International HErbert Marcuse Society

FROMM SOCIETY 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: March 15, 2024

Call for Abstracts -- Erich Fromm Society of North America.pdf

A NEW BOOK

to be edited by

Alexander Kurunczi, Kenneth Rösen, and Sarah M. Surak

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS


Against One-Dimensionality:

Pedagogy, the Political,

and Prefiguration in Marcuse


We are seeking contributions for the book project Against One-Dimensionality: Pedagogy, the Political, and Prefiguration in Marcuse, edited by Alexander Kurunczi (University of Vienna), Kenneth Rösen, and Sarah M. Surak (Salisbury University). The volume will serve as a critical reconstruction and interrogation of Marcuse’s (and Marcusean) perspectives on the sphere of pedagogy, practices of social work, and (prefigurative) projects of emancipatory struggles.


DEADLINE

January 15, 2024


Amidst the “core thinkers” of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse offers arguably some of the most productive resources to engage with political struggles. His stature as a politically engaged intellectual, his personal involvement in, for instance, the student protests of 1968 and the nascent feminist movement in the U.S., and his sympathetic yet keen eye for the newly emergent emancipatory struggles of his time make him an indispensable voice of the Frankfurt School’s emphasis on the mutually imbricated, co-constitutive character of theory and praxis. Given the sheer ubiquity of crises characterising our contemporary conjuncture (including looming ecological destruction, the erosion of social security systems, declining possibilities of self-sustenance, violent migration and border regimes as well as proliferating violence against women and people of colour, to name but a few), Marcuse’s insistence on political struggle and on theory’s importance in carving out a place for these struggles remains enormously timely. At the same time, Marcuse imparts the insight that the connection between theory and praxis maps onto another – comparably pivotal – connection: namely the one between pedagogy and emancipation – as inextricable as it is politically indispensable. This insight provides a promising starting point from which to embark on a more thorough analysis of Marcuse’s work from a pedagogical vantage point.


Marcuse’s perspective on education is, at the same time, bound up with his trenchant and compelling critique of instrumental rationality, most prominently put forward in One-Dimensional Man. It offers resources for critiquing the contemporary narrowing of educative possibilities and spaces under neoliberalism. Given the hegemony of inherently

instrumental concepts such as ‘competency’ and ‘resilience’ in pedagogical contexts, the search for alternatives appears to be paramount, as different understandings of pedagogy and educational practice are – in the hegemonic vernacular – often accused of being unrealistic, naïve and oblivious of social, political, and pedagogical reality. Marcuse’s reflections on how to bring about another world, in contrast, emphasise that educative contexts and socially and politically transformative movements cross-fertilise, while his demand that critical pedagogy has to “counteract the deceptive neutrality and often plainly apologetic teaching” (1969, 44) positions critical pedagogy as diametrically opposed to capitalist forms of training and indoctrination. With Marcuse, we contend, the attempt of (re-)establishing hope, care, and empowerment as realistically utopian social practices at the heart of the pedagogical project can be thrown into sharper relief, both theoretically and in terms of actual practical projects and attempts that try to implement these new norms of critical pedagogy. Instead of casually dismissing these attempts as being doomed to fail, Marcuse’s emphasis on utopian potentials opens up avenues for critical interrogation and a re-imagination of what is possible and how it can be achieved.


Taking seriously Marcuse’s ongoing reflection on, commitment to, and solidarity with political struggles of emancipation, Against One-Dimensionality aims at serving as a focal point for combining theory and praxis, for thinking with, against, and beyond Marcuse. Written for undergraduates, graduate students, junior researchers, senior scholars, and practitioners, this edition brings together a theoretical synthesis of Marcuse’s theory of education with a deployment of his social critique, while simultaneously offering perspectives on the practices of critical education and their liberatory potentials. In that respect, actualising his thought in the context of pedagogy constitutes an eminently political project; in Marcuse’s words, this means “education which turns into praxis: demonstration, confrontation, rebellion” (1969, 40). We believe that Marcuse is uniquely illuminating in articulating the possibilities for real-world praxis without falling prey to either cruel optimism or an unhelpful and unfeasible abstract utopianism.


