Abstract:This essay argues for a materialist elaboration of the insight that historical time is nonidentical with itself. It sees in such time the seeds of utopian futurity that lie latent in the historical present yet are systematically foreclosed by it. The utopianism at issue involves a radical constriction of desire and a global redistribution of precarity, which together render the utopian imagination responsive to the finite character of the earth's resources. Certain works of contemporary literature are especially revelatory in this context. They invite us to live through the texture of their forms both the heterogeneity of historical time and the incipience of a transfigured future in which (to quote Anahid Nersessian) the world will be "lightened of the burden of furnishing abundance" because humans have become "agents of less catastrophic harm."
{"title":"Capitalism, Temporality, Precarity: Utopian Form and its Discontents In Contemporary Literature and Theory","authors":"Greg Forter","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay argues for a materialist elaboration of the insight that historical time is nonidentical with itself. It sees in such time the seeds of utopian futurity that lie latent in the historical present yet are systematically foreclosed by it. The utopianism at issue involves a radical constriction of desire and a global redistribution of precarity, which together render the utopian imagination responsive to the finite character of the earth's resources. Certain works of contemporary literature are especially revelatory in this context. They invite us to live through the texture of their forms both the heterogeneity of historical time and the incipience of a transfigured future in which (to quote Anahid Nersessian) the world will be \"lightened of the burden of furnishing abundance\" because humans have become \"agents of less catastrophic harm.\"","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"1 1","pages":"54 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73796124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Three key words in the subtitle of Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh’s most recent book announce the thematic limit of its drastically absolute title Omnicide. On the face of it, mania, fatality, and the “futureindelirium” are matters the book deals with in an attempt to excavate the most recent trends (from the middle of the last century or so) in literatures in Arabic, Persian, and French by Arab and Iranian writers. It does so in the format of a lexicon of manias, each of which are illustrated, elaborated, exemplified, echoed, and imaged through leitmotifs quoted from snatches of text from “vanguard” writers from that part of the world. The book is built around this format of lexicon, quotation, and thematic elaboration to perform a set of readings that transcend the territoriality attached to the literatures of the East and recuperate the texts’ maniacal energies. It does so with such deliberation that despite its playful presentation, a distinct thesis emerges at the intersection of three axes corresponding to its three subtitles: an antipsychological understanding of mania, a poeticfigural preoccupation with fatality, and an unselfconscious, even undramatic heralding of a futureindelirium that, according to the book’s narrative, is already underway. There are echoes here of preoccupations of several EuroAmerican modernisms: this review will focus on the deliberate, untheorized resurfacings of EuroAmerican theory in this otherwise innovative book about some avantgarde literatures of the East. In its partial archiving of “middleeastern” manias, we will note signs of a GrecoLatinity,
{"title":"Return to Greco-Latinity","authors":"Shad Naved","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0043","url":null,"abstract":"Three key words in the subtitle of Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh’s most recent book announce the thematic limit of its drastically absolute title Omnicide. On the face of it, mania, fatality, and the “futureindelirium” are matters the book deals with in an attempt to excavate the most recent trends (from the middle of the last century or so) in literatures in Arabic, Persian, and French by Arab and Iranian writers. It does so in the format of a lexicon of manias, each of which are illustrated, elaborated, exemplified, echoed, and imaged through leitmotifs quoted from snatches of text from “vanguard” writers from that part of the world. The book is built around this format of lexicon, quotation, and thematic elaboration to perform a set of readings that transcend the territoriality attached to the literatures of the East and recuperate the texts’ maniacal energies. It does so with such deliberation that despite its playful presentation, a distinct thesis emerges at the intersection of three axes corresponding to its three subtitles: an antipsychological understanding of mania, a poeticfigural preoccupation with fatality, and an unselfconscious, even undramatic heralding of a futureindelirium that, according to the book’s narrative, is already underway. There are echoes here of preoccupations of several EuroAmerican modernisms: this review will focus on the deliberate, untheorized resurfacings of EuroAmerican theory in this otherwise innovative book about some avantgarde literatures of the East. In its partial archiving of “middleeastern” manias, we will note signs of a GrecoLatinity,","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"30 1","pages":"197 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83342024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matory’s The Fetish Revisited relates lacunae in Freudian and Marxist theory to Afro- Atlantic spiritual and commercial life. Build-ing on a long tradition of critique of the “fetish- as- concept,” Matory resituates the fetish in a matrix of economic, ideational, and geopolitical relations. Beginning with the erotic life of middle- class, white Amer-ica, he demonstrates that fetish play, bondage, and sadomasochism and master/servant play disclose fantasies of denigrated Blackness— a literal embodiment of “kink” (2018, xii– xiii)— in which racialized and eroticized power may be negotiated and transacted. Matory is inter-ested not only in the imaginative dimensions of such play but also in the material objects that reside and circulate within its ritualized practice. As he moves into his introduction to Freud and Marx, Matory claims that “Freud knew as well as Marx and the Afro- Atlantic priests that things and the value attributed to them powerfully mediate human relationships” (xix). Social rivalries produce the fetish as a site of contested social meaning (xix– xx), powerfully recalling Pietz’s seminal article series on “The Problem of the Fetish” (1985, 1987, 1988). and hence cross-
