Radical Critique Research Articles

El arte en la encrucijada de la historia sudafricana Resonancias a partir de la obra de Tracey Rose

The most interesting intellectual tradition of cultural studies invites us to observe the interconexion among life experiences, culture and power. In this paper we aim to analyze racism and colonialism continuities in contemporary South Africa from a feminist point of view, where official narratives about South African recent past are contested. Our starting point is the video-instalation The Black Painting: Dead White Man de Tracey Rose, presented at Goodman Gallery, Cape Town in 2015, in order to analyze the binarism as an epistemological discourse producing history and framing art as one of the possible historical narratives; simultaneously, we aim to underline the young Black artist contribution to a radical critic of South African History and its present resonances.

The Eye is in Things: On Deleuze and Speculative Realism

ABSTRACT Speculative realists have directed a radical critique towards what they call “correlationism,” the stance according to which we only have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. Both Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier have used Gilles Deleuze’s ontology as a paradigmatic example of correlationism. Instead of defending Deleuze from this accusation, I argue that we need to accept it, but that the correlation is drastically transformed when we take into account Deleuze’s panpsychism. I hence contend that Deleuze is a panpsychist, grounding my argument in (a) his theory of contemplations and (b) his account of the universe as a cinema in itself. This changes everything, since a panpsychist type of correlationism avoids the main problem that leads both Meillassoux and Brassier to try to overcome correlationism, namely, that of the possibility of existence before and after humans.

The Royal Commission on Human Relationships and the Australian Women’s Weekly, 1977–1980: The Personal, the Political, the Popular

ABSTRACT The Australian Women’s Weekly (the Weekly) has long been regarded as a publication that built its success upon espousing a traditional femininity to Australian women through its features on home, family and fashion. The advent of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s prompted swift and radical critiques of the role of women in Australian society, with women’s magazines one key focus for these critiques. To maintain its cultural relevance and mainstream appeal, it was necessary for the Weekly to keep pace with social change, compelling the magazine to question the role it played in perpetuating the inequality of women. This article explores the Weekly’s engagement with the Australian women’s movement of the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the Royal Commission on Human Relationships influenced the publication’s reporting between 1977 and 1980. The Commission’s commitment to making the personal political through listening to people’s experiences, especially those of women, was replicated in the Weekly through its 1980 Voice of the Australian Woman project. Analysis of the magazine during this period reveals the ways in which the ideas of the Australian women’s movement had permeated the mainstream by the later 1970s.

Н.В. Гоголь и К.Н. Леонтьев: рецидивы западничества в «консервативной» критике

The article covers the problem of K.N. Leontiev’s perception of the N.V. Gogol’s heritage. They were close in worldview but divided by a misunderstanding based on the interpretation of Gogol’s legacy in radical criticism. As the student Leontiev experienced the influence of Western ideology, which led to his negative attitude towards Gogol’s satire. Decisive for him was the opinion of A.I. Herzen about Gogol as an “unconscious revolutionary,” reported to Leontiev by I.S. Turgenev. After the ideological “breakthrough” that followed, when the critic began to adhere to conservative views, his understanding of Gogol’s work remained unchanged. As in his youth, when the authorities for Leontiev were V.G. Belinsky, I.S. Turgenev, A.I. Herzen and N.G. Chernyshevsky, he continued to evaluate Gogol’s heritage exclusively in the context of the accusatory literature of the “natural school.”

Reinventing the Humanities

The humanities are currently under pressure from vocational studies and electronic technologies. The more education is mechanized and corporatized, the less room there is often thought to be for the Bildung that the modern humanities aimed to impart. At the same time, radical critiques of the neoliberal university have appeared, implicating it in colonial practices, racism, and the promotion of casteism, hierarchy, and inequality. Currently there are major schisms between defenders of the traditional humanities and advocates of technologically based higher education, advocates of radically politicized higher education, and advocates of entirely vocational training, which dispenses with the humanities altogether.

