Changes in Art and Society

A View From the Present

 March 31, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel held on March 31st, 2012 at the Fourth Annual Platypus International Convention, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Video Recording Transcript in Platypus Review #46 Panelists Mary Jane Jacob (School of the Art Institute) Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois Chicago) Robert Pippin (University of Chicago) Description Hegel famously remarked that the task of philosophy was to “comprehend its own time in thought.” In a sense, we can extend this as the raison d’etre for artistic production, albeit in a modified way: art’s task is to “comprehend its own time in form. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2012  Aesthetics  Art  Culture  Politics  Society 

Art, Culture, and Politics

Marxist Approaches

 April 30, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel held as part of the third annual Platypus International Convention, on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element A transcript of Bret Schneider’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #37 Panelists Omair Hussain Lucy Parker Pac Pobric Bret Schneider Description After its apparent exhaustion as a project of social transformation, Marxism seems to remain alive as a cultural and hermeneutic endeavor. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2011  Aesthetics  Art  Contemporary art  Culture  Leon Trotsky  Marxism  Politics  Jacques Rancière  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

Cultural Studies in the Academy

Towards a Critique of the Present Moment

 March 24, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society given at the 2011 annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association in Chicago, IL on Thursday, March 24, 2011, at Columbia College, Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Benjamin Shepard - Independent Scholar (Los Angeles), Platypus Affiliated Society Jacob Cayia - University of Illinois - Chicago Omair Hussain - School of the Art Institute of Chicago [Read More]
Academy  Columbia College  Cultural studies  Cultural Studies Association  Culture 

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

 December 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]
1930s  Anti-globalization  Capitalism  Co-optation  Commodity form  Communist party  Culture  De-radicalization  Democratic  Economics  Emancipation  Emancipatory  Equivalential  Ernesto Laclau  Feminism  Freedom  Hegemony  History  Identity  Industrial  Institutionalization  Italy  Labor  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Movements  Participation  Particularity  Plurality  Politics  Popular  Production  Progressive  Proletarian  Radical  Reification  Revolution  Surplus value  Theory  Union  Universality  Workers  Working class  WWII