{"title":"Rethinking Freud and Marx through Afro-Atlantic Religions","authors":"Brendon Nicholls","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Matory’s The Fetish Revisited relates lacunae in Freudian and Marxist theory to Afro- Atlantic spiritual and commercial life. Build-ing on a long tradition of critique of the “fetish- as- concept,” Matory resituates the fetish in a matrix of economic, ideational, and geopolitical relations. Beginning with the erotic life of middle- class, white Amer-ica, he demonstrates that fetish play, bondage, and sadomasochism and master/servant play disclose fantasies of denigrated Blackness— a literal embodiment of “kink” (2018, xii– xiii)— in which racialized and eroticized power may be negotiated and transacted. Matory is inter-ested not only in the imaginative dimensions of such play but also in the material objects that reside and circulate within its ritualized practice. As he moves into his introduction to Freud and Marx, Matory claims that “Freud knew as well as Marx and the Afro- Atlantic priests that things and the value attributed to them powerfully mediate human relationships” (xix). Social rivalries produce the fetish as a site of contested social meaning (xix– xx), powerfully recalling Pietz’s seminal article series on “The Problem of the Fetish” (1985, 1987, 1988). and hence cross-","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"17 1","pages":"145 - 155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91365472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Using Hannah Arendt's lectures on aesthetic judgement, this paper asks what it means to dismiss, reject, even hate a film, and how this might be useful to democracy. Through a discussion of the appearance of aesthetic judgment in Pretty Woman (Gary Marshall, 1990), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1988) this paper explores the repercussions of declaring "I hate this movie"—what it means when this is said and what kinds of projects it allows. Through examinations of these films, this article argues that hatred is a valuable response because it demands that the contours of its rejection be explored and guarded, and it ultimately yields something that might be called "thought." This article contends that hatred always requires explanation, an articulated defense that measures one's own mind against the one responsible for the film—and indeed against those who judge it differently. But the measured response that hatred demands also pushes up against its own contingency, always revealing its unstable grounding and its capacity to be overwritten and reevaluated. In this regard, hatred of a film can serve as a kind of testing ground for participation in democracy.
{"title":"On the Political Potential of Hating Movies","authors":"Kalling Heck","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0039","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Using Hannah Arendt's lectures on aesthetic judgement, this paper asks what it means to dismiss, reject, even hate a film, and how this might be useful to democracy. Through a discussion of the appearance of aesthetic judgment in Pretty Woman (Gary Marshall, 1990), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1988) this paper explores the repercussions of declaring \"I hate this movie\"—what it means when this is said and what kinds of projects it allows. Through examinations of these films, this article argues that hatred is a valuable response because it demands that the contours of its rejection be explored and guarded, and it ultimately yields something that might be called \"thought.\" This article contends that hatred always requires explanation, an articulated defense that measures one's own mind against the one responsible for the film—and indeed against those who judge it differently. But the measured response that hatred demands also pushes up against its own contingency, always revealing its unstable grounding and its capacity to be overwritten and reevaluated. In this regard, hatred of a film can serve as a kind of testing ground for participation in democracy.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"70 1","pages":"109 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81621324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:While politics and ethics are typically held to be distinct modes of judgment, that distinction often breaks down rather quickly in both theory and practice. This article focuses on one symptom of this breakdown: an academic trend that has been called "the ethical turn" in political theory. In response to social scientific approaches to politics that are seen as both too narrow and too structural, political theorists have increasingly drawn on ethical concepts that offer a promise of agency and relevance for their field. In doing so, however, contributions to the turn end up neglecting some valuable resources for theorizing politics. This article argues that solidarity, as a concept with stakes in both ethical judgment and political power, can be a useful tool for a political ethics.