The volume will be comprised of three sections, which can be motivated by the following considerations:


1) Pedagogy in/of Marcuse: in which contributions will highlight the conceptual

possibilities of Marcuse’s thought for pedagogical purposes and the implications of

his thinking for what education should ideally and conceptually strive for and render

attainable.


2) Education as Object of Critique: in which contributors will make clear the

consequences of our current trajectory. This section zeroes in on an analysis of

contemporary forms of education regimes and how they contribute to stabilising

current structures of power, i.e., neoliberal, cis-heteropatriarchal, white

supremacist/racist, ableist, speciest capitalism. For example, this could focus on

forms of actually-existing education such as scrutinising global pedagogical practices

like standardised testing or the discourse of heterodox economic education. It could

also problematise education policies and their cultural or socio-economical material

impact such as racialised forms of predatory inclusion in the context of the US or the

UK or the implementation of particular educational programmes in the context of

Structural Adjustment Programmes in the global South.


3) Social Work, Counter-Hegemony, and Prefiguration: here, practices of resistance

are explored and examined. Building upon the work of educators all around the

globe, this section is dedicated to critically assessing the emancipatory potentials and

perils of complicity inherent in extant forms of critical pedagogy. It can tackle the

crucial question of how to engage the centrality of desire and affect in a potential

post-capitalist world and how this influences pedagogical practice. Similarly, we

invite texts that scrutinise the ways in which prefiguration is a politically precarious

concept in educative settings and whether (as well as how) resistant practices can

develop lasting effects and be institutionally anchored. This section also makes

possible further reflections on the epistemic and material challenges that even critical

pedagogical projects might be confronted with and the pitfalls they might fall prey to.


How To Submit: 


We will collect proposals until 15 January 2024. Authors will be notified about their abstracts’ status shortly thereafter; manuscripts will be due on 1 August. Please send your proposals to alexander.kurunczi@univie.ac.at. Please provide a working title, 400-500 word abstract of the proposed piece, an indication which section you would like the piece to appear in as well as a short bio note (approx..150 words).


All contributions will undergo review by the editorial team before being accepted into the volume. In particular, we welcome contributions from scholars from the global south, scholars of colour, queer scholars, disabled scholars, and women and other gender marginalised scholars. We also welcome contributions from educators and practitioners.

Walter Benjamin / Image by  Charlotte Joël, 1929.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: January 15, 2024

Reapproaching

Walter Benjamin:

The Task of Theory Today 

2024


Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism

The University of Western Ontario

London, CANADA


CONFERENCE INFORMATION 

       Solidarity and          Class Struggle 2024

 

Sixteenth Biennial Conference

Radical Philosophy Association 


hosted by 

Utah Valley University & University of Utah

October 10-12, 2024

Salt Lake City, UTAH, USA

 

Keynote Speakers: 

Banu Bargu (University of California, Santa Cruz)

John Bellamy Foster (University of Oregon) 

Taking the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death as an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities and problems faced by contemporary political movements, we are excited to invite papers on the theme, “Solidarity and Class Struggle,” to our 16th biennial conference. The war on the working class is waged with increasing violence, even as it takes different forms in various contexts. While capitalist exploitation characterizes the experience of all but a few of the world’s human inhabitants, the forms of oppression faced by those living in the global periphery, racial and ethnic others, migrants and stateless persons, women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other marginalized groups seem to complicate the picture of a working class united by universal interests. The question then arises as to the possibility of a shared struggle of the exploited despite their uneven experiences of oppression. How can class struggle help us overcome the barriers to unity? What are the conditions allowing for solidarity across difference?

