo, and his role as producer in the late-1970s until his death. First, it explores how he has been discussed by his musical peers and respected Australian rock historians. Second, it details Loyde’s musical origins and work with early bands during the period in which he was first referred to as Australia’s first guitar hero. Third, it investigates the career and influence of The Coloured Balls, their relationship with the 1970s youth subculture known as the ‘sharpies’, and the media-fuelled moral panic which surrounded both the band and the sharpies. Fourth, it assesses Loyde’s work as a producer in the 1980s, and late-in-life recogniti...
TL;DR: The authors explores the riot as a form of collective action, considers the role of looting and arson within it, and the extent to which the actors involved find themselves part of multiple logics that mutually undermine each other.
Abstract: Just as with the riots of 1981, the riots of summer 2012 will play a key role in the reshaping of British society. Most analyses frame these events as pathologies of the poor or as contemporary expressions of Mertonian anomie. Drawing on the work of Randall Collins, this article explores the riot as a form of collective action, considers the role of looting and arson within it, and the extent to which the actors involved find themselves part of multiple logics that mutually undermine each other. The analysis highlights the importance of the embodied, mobile, temporal and visual dimensions of the riot, and argues that the social sciences need to develop conceptual tools and methods to both engage with such embodied events and to be part of the social debate about their meaning.
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TL;DR: In early August 2011, disturbances broke out in a number of English cities and all of a sudden it seemed as if all of the country was about to burst into flames as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In early August 2011, disturbances broke out in a number of English cities. What happened was broadcast globally, and all of a sudden it seemed as if all of the country was about to burst into flames. This short paper is offered by way of a ‘letter’ from England. It was written in late August 2011 and is an initial attempt to develop an understanding of why the disturbances broke out, what motivated the people who were involved and, indeed, why things were confined to England. Cities elsewhere in Britain experienced nothing. The paper identifies a crisis in the English social imaginary. The disturbances are understood as a conjunctural response to this crisis, a response highlighting the interregnum in the English social imaginary.
TL;DR: The German philosopher and intellectual historian Karl Lowith is known and discussed mainly in the English language via his major work on secularization, first written and published in English, and the more recently translated essays that criticize Martin Heidegger.
Abstract: The German philosopher and intellectual historian Karl Lowith is known and discussed mainly in the English language via his major work on secularization – Meaning in History, first written and published in English – and the more recently translated essays that criticize Martin Heidegger. However, Lowith’s body of work is rarely considered for the original contribution that it offers to the discourse on the questions of modernity and modern life. This oversight is due much to the way in which Hans Blumenberg and Jurgen Habermas have each ‘dealt’ with Lowith’s position; Lowith in each case becomes a flagstone in the path to their own theories. This article reappraises Lowith’s thought through an exploration of his major works, and discovers that the concepts and motivations behind the critical force of his intellectual histories suggest a more sensitive reading of the modern condition than his critics allow. His notions of nature, cosmos and eternity, and his steadfast skepticism, reveal Lowith to be a theo...
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that Salman Rushdie neutralizes the two by introducing what Ranciere calls a dissensus in the ethical-aesthetic hierarchy, which works on a principle of "excess" so that within the domain of aesthetics the ethical is pushed to its limits.
Abstract: This essay deals with the manner in which Salman Rushdie’s works engage with the heterogeneous logics of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Ranciere it is argued that Rushdie neutralizes the two by introducing what Ranciere calls a dissensus in the ethical-aesthetic hierarchy. The dissensus works on a principle of ‘excess’ so that within the domain of aesthetics the ethical is pushed to its limits. The order of desire (aesthetics) and the order of knowledge (ethics) are no longer seen as hierarchical and mutually exclusive categories. By examining two versions of an unpublished novel by Rushdie (‘Madame Rama’) it is suggested that Bollywood cinema functions as a mode in which the two orders come together. In this early and mercifully unpublished novel, one finds the beginnings of Rushdie’s belief that works of art are sites of ideological and ethical contestations.
TL;DR: The authors explored the shifts in contemporary urban Bengali cinema and map and historicize the main trends in relation to changes in the political fortunes of the city in this context, and tried to explore the shifts and shifts in Bengali Cinema.
Abstract: This article tries to explore the shifts in contemporary urban Bengali cinema and map and historicize the main trends in relation to changes in the political fortunes of the city In this context,
TL;DR: Adorno identifies to a certain extent with the great psychoanalytic riddle-solvers, Freud and Ferenczi, as he probes these contradictions as mentioned in this paper, and also approaches the problem as a sociologist.
Abstract: Psychoanalysis sets out to solve the riddles and enigmas of the psyche. For Adorno, however, psychoanalysis itself is an enigma. Why, he asks, have both the theory and its therapeutic applications become entangled in insoluble contradictions? Adorno identifies to a certain extent with the great psychoanalytic riddle-solvers, Freud and Ferenczi, as he probes these contradictions. He hopes, however, to move beyond the limits of a theory that reduces all phenomena to psychological factors, so he also approaches the problem as a sociologist. This perspective enables him to describe the static and dynamic aspects of the social structure within which psychoanalysis developed in the first half of the 20th century. And it frees him, furthermore, from the misconception that Freud passed on to most of his followers: the belief that they were pursuing a natural science of the soul, which would generate its own rigorously scientific psychological technique.
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that a German mood of antagonism with the West represents not a regressive ideology but the productive and intelligent outcome of a longstanding preeminence of philosophical questioning in German academic life since the later 19th century about European world pictures and their claims.