{"title":"Solidarity and The Ethical Turn","authors":"Chad Lavin","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:While politics and ethics are typically held to be distinct modes of judgment, that distinction often breaks down rather quickly in both theory and practice. This article focuses on one symptom of this breakdown: an academic trend that has been called \"the ethical turn\" in political theory. In response to social scientific approaches to politics that are seen as both too narrow and too structural, political theorists have increasingly drawn on ethical concepts that offer a promise of agency and relevance for their field. In doing so, however, contributions to the turn end up neglecting some valuable resources for theorizing politics. This article argues that solidarity, as a concept with stakes in both ethical judgment and political power, can be a useful tool for a political ethics.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"4 3 1","pages":"108 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87874512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay particularizes Césaire's poetic project through the lens of spirit possession, showing how spirit possession offers a philosophical paradigm through which Césaire challenges the narrative of European humanism, anchoring Négritude in an alternative, decolonial sense of what it means to be human. Articulating a view of humanness that connects the world of ancient Greece to that of Haitian Vodou, Césaire's theorization of "poetry" (as a mode of knowledge, engagement, and production that involves energy exchanges and human participation in the living world) brings useful perspectives to current debates surrounding capitalist crises, ecological collapse, and epistemic freedom. Through the links made between "spirit," "poiesis," and "animism" here, this essay expands understandings of Césaire's work and Négritude. From a weak iteration of Pan-Africanism or strong senses of diaspora, the latter is reframed as a deep poetic sensibility with its own metaphysics and ethical commitment to earth and land and their entanglement with Being.
{"title":"Aimé Césaire: Possession as Paradigm of Consciousness","authors":"J. Allen-Paisant","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay particularizes Césaire's poetic project through the lens of spirit possession, showing how spirit possession offers a philosophical paradigm through which Césaire challenges the narrative of European humanism, anchoring Négritude in an alternative, decolonial sense of what it means to be human. Articulating a view of humanness that connects the world of ancient Greece to that of Haitian Vodou, Césaire's theorization of \"poetry\" (as a mode of knowledge, engagement, and production that involves energy exchanges and human participation in the living world) brings useful perspectives to current debates surrounding capitalist crises, ecological collapse, and epistemic freedom. Through the links made between \"spirit,\" \"poiesis,\" and \"animism\" here, this essay expands understandings of Césaire's work and Négritude. From a weak iteration of Pan-Africanism or strong senses of diaspora, the latter is reframed as a deep poetic sensibility with its own metaphysics and ethical commitment to earth and land and their entanglement with Being.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"62 1","pages":"1 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83012252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A book review of Shawn Michelle Smith's Photographic Returns.
摘要:对肖恩·米歇尔·史密斯的《摄影归来》进行书评。
{"title":"The Long Moment in Racial Justice","authors":"Rijuta Mehta","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Abstract:</p><p>A book review of Shawn Michelle Smith's <i>Photographic Returns</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"17 1","pages":"179 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87857331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The This body invisible of Stubblefield to masterfully intertwine art and critical theory with some remarkably lucid explanations of the actual operations of drone warfare. The ambitiously examines a wide range of artistic practices, from gallery- based installation art, art, film, digital imag -ery, and location- based art installations. The book’s engagement with drone art is at its best when demonstrating how drone warfare and the technical assemblage associated with it are used as a medium for art projects installed in galleries. Simultaneously, these terms— art, drone, medium— are problematized implicitly through-out
{"title":"Drone Art: The Everywhere War as Medium by Thomas Stubblefield (review)","authors":"Stephen Groening","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"The This body invisible of Stubblefield to masterfully intertwine art and critical theory with some remarkably lucid explanations of the actual operations of drone warfare. The ambitiously examines a wide range of artistic practices, from gallery- based installation art, art, film, digital imag -ery, and location- based art installations. The book’s engagement with drone art is at its best when demonstrating how drone warfare and the technical assemblage associated with it are used as a medium for art projects installed in galleries. Simultaneously, these terms— art, drone, medium— are problematized implicitly through-out","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"42 1","pages":"195 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80890947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The hubristic end to the Trump administration has brought the constitutionality of presidential actions once again into question. But is it sufficient to approach the "unconstitutional" acts of presidents merely in terms of criminality? We should ask whether or not the preoccupation with executive criminality among critical progressives ought to make way for a properly political view of those actions. The existentialist political writings of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben provide an entry point into the politicizations of authoritarian figures in a way that brings out both their radical quality and the disturbing vibration of legitimacy that attracts so many supporters. The argument is structured through a historical analysis of the Nixon presidency, in the context of the Watergate affair, so as implicitly to throw recent developments into a more effective critical relief.
{"title":"The Exceptional Politics of Richard Nixon: Politicking, Sovereignty, or \"High Crimes and Misdemeanors\"?","authors":"J. Welsh","doi":"10.1353/cul.2022.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2022.0026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The hubristic end to the Trump administration has brought the constitutionality of presidential actions once again into question. But is it sufficient to approach the \"unconstitutional\" acts of presidents merely in terms of criminality? We should ask whether or not the preoccupation with executive criminality among critical progressives ought to make way for a properly political view of those actions. The existentialist political writings of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben provide an entry point into the politicizations of authoritarian figures in a way that brings out both their radical quality and the disturbing vibration of legitimacy that attracts so many supporters. The argument is structured through a historical analysis of the Nixon presidency, in the context of the Watergate affair, so as implicitly to throw recent developments into a more effective critical relief.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":"61 6","pages":"119 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72371514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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