Levinas's Humanism of the Other and King Lear

Levinas’s Humanism of the Other may be seen as a meditation of King Lear. His philosophy offers what a critique of traditional and modern anti-humanism urgently needs: an ethics that precedes being. It provides a necessary ethical foundation needed to investigate questions of the human and humanity that Shakespeare examines so thoroughly in this powerful tragedy. Prefiguring Levinas’s later philosophy, Shakespeare dramatizes this humanism of the other through the suffering and vulnerability of the body. Lear’s and Gloucester’s parallel journeys are both grounded in this vulnerability of the body and fragility of the mind that lead them to a humanism of the other. Moreover, the ethical good that precedes ontology, the saying, is profoundly staged through the characters of Cordelia and Edgar. This vision of King Lear, therefore, underlies and informs Levinas’s radical critique of traditional humanism and contemporary anti-humanism in his insistence on a humanism of the other.

Development postcolonial: a critical approach to understanding SDGs in the perspective of Christian social ethics

Non-technical summaryBy distinguishing between developed and less developed nations, the concept of development subtly establishes hierarchies and a supposed comparability, which is highly ambivalent from a socio-ethical point of view. The idea of holistic development in Catholic social teaching focus on cultural dimensions and therefore sets an important counter accent to the fixation on socio-technically producible and countable things. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lack a coherence between the social and the ecological components as well as a naming of power conflicts. For a power-critical, postcolonial and participatory concept of development, their interpretation could learn substantially from the encyclicalLaudato si'.Technical summaryThe paradigm of development is subjected to a radical critique in parts of the academic debate: Is the idea of development, which in a gesture of aid divides the world into “developed” and “underdeveloped” nations and thus establishes a hierarchy, still politically and morally justifiable at all? Has this concept possibly become a backdoor to prolong the old colonial power relations into the 21st century, even to increase them in some cases? Is development one of the great utopias of the 20th century that promised freedom and brought division? Is the ecological overexploitation of global resources the inevitable reverse side of the spread of the Western model of prosperity disguised as “development”? Do the SDGs act subcutaneously as enablers of Western imperial power, or do they represent a genuine paradigm shift? This article explores these questions in four steps: 1. Is the age of development is over? 2. The ideal of “integral development” – steps of a revision process 3. In the tension between ecological and social goals: A Comparison of the “Sustainable Development Goals” and the EncyclicalLaudato si' 4. Priorities and strategies of a “post-utopian development policy”.Social media summaryThe shadows of colonial thinking are still effective today in development concepts fixated on countable factors of socioeconomic efficiency.

Un Dieu n’est pas 1 dieu

One God Is Not 1 God Heidegger and the Question of the Unique God In Heidegger’s Four Notebooks I and II (Black Notebooks 1947 – 1950), edited as volume 99 of the Gesamtausgabe of his writings, the author remarks that “One God, who as a unique God does not tolerate other Gods apart from him is outside divin-ity ”, the latter obviously referring to the Bible’s passage found in Exodus 34: 14 : “For you shalt worship no other God: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”. But how does Heidegger come to say that? How does he come to deny the divinity of the one God? This seems to be at first sight a radical criticism of the so-called ‘monotheism’. A major question remains unanswered, nonetheless: the sense in which the Jewish tradition focuses on the “One God”. In this context, “one” is actually not a number but a name. Far from being one of God’s attributes, it is God’s Name. It is a common ground that Heidegger had no access to the Hebrew text of the Bible, a biased situation which leads us to narrow-minded consequences regarding the ‘Old Testament’, where God is frequently called Elohim, i. e. a plural. Is the Jewish God exclusive, or rather Heidegger’s conception of Judaism restrictive? That is the question.

Восприятие романа «Бесы» Ф.М. Достоевского в русской дореволюционной радикальной критике