Abstract: Criticism of ‘the West’ and of ‘Western civilization’ in Germany in the early 20th century is generally most familiar today as a conservative force of the age. It is well-known that at the outbreak of war in August 1914 a longstanding German complex of resentment of the Western European powers exploded in a call to arms. Yet it needs to be stressed that not all prominent German bourgeois writers endorsed a wholly militant reading of the motif of German national-cultural ‘protest at the West’. By 1918 an array of voices could come to discern another kind of salient work of contention that refused apology for any kind of violent Kulturkrieg. The thesis defended in this article is that in sophisticated humanistic writing of the era, a German mood of antagonism with the West represents not a regressive ideology but the productive and intelligent outcome of a longstanding preeminence of philosophical questioning in German academic life since the later 19th century about European world pictures and their claims...
TL;DR: The commitment of Arnold Gehlen's commitment to National Socialism is mostly seen in close connection with National Socialism as mentioned in this paper, a commitment he never disavowed, and it is one of the most controversial figures of German intellectual history.
Abstract: Arnold Gehlen is one of the most controversial figures of German intellectual history. Gehlen’s commitment to National Socialism (a commitment he never disavowed) is mostly seen in close connection...
TL;DR: For many years, the downtown in Clarksdale, with a municipal population of 17,960 and located in the northern part of the Mississippi Delta, had lost its role as the centre providing a wide range o
Abstract: For many years, the downtown in Clarksdale, with a municipal population of 17,960 and located in the northern part of the Mississippi Delta, had lost its role as the centre providing a wide range o
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs central theoretical positions in the discourse of modernity in the Weimar Republic in the double semantic context of crisis and contingency, and provides hegemonial evidence for the political and aesthetic concepts of totality in classical modernity.
Abstract: The text reconstructs central theoretical positions in the discourse of modernity in the Weimar Republic in the double semantic context of crisis and contingency. On the one hand, these categories ground the dialectic of destruction and construction, which provides hegemonial evidence for the political and aesthetic concepts of totality in classical modernity. On the other hand, these categories also ground the openness of a thinking in possibilities, which remained marginal in the Weimar Republic but has become dominant in the postmodern critique of modernity.
TL;DR: In this paper, the social and cultural construction of markets is explored in the context of China, and the authors explore how to get markets where people are willing to participate in the construction process.
Abstract: This article reflects on some themes in Harrison White’s work in the context of China, where the social and cultural construction of markets is quite literal. We explore how we get markets where pr...
TL;DR: The concept of autonomy as presented in the works of Cornelius Castoriadis offers the possibility of expressing the core aims of a radical politics in a manner divorced from a discredited Marxist or communist past as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The concept of autonomy as presented in the works of Cornelius Castoriadis offers the possibility of expressing the core aims of a radical politics in a manner divorced from a discredited Marxist or communist past. The concept occasions ongoing debate about its true meaning as well as its implications and consequences. Some people question the value and viability of autonomy as a political aim. This article attempts to elucidate and defend what I see as the central meanings and implications of the concept of autonomy, particularly in its political dimension. The concept of autonomy is considered in its relationship to the ideas of project, self-limitation, and democracy, and the socialist tradition.
TL;DR: In this article, Jurgen Habermas and Claude Lefort try to explain the relationship between universality and particularity in modern democratic societies, politics and civil society, and they show how these two concepts are related.
Abstract: This article shows how Jurgen Habermas and Claude Lefort try to explain the relationship between universality and particularity in modern democratic societies, politics and civil society. It will d...
TL;DR: In the crisis scenarios of modernity which flourished in the Weimar Republic, technology is typically seen as destiny or fate as discussed by the authors, and the coming struggle for world power in terms of the integration of production and technology in the industrial-military complex.
Abstract: In the crisis scenarios of modernity which flourished in the Weimar Republic, technology is typically seen as destiny or fate. Thus Oswald Spengler and Ernst Junger both construe the coming struggle for world power in terms of the integration of production and technology in the industrial-military complex. Martin Heidegger’s critique of Junger’s blueprint for total mobilization in Der Arbeiter (1932) springs from his reading of modernity as nihilism. Just as the crisis of Western history is reaching completion in modernity, so equally metaphysics reaches completion in modern technology. Heidegger’s essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, written after the Second World War, is contrasted with Ernst Cassirer’s essay ‘Form and Technology’ (1930), directed against Spengler’s regression to irrationalism, in terms of two fundamental relationships to the world: Heidegger’s Greek-oriented ontology of world disclosure and Cassirer’s modern ontology of construction (the possibilization of the world) with refere...
TL;DR: The work of anthropologists on the Kalingas of the Philippine Cordilleras and their tattooing practices is considered for heuristic purposes as discussed by the authors, where the body becomes a repository of significant life events and rituals concretized by tattoos.
Abstract: An archive is an integral part of literate and social life and is in the custody of political institutions for their historical value. It is argued that societies who lack the faculty of recording histories contribute to the archive-making process in a different context. To advance this, the work of anthropologists on the Igorots, more specifically the Kalingas, of the Philippine Cordilleras, and their tattooing practices are considered for heuristic purposes. It is in these societies, where the concept of the Western archive is absent, that the body becomes a repository of significant life events and rituals concretized by tattoos. Tattooing becomes a form of memory on how bodies remember and create narratives and counter-narratives. To serve as a provocation for further research, Derrida’s two-fold understanding of the archive is utilized. The archive, on the one hand, as a commencement that evokes the writing of the archive and, on the other hand, the understanding of the tattoos as disjointed and inco...