 

Recognizing that solidarity and class struggle take many forms today, we welcome a broad variety of approaches to our conference’s topic, or in any area of radical philosophy. We are particularly interested in papers addressing any of the following themes:

 

Submissions

The Radical Philosophy Association Conference Program Committee invites submissions of 250-500 word abstracts for talks, papers, workshops, or roundtable discussions. In keeping with the spirit of radical thinking embodied by the RPA, we also encourage submissions that employ formats and media that challenge the standard conference presentation (including workshops, interactive sessions, etc.). In recognition that radical philosophy is often done outside traditional philosophical settings, we want to encourage proposals from those working in other disciplines and/or outside of academia. We especially welcome contributions from those often excluded from or marginalized in academic philosophy, including BIPOC, LGBT+, persons with disabilities, and poor and working-class people.

 

Please submit paper, workshop, or other proposals related to the conference theme or general themes of the RPA as an email attachment (pdf, docx, doc, or txt) to radical.philosophy.association@gmail.com by February 15, 2024. Please identify if the submission is from a graduate student, so it can be considered for the Iris Marion Young Prize for Best Graduate Paper. 

Teoria CRITICA em minas / Brasil 2023

On hundred years ago, in March, 1923, the Institute of Social Research, as an academic institution of the University of Frankfurt, was founded. Felix Weil financed the buildingwith money from his family's farm, a coffee plantation in Uruguay, South America. Weil's project was the institutionalization of Marxist studies beyond the confines of the then current orthodox ideology of the Communist Party. 

In October 1930, Max Horkheimer became director of the Institute, introducing a new tone, echoing the young Marx and the later Freud. The interwoven thoughts of these two thinkers is the blueprint of the Institute of Social Research, aka Frankfurt School, that we, scholars and activists of Minas Gerais, Brasil, considering the inflection it represents in the history of Philosophy and Social Studies, desire to celebrate and renew for our times. To keep the fire burning! 

Together with an outstanding group of Brasilian professors and students, we have invited Professor Arnold Farr (University of Kentucky, USA), who created the International Herbert Marcuse Society in 2005. We also invite you all to join us in this centenary celebration: body and/or soul. 

Repeating Marcuse, weitermachen.... 

Professor Andrew Feenberg

[Image: Verso]

ANDREW FEENBERG at University of Lorraine 2023

HERBERT MARCUSE, MARX & la psychologie du fascisme

On October 9, 2023, at 9:30 am (CANADA / Pacific Time), Professor Andrew Feenberg will give a talk on Marcuse, Freud and fascism for the University of Lorraine. The talk will be in French. Here is the information from the organizers. You can join at https://sciencespo.zoom.us/j/98082282760#success 

MARIA MIES

1931-2023

international webinar on the significance of the ecofeminist Marxist legacy of Maria Mies 

7 JUNE 2023

11:00am (Delhi time)


Sponsored by 

School of Gender and Development Studies

Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)

Delhi, INDIA

Grassroot activists will join university faculty, including Professors Marilia Mello Pisani (BRASIL), Farida Akhter (BANGLADESH), Chhaya Dattar (INDIA), Vibhuti Patel (INDIA), Savita Singh (INDIA), and Sunita Dhail (INDIA),  to reflect on the foundational work of Maria Mies.

GOOGLE LINK:

meet.google.com/oyz-rsoa-osq

a landmark work in feminist theory and development studies

"It is my thesis that this general production of life, or subsistence production - mainly performed through the non-wage labour of women and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and peasants in the colonies - constitutes the perennial basis upon which 'capitalist productive labour' can be built up and exploited." [Maria Mies, 1986]

Andrew Feenberg: Philosophy of Technology

Bonn University 2023

Professor Andrew Feenberg introduces the field of philosophy of technology as a necessary and valuable discourse for current times. The lecture centers around critical theory of technology and will be inspired by Prof. Dr. Feenberg’s latest book The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis (Verso, 2023).

