Soren Whited

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009 SUSAN BUCK-MORSS’S RECENT OFFERING Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, takes critical aim at two targets: what she identifies as Eurocentric models of universal history, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rejection of any notion of universality whatsoever in favor of the postmodernist “plurality of alternative models” (ix). What she proposes instead is “a universal history worthy of the name” (x), by which she means one that does not give the European Enlightenment and its direct heirs a monopoly on the historical project of freedom. [Read More]

A PREFATORY STATEMENT FROM RETORT: Having talked over your questions at length, we find that they can be answered best by grouping together several of them and trying to spell out the key issues and assumptions we see underlying them. That way, we hope, the common ground between Retort and Platypus will be clear – as well as the nature of our disagreements. Soren Whited: How would you describe the historical and conceptual relationship between the commodity form – first articulated by Marx and further elaborated by Lukács as “the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects” – and the concept of spectacle – first formulated by Guy Debord as “capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image”? [Read More]

IN 1871 THE PARIS COMMUNE, a revolutionary body formed during the deep unrest following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, rose against the post-war provisional government of Adolphe Thiers and briefly held power in France. Two months after it took power, the Commune was brutally suppressed by the French army. In his film “La Commune,” released in 2002, director Peter Watkins orchestrated and documented a theatrical re-enactment of the Commune. At nearly six hours, the film explores the events of the Commune as well as its relevance for the present, and in so doing it is compelled to negotiate the myriad ways in which history bears on the present. [Read More]