The novel “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky has a very rich history in terms of its percep­tion in the history of Russian and Soviet culture. Contrary to a popular belief, it was never banned in Soviet times. It was published four times as part of the collected works of Dostoevsky (1927, 1957, 1974, 1982). This article examines how the novel “Demons” was received by the Russian radical criticism during the author’s lifetime. The analysis focuses on the critical articles by N.K. Mikhailovsky, one of the leaders of the narodniks, and P.N. Tkachev, a radical revolutionary, an associate of S.G. Nechaev. They are united by a sharply critical attitude to the novel, its almost complete rejection. Both Mikhailovsky and Tkachev categorically deny that such metaphysical and religious ideas and disputes take place in the revolutionary environment in which the cult of scientific knowledge, positivism and atheism reign, as it is presented in the novel. Mikhailovsky also reproaches Dostoevsky for having overlooked the main demon of Russia at that time – the demon of wealth and its threat for the country. In a dispute that followed be­tween Dostoevsky and Mikhailovsky, the topics of conservative socialism and whether socialism can be non-atheistic were raised. Unfortunately, this dispute did not develop. Tkachev’s criticism of this novel was even more harsh. According Tkachev’s main thesis, Dostoevsky exclusively limited himself to analyzing psychiatric anomalies of human character, painting the inner world of mentally ill people, and ascribing to his characters and to their reality only the inner states of his soul and only his own ideas. These works are only the first stage of the perception of “Demons” by the revolutionary-radical liter­ary tradition. However, for example, in the early Soviet years (1920s), some Marxist authors believed that in “Demons”, on the contrary, Dostoevsky in many respects truth­fully reflected the revolution and its elements (V.F. Pereverzev). And in the early Soviet historical science, at the same time, a trend was formed towards an apology and justifica­tion of Nechaev himself and of his actions.

“Common cause” as a principle of national science in Russia

The article raises the problem of the possibility of updating the foundations of scientific knowledge. The authors proceed from the generally accepted thesis about the “crisis of European sciences”. Analyzing some cultural and historical features of the formation of classical science, the authors note its connection with the specifics of Western religiosity, from which science eventually freed itself. Further, referring to the formulation of the problem by E.Husserl, the authors substantiate the position according to which Russian philosophy, criticizing the Western type of rationality, put forward principles of the organization of science that differ from European ones. The originality of the Russian interpretation of science and scholarship is expressed in the synetic unity of the principles of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. The authors pay special attention to the philosophical views of N.F.Fedorov, which, on the one hand, paradoxically combine the scientific and religious ideas of the thinker, and, on the other, most fully reveal the format of the unity of cognitive, moral and aesthetic ideas. The authors consistently reconstruct N.F.’s teaching. Fedorova, showing that the “philosophy of the common cause”, in addition to radical criticism of the methodological principles and targets of the bourgeois system of knowledge, contain conceptual innovations that expand cognitive and heuristic possibilities. The generally recognized principles of rational egocentrism, formal criticism and pragmatic utilitarianism can be reformatted into conciliar unity and transformative pragmatism, respectively. The conclusion of the article is devoted to the actual implementation of the Fedorov principles in the process of the formation of scientific knowledge and its practical application in Russia. The authors emphasize that during the Soviet period of Russian history, the principles of science put forward by N.F.Fedorov began to be embodied in real life. Soviet cosmonautics became the brightest personification of science as a common cause.

The Impact of Deconstruction on the Lithuanian Literary Criticism

In the article I discuss how deconstruction (Jacques Derrida and other Yale School participants) came to Lithuanian literary criticism and how it changed habits of humanitarian thinking during the three decades after independence. The most unusual and radical deconstruction critique of essentialist metaphysical thinking, new terminology (inter-text, elimination of center, footprint, writing, difference, blinding, labyrinth narrative, guest / enemy, etc.) and new strategies for interpreting texts were very important for Lithuanian humanities liberated from Soviet ideology. Literary critics have noticed and discussed the undoubted connection between postmodernist literature and its deconstructive reading.We can find three tendencies in the deconstructive criticism of Lithuanian literature. The first tendency is the interpretation of general theoretical concepts of deconstruction, second tendency - searching the deconstructive features in literary works and the third tendency of criticism, expanding its own self-criticism and self-irony, is discussing chrestomathic and structuralist interpretations of the literary works or deconstructing icons of Soviet culture. We know very well, that many feminist, postcolonial, historiographic, anthropological, or interdisciplinary researches of literature cannot escape the effects of deconstruction.

