Walter Benjamin

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

WALTER BENJAMIN OCCUPIES a unique place in the history of modern revolutionary thought: he is the first Marxist to break radically with the ideology of progress. His thinking has therefore a distinct critical quality, which sets him apart from the dominant and “official” forms of historical materialism, and gives him a formidable methodological superiority. This peculiarity has to do with his ability to incorporate into the body of Marxist revolutionary theory insights from the Romantic critique of civilization and from the Jewish messianic tradition. [Read More]
Anarchism  Bolshevism  Critical theory  Frankfurt School  French Revolution  György Lukács  Historical materialism  History  Ideology  Karl Marx  Marxism  Profiles  Progress  Theology  Theory  Violence  Walter Benjamin 

The science that wasn't

The orthodox Marxism of the early Frankfurt School and the turn to Marxist Critical Theory

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

FROM THEIR CANONIZATION in the 1960s through their appropriation by postmodernism in the 1980s, the writings of the Frankfurt School have had their Marxian dimension minimized, vulgarized and ultimately ignored. Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer, the only names of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Theory’s roster that seem to be remembered today, have instead become characterized as anything from old-timey liberals to mystical eclectics; from Left Hegelian hippies to ivory tower elitists. [Read More]
History of the Left  Frankfurt school  Critical theory 

Requiem for the 60s

Response to a boycott of discussion of "40 years of 1968"

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY in Chicago, in coordination with several chapters of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Chicago (at the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College, Chicago) organized a public forum on “40 years of 1968: the problematic drama of the past in the present,” scheduled for the evening of Thursday, May 8 downtown at the School of the Art Institute. [Read More]
1960s  /20th Century  History of the Left 

Persepolis and the personal consequences of failure

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

PERSEPOLIS IS A FILM that does not take itself seriously enough. This is not a comment on the unadorned animation style. Nor am I referring to the narrative of the protagonist: a story of a girl raised in a left-wing milieu that succeeds in arousing quite a bit of empathy in the audience. It is the film’s treatment of depoliticization as a fait accompli and its persistent retreat to the safety of the personal that make it a fascinating symptom of politics today. [Read More]
Iran  Iranian Revolution  Persepolis  Film 

Capitalism and the environment

Interview with James Speth in NPR Worldview's series 'Critical Thinking on Capitalism,' March 26, 2008

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A PARADOX CONFRONTS AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISTS, according to James Gustave Speth, the Dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies: “We now have a flourishing environmental movement, a proliferating number of organisations, more and more money going into this, decades now of environmental legislation and programs, at all levels of government, and the environment keeps going downhill.” The contradiction, according to Speth, results from the U.S. environmental movement focusing too narrowly on working “within the system. [Read More]

"Let the dead bury the dead!"

Response to Principia Dialectica (UK) on May 1968

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE NEW MAYDAY MAGAZINE (UK) and Platypus have been in dialogue on the issues of anarchism and Marxism and the state of the “Left” today in light of history. (Please see “Organization, political action, history and consciousness” by Chris Cutrone for Platypus, and “Half-time Team Talk” by Trevor Bark for Mayday, in issues #2, February 2008, and #4, April-May 2008, respectively.) Principia Dialectica, another new British journal, also has taken note of Platypus (see “Weird gonzo leftoid journal,” April 15, 2008), specifically with our interview of Moishe Postone on “Marx after Marxism” (in issue #3, March 2008). [Read More]
1968  Anarchism  Exchanges  György Lukács  Marxism  Mayday  Moishe Postone  Principia Dialectica  Theodor W. Adorno  Trevor Bark  Walter Benjamin 

"Race" in social-historical and political context

 January 1, 0001  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Dear Editors, I would like to respond to Chris Cutrone’s article, “Review: Angela Davis ‘How does change happen?’” from the March 2008 issue #3. I agree with Cutrone’s general sentiment that we as a country have failed to productively engage the problem of race, and that an honest critique of capitalism is pretty much absent from American politics. However, one does not necessarily follow the other. I disagree that a discussion of capitalism must necessarily displace a discussion of race, a term which Cutrone disrespectfully frames in quotation marks and describes as a “distraction” and “inadequate category. [Read More]
Race  Angela Davis