Crisis of the eurozone and the Left

Responses to the global economic downturn

THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT is from an event that took place on April 2, 2012 at the University of Chicago, in conjunction with the 2012 Platypus International Convention, titled “Responses to the Global Economic Downturn.” Members and contacts of the Platypus Affiliated Society in Europe were invited to speak on their experience of leftist responses to the economic downturn. The speakers included Haseeb Ahmed (Netherlands), Valentin Badura (Austria), Cengiz Kulac (Austria), Moritz Roeger (Germany), Jerzy Sobotta (Germany), and Thodoris Velissaris (Greece). [Read More]

The Occupy movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today

The Occupy movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today
ON NOVEMBER 5, 2011, using questions formulated together with Chris Cutrone, Haseeb Ahmed interviewed Slavoj Žižek at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Haseeb Ahmed: Are we currently – after Tahrir Square and the eruption of the Occupy movement – living through a renaissance of the Left? If so, what is the historical legacy that stands in need of reconsideration? [Read More]

Book Review: Detlev Claussen. *Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius*

Book Review: Detlev Claussen. *Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius*
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. FOR YEARS THEODOR ADORNO’S theoretical work has suffered from either neglect or semi-hostile “interpretation.” It is therefore refreshing to see Detlev Claussen, who studied under Adorno at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1971, take a more sympathetic approach to the study of Adorno’s philosophy and intellectual life. In Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, Claussen attempts to track the historical and biographical factors that influenced Adorno’s critical theory and, in doing so, strives to carefully reconstruct both the changing context and the abiding problematic that Adorno was attempting to grasp in and through his work. [Read More]