A Sonogram of the Dark Side of the Dao: The Possibility of Antinatalism in Daoism

In the present work I study Daoist philosophy in conjunction with the radical new philosophy of antinatalism, spearheaded by South African philosopher David Benatar. Although I am not claiming equivalence between the two, a meaningful communication emerges between the classical Chinese sources used here and the modern doctrine of antinatalism. I argue that both visions partake in a radical critique of consciousness according to which this faculty of the human mind is far from what it is often held to be. In fact, it is perceived as a destructive and disruptive element of, and in, existence. Moreover, both offer a praxis of return that seeks to undo this disruption. In the case of Daoism, consciousness pushes humans ever farther away from the Dao. It is imperative to return from this exile, and to return to the Dao. This can, radically, only be achieved by the return from ‘ordinary’ conscious existence. This is the prerogative of sagehood. It will be shown that the trajectory of sagehood shares important parameters with the antinatalist quest to significantly (and perhaps conclusively) challenge human hubris in the cosmos at large, and to reinstate cosmic humility.

Caribbean dreams: Education for more than just sustainable development

Education has the potential to help address some of the most critical social and environmental issues of the Caribbean. However, I argue that this can only occur if there is a radical critique of the now dominant education for sustainable development (ESD) discourse, which is seemingly constructed primarily from the positionality and interests of the global powerful. I draw on repositioning theory to reframe the perspective from which the sustainability discourse is constructed to advocate for an educational approach that is more relevant to the context of the Caribbean. The resulting education envisioned in this paper, Education for Social Transformation (EST), challenges some of the assumptions and conceptions of ESD by exposing broader issues of inequity that the latter concept implicitly endorses. I argue that EST may help build sustainable Caribbean societies by linking environmental preservation to broader social transformations. Thus, transformation takes center stage in place of the limited notion of sustainability that has become synonymous with capitalist development violence.

Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014)

The question of the book is how a radical critique of capitalism is possible when critique in the tradition of Kant and Hegel means that the criticized subject itself has to “give” the measure of its critique. The thesis is that, while in Kant this reflexivity is achieved by transcendental subjectivity and reason and in Hegel by self-consciousness, self-relation of the concept and the absolute reason of spirit, in Marx we find a materialist turn.
 The turn shows that capitalist society became reflexive by a kind of self-measurement, done by the functions of money, on the one hand, and the valorization of labour power and capital, on the other. Money, by its function as the measure of value and the means of its realization and mediation, measures in the commodities the productive relations of their production, thus determining from the past valorization of labour and capital the magnitudes necessary for their further productive valorization — and hence for a productive use of money itself. That is howl, in money’s capital form, the measured magnitudes become reflexive, while money itself becomes in its capitalist self-relation the form to measures the same valorization process which by this form becomes possible in the first place

Historical Memory in the Process of Formation and Reproduction of Modern National Identity: the French Experience (Part 2)

The article is devoted to the study of the role of historical tradition and national memory in the formation of modern types of ethno-national identity and mechanisms of consolidation of citizens at the stage of formation of the French state of the modern type. In this regard, various versions of French history were analyzed by representatives of historical and historiographical schools, which still compete with each other for the status of creators of a generally accepted interpretation of important historical events.
 It was found that consistently patriotic motivation, which ensures the formation and realization of the innovative potential of the people and social activity of this creative core of the nation, aimed at overcoming any crisis challenges, is formed only on the basis of maximum meaningful synthesis of existing interpretations of French history. In particular, the effectiveness of memory policy is ensured by the fact that symbols, traditions and historical monuments that positively influence the dynamics of national-patriotic motivations and feelings are inevitably (and often, quite consciously) filled with qualitatively new meanings and values.
 The complete failure of neoliberal and left-wing radical critiques of Holism’s theory and practice has been proved, the conservative elements of which, in particular the appeal to the heroic past, are not at all identical with medieval archaism and almost neo-Nazi political preferences. On the contrary, the typological similarity of Bonapartism and Hollism is due precisely to their ability to effectively oppose reactionary and revolutionary extremism, which is equally destructive to the nation-state.
 In this regard, the exceptional relevance of the use of historical memory to form their own traditionalist and authoritarian charisma (in their relationship) by the creator and first president of the Fifth Republic Charles de Gaulle in the process of his opposition to anti-national provocations of far-right and far-left.

