Overview of all pages with the authors #Chris Mansour

The Japanese Left

March 2, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN THE SPIRIT of the 50-year anniversary of 1968, Chris Mansour of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed William Andrews about the legacy of the New Left in Japan. William Andrews is a writer, translator, editor, and independent researcher based in Tokyo. He is originally from London and currently a graduate student at Sophia University. He published a book in 2016 entitled Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicals and Counterculture, From 1945 to Fukushima, followed in 2018 by The Japanese Red Army: A Short History, which was published in German. [Read More]

Japan

Back to Enlightenment values

February 3, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 2, 2017, Chris Mansour interviewed Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked! and a panelist on a conversation that took place the night before entitled Is the Left Eating Itself?, part of an international discussion linked to Spiked!’s Unsafe Space Tour, which aimed to tackle issues such as campus culture, free speech, and Title IX. A recording of the conversation can be found at https://archive.org/details/RMONeill. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. [Read More]

Spiked! Brendan O'Neill Brexit

Introduction to "Remarks on the Authoritarian Personality"

November 8, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO CLAIM that a person, social group, or historical moment is authoritarian by varying degrees? In what way can the emergence of modern authoritarianism be accounted for and how would it be overcome? These were central questions in the landmark 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality (AP), coauthored by T.W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford.1 AP emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, a time when finding answers to the rise of fascism was a desideratum for intellectuals and political figures. [Read More]

Theodor W. Adorno Authoritarianism Authoritarian Personality

Art, a modern phenomenon

June 1, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 18, 2014, Chris Mansour, a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society in New York, interviewed Larry Shiner, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, History, and Visual Arts at The University of Illinois, Springfield and author of The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (2001), in which he argues that the category of art is a modern invention. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Chris Mansour: You first wrote The Invention of Art in 2001, nearly 15 years ago. [Read More]

Art Visual Art Larry Shiner

Utopia and reality

December 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2012, Chris Mansour interviewed Stephen Eric Bronner, a professor at Rutgers University and author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary for Our Times (1980), Socialism Unbound (1990), Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists (1994), and Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement (2004), among many others. His most recent book is Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, and Utopia. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. [Read More]

Art Art and Politics Stephen Eric Bronner Rosa Luxemburg Modernism Utopia

The occupation of art's labor

April 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 28, 2011, Chris Mansour interviewed Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (2009). Mansour and Bryan-Wilson talked about the history of the Art Workers’ Coalition and its political relevance today, in light of the increasing involvement of artists and artistic strategies in the Occupy movement. What follows is an edited transcript. [Read More]

Art Art Workers' Coalition Artistic labor Guerrilla Art Action Group Julia Bryan-Wilson Occupy Wall Street Art and Culture

The antinomy of art and politics

A critique of art as "cultural resistance"

August 31, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_AT THE 2011 LEFT FORUM, held at Pace University between March 18–21, Platypus hosted a conversation on the theme of Aesthetics in Protests. Panelists Stephen Duncombe (Reclaim the Streets), Marc Herbst (Journal of Aesthetics and Protest), Chris Mansour (Platypus), Laurel Whitney (The Yes Men), were asked to consider: “What are the historical roots that contribute to the use of current aesthetic interventions in political protests? In what ways do they expand or limit the possibilities for protests to transform the social order? [Read More]

Art Art and Politics Left Forum Art and culture

Postcolonialism or postmodernism?

April 2, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 11, 2011 – the day Hosni Mubarak resigned the office of President of Egypt – Chris Mansour interviewed Susan Buck-Morss, professor of political philosophy and social theory at Cornell University and author of The Origin of Negative Dialectics and Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, on behalf of The Platypus Review. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Chris Mansour: What were the stakes of introducing Critical Theory into a postmodern culture that widely considered its ideas obsolete? [Read More]

Marxism Susan Buck-Morss colonialism postcolonialism postmodernism modernism Egypt Islam history Theodor W. Adorno

Praxis, theory, and the unmakeable

March 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 19, 2011, Chris Mansour of Platypus interviewed Robert Hullot-Kentor, noted Adorno translator and author of Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. Chris Mansour: For several decades you have been translating and interpreting the relevance of Adorno’s thought for us. In your most recent essays, however, it seems you have mostly wanted to save Adorno’s ideas from appropriation by the postmodern and contemporary canon, which you claim have done “immense damage” to his insights. [Read More]

Art Critical theory Francis Bacon Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Martin Heidegger Karl Marx Robert Hullot-Kentor Theodor W. Adorno

I Can't Go On, I'll Go On

A Response to 'Questionnaire on ''The Contemporary''' in 'October' and 'What is Contemporary Art?' in 'e-flux'

October 8, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into. —Samuel Beckett, Molloy IN WALTER BENJAMIN’S MAGNUM OPUS, The Arcades Project, capitalist modernity is in several instances depicted as a “hellish” existence.1 He describes this condition as history continuing to truck along in its course, but only doing so regressively. [Read More]

Art Art and Culture