Dr. Feenberg is a prominent figure of what is called the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. His approach, Critical Constructivism, provides a theoretical toolkit for assessing technology design in light of political choice. His approach combines critical theory as championed by Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School with a sociological constructivist lens on technology associated with Science and Technology Studies.

No registration required and open to all! / Associated workshop with Prof. Feenberg on June 16, 2023.

Funded by Bonner Graduiertenzentrum. Event website link.

"Digital Publics: Images, Discourse & Screens" SUMMER SCHOOL 2023

The inaugural Theory, Culture & Society Summer School 2023 will take place from 11-16 September 2023, at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.

The Summer School seeks to provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for research, aimed at established and early career researchers, and also providing opportunities for postgraduate students.

The University of Klagenfurt, situated in the Austrian Alps, provides an inspiring location, where participants will have the opportunity to explore contemporary critical debates, enhance skills and literacies for research and publishing, and share in a cultural program. A key theme for this year's gathering is "Digital Publics: Images, Discourse & Screens", building on the recent Special Issue of Theory, Culture & Society, ‘A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?’ (edited by Martin Seeliger Sebastian Sevignani; and including a new contemporary reflection by Jürgen Habermas).

Places are limited. Participants can apply via an online platform by providing a CV. As part of a "work-in-progress" strand, participants also can apply to discuss their research projects with the wider group (more details are available online).

The course fee is 400 Euro if you apply by 1 June 2023, after which the fee is 500 Euro. The fee covers all seminars, workshops, and cultural programs, as well as lunch and refreshments over 5 days. 4 travel bursaries (500 Euro) will be provided based on the quality of individual applications and with attention given to supporting diversity. To be eligible for consideration for the travel bursary, applications must be submitted by 19 June 2023.

—Mike Featherstone, Sunil Manghani, Tomoko Tamari, and Rainer Winter


Just Published 2023

Andrew Feenberg, who holds the holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, is the author of Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (1981), Critical Theory of Technology (1991), Alternative Modernity (1995), Questioning Technology (1999), When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The May Events of 1968 (2001), Transforming Technology (2002), Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (2005), and Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (2010), The Philosophy of Praxis (2014), Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason (2017), and Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity (2019). 

“A student and friend of Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s, Andrew Fenberg gives in this new book an outstanding contribution not only to the knowledge of his philosophy, but also to the ‘ruthless criticism’ of advanced capitalism. Feenberg shows, with great insight, how Marcuse’s Marxism, rooted in Phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, and Freudian Eros, was able to combine rationality and imagination, producing a radical version of Critical Theory which won the hearts and souls of the rebellious youth of the 1960’s. And which is still very much relevant in our times, because, as Feenberg concludes, climate change validates his revolutionary call for a new society, based on life-affirmative values.”

—Michael Löwy






“For a half century, Andrew Feenberg has tirelessly explicated, interrogated and applied the lessons of his controversial mentor, Herbert Marcuse. The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing is the culmination of these efforts, building on the strengths of Marcuse’s thought, while candidly confronting its weaknesses, in the hope of convincing a new generation of readers of its abiding relevance.”

—Martin Jay

“Andrew Feenberg’s new book is a tour de force. With detailed yet crystal-clear analyses of Marcuse’s major writings in their historical context, it reconstructs the implicit ontology of meaning that sustains Marcuse’s unique version of critical theory. Arguing that Marcuse’s embrace of phenomenology far outlived his break with Heidegger, Feenberg demonstrates its importance in chapters devoted to Marcuse’s reading of Marx, Hegel, and Freud, engaging unflinchingly, yet constructively, with the more controversial aspects of those readings and the famous debates they provoked. Two final chapters—on techno-science and on the environmental crisis—concretize the potential contained in Marcuse’s idea of ‘libidinous reason’ for tackling the ideological and structural impasses of our own desperate times.”