Ästhetische Darstellungsformen der kommunistischen Vergangenheit in Carmen Francesca Bancius Lebt Wohl, Ihr Genossen und Geliebten! (2018)

Abstract Carmen Francesca Bancius trilogy that includes the novels Vaterflucht (1998), Das Lied der traurigen Mutter (2007) und Lebt Wohl, Ihr Genossen und Geliebten! (2018) make from a cultural-historical perspective individual and collective memory processes in post-communist Romania visible. Her last work shows most clearly what shifts the culture of remembrance underwent in post-communist Romania, and how the tone of remembrance changed from a radical criticism of the system in the 1990s to a conciliatory narrative in the 2000s. Considering the dominant memory discourses in non-literary spaces, the present contribution analyses the aesthetic possibilities that Banciu explores in order to humanize the image of the unscrupulous communist official that dominated her narrative in Vaterflucht (1998), and Das Lied der traurigen Mutter (2007).

Living under value chains: The new distributive contract and arguments about unequal bargaining power

AbstractIn the 1980s and 1990s, during the high‐water mark of Washington Consensus development, rural sociologists and geographers critical of contract farming described contract as a legal fiction—one that imagines formally equal and voluntary relations between large firms and small farmers and hence that functions purposefully to obscure unequal social relations. Today, however, development planners, who argue for contract farming as an integral part of value chain agriculture, describe unequal bargaining power as a problem for rural development to solve. Our article analyzes how proponents have domesticated what was once a radical critique of contract farming—a phenomenon that we suggest tells of value chain development more broadly. Via a qualitative case study of India, we describe how a range of actors—development planners, state officials, and farmers—now all make arguments about unequal bargaining power and yet hold disparate understandings of what bargaining inequalities mean and what reforms should therefore follow. More specifically, we show how and why common reform proposals—for contract regulation and farmer aggregation—remain constrained by the inequalities they would challenge and thus why farmers themselves speak different possibilities to the problem of unequal bargaining power.

Trendy Monsters: The Nazis, the Perpetrator Turn, and Popular Culture

Trendy Monsters: The Nazis, the Perpetrator Turn, and Popular Culture

EVOLUTIONARY MODEL OF SOCIAL CHANGE: A CRITIQUE

Anthony Giddens, one of the forerunner among the anti-evolutionists in sociology today, has made a special point of criticizing evolutionary theories for their lack of any concept of human agency, which for Giddens completely invalidates any social theory. Theories of social evolution have incited two kinds of critiques; one radical, and the other moderate. Radical critics of the theory of social evolution raise methodological issues with the theory of social evolution. They argue that social change cannot be understood through evolutionary theory, therefore the latter is not needed. Moderate criticism differs from radical criticism because it seeks to separate the concept of evolution from that of progress. According to this position, the idea of social progress must be rejected, but the evolutionary approach should be preserved. This article will look into the conceptual terrain of evolutionism and pattern of ebb and flow in it.

‘A Talented Daughter of the Mallee’: Myra Morris Meets Regional Readers

Myra Morris (1893–1966) was a prolific author of poems, short stories, novels and children’s books. Best known for her short stories, which were published in a wide array of Australian periodicals, Morris’ novels have been less celebrated. This article considers The Wind on the Water (1938) set at the ‘Four Mile’ hotel near ‘Brown’s Town’ in the Mallee region, which was serialised in the Australian Women’s Weekly and as a popular ABC radio broadcast after publication. Due to its generic romance elements, the novel’s quietly radical critique of the cruel subjection of women and animals has been largely overlooked. When discussed with book groups in the Mallee region, the novel offered a springboard for discussion of womens’ intimate relationships, class dynamics in small towns and considerations of inheritance. Although it was over ninety years old at the time of these sessions, readers of different genders and ages tended to identify closely with the novel’s protagonist and her thwarted efforts to find fulfilment and create a better future for her children. We argue that Morris’ novel might be regarded as a crucial antecedent of a number of contemporary novels about sensitive women seeking beauty in small Mallee towns. Her own early experiences in country towns may have contributed to her understanding of the lot of rural women who slaved to maintain their households in precarious conditions. The more complex renderings of the Mallee offered by Morris’ novel, along with the readers’ response to it, show how places are continually being made by the stories told and read about them.