—Steven Crowell


“The title of Feenberg’s book is to be taken literally: the ruthless critique of everything existing is today needed more than ever, and this critique has to denounce ruthlessly also the limitations of today’s forms of Leftist critiques of the establishment which de facto help the establishment to reproduce itself. Is political correctness the right way to undermine sexism and racism? Is the elevation of nature into Mother Earth the right way to prevent the destruction of our environment? In short, what we need is to repeat today what Marcuse, in his critique of traditional Marxism, did in the 1960s, and Feenberg does this at the highest possible level.”

—Slavoj Žižek 

BOOK REVIEW

Carl Cassegård, review of Andrew Feenberg's The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing, 

in Philosophy and Social Criticism 2023: 1-7. DOI: 10.1177/01914537231191559

The Singularity of Stanley Aronowitz 2023

Friday, March 3rd, 11AM-7PM ET 

CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY


Join Cornel West, Immanuel Ness, Kristin Lawler, Sohnya Sayers, Richard Wolff, and more to discuss the work of Stanley Aronowitz and his impact. 

For more information email: pbratsis@bmcc.cuny.edu

Verso Blog 2022


HERBERT MARCUSE,

a thinker to wake up the left

"Herbert Marcuse's ideas animated young people's protests in 1968, but today he's rarely discussed. Simon Blin argues that it's time to return to Marcuse's radical ideas in order to think anew about the struggles we face today."

*Read the article here.*

This article was originally published by Libération on July 20, 2022.

Vincent W. Lloyd is associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. His previous books include Black Natural Law and the coedited Race and Secularism in America. He coedits the journal Political Theology.

Yale University Press Podcast

Episode 93: Vincent W. Lloyd on Black Dignity 

In this episode (November 22, 2022) of the Yale University Press podcast, we talk to author Vincent W. Lloyd about his new book, Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination. In what might be called a work of observational philosophy—an effort to describe the philosophy underlying the Black Lives Matter movement—Lloyd defines dignity as something performative, not an essential quality but an action: struggle against domination.

Robert T. Tally Jr. 2022

Another timely and very provocative new book from Robert T. Tally Jr. has just been published and is now available.

***

From the Los Angeles Review of Books:

Robert Scott probes the “conditions of imagination under late capitalism” in his review of Robert T. Tally Jr.’s For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism. 

***

"An exuberant and erudite take-down of those who think things are pretty much OK, so critique is superfluous. Tally calls out the logic and timing of the dog-whistle school of anti-critique, who have done their part to encourage the recent frenzy over Critical Race Theory and other bits of populist anti-intellectualism. But rather than calling its opponents names, this books lays before them a formidably nuanced and eloquent example of critique. We nattering nabobs of negativism have found ourselves a joyous and principled defender."

Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

***

Robert T. Tally Jr. teaches American and world literature at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature, and he is active in the emerging fields of geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities. Tally is the editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series, and he has published several books, as well as dozens of essays and reviews, on literature, theory, and criticism. Much of his work draws upon and interprets Critical Theory, including the work of Herbert Marcuse.

Charles Reitz 2022

Charles Reitz's important new book—the latest work from his Ecosocialist EarthCommonwealth Project—has just been published and is now available.

"Charles Reitz is a major scholar of the work of Herbert Marcuse and an important commentator on the global crises faced by contemporary society."

—Arnold L. Farr, University of Kentucky

"To the rising fascist threat...Reitz counterposes the themes of ecology and humanism analyzed in a global, multicultural light, from European socialist humanism to African Ubuntu."

Kevin B. Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Charles Reitz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Social Science, Kansas City Kansas Community College. His previous books include Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (2000); Crisis and Commonwealth: Marcuse, Marx, McLaren (2013); Philosophy & Critical Pedagogy: Insurrection & Commonwealth (2016); and, Ecology and Revolution: Herbert Marcuse and the Challenge of a New World System Today (2019).

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS

Previously Unpublished Lectures by Herbert Marcuse

The Marcuse Society is pleased to announce that the following book of five previously unpublished lectures by Herbert Marcuse is now available.

Available now for sale.