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This first book in a three-volume collection of Georges Bataille's
essays introduces English readers to his philosophical and critical
writings. In the aftermath of the Second World War, French thinker
and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the
moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by "a
need to live events in an increasingly conscious way," and to
reject any compartmentalization of intellectual life, Bataille
founded the journal Critique. Adopting the format of the review
essay, he surveyed the post-war cultural landscape while advancing
his reflections on excess, non-knowledge, and the general economy.
Focusing on literature as a mode of sovereign uselessness, he
tackled prominent and divisive figures such as Henry Miller and
Albert Camus. In keeping with Critique's mission to explore the
totality of human knowledge, Bataille's articles did not just focus
on the literary but featured important reflections on the science
of sexuality, the Chinese Revolution, and historical accounts of
drunkenness, among other matters. Throughout, he was attuned to how
humanity would deal with the excessive forces of production and
destruction it had unleashed, his aim being a way of thinking and
living that would inhabit that excess. This is the first of three
volumes collecting Bataille's post-war essays. Beginning with an
article on Nietzsche and fascism written shortly after the
liberation of Paris and running to the end of 1948, these texts
make available for the first time in English the systematic
diversity of Bataille's post-war thought.
In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the
forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper
hand. How should we name, map and respond to this state of affairs?
Late Fascism turns to theories of fascism produced in the past
century, testing their capacity to illuminate our moment and
challenging many of the commonplaces that debate on this extremely
charged term devolves into. It can be tempting for any contemporary
assessment of fascism to reach for historical analogy. Fascism is
defined by returns and repetitions, but it is not best approached
in terms of steps and checklists dictated by a selective reading of
Italian Fascism or National Socialism. Rather than treating fascism
as an unrepeatable phenomenon or identifying it with a settled
configuration of European parties, regimes, and ideologies, Toscano
approaches fascism as a problem and a process, one that is
intimately linked to capitalism's demands for domination. Drawing
especially on Black radical and anti-colonial theories of racial
fascism, Late Fascism makes clear the limits of identifying fascism
simply with the political violence of bygone European regimes.
Developing anti-fascist theory is a vital and urgent task. From the
"Great Replacement" to campaigns against critical race theory and
"gender ideology", today's global far-right is launching lethal
panics about the threats to traditional political, sexual and
racial regimes. Late Fascism allows us to rediscover some truly
inspiring anti-fascist thinkers, rooted in their turn in largely
anonymous collective practices of worldmaking against domination,
traditions of the oppressed that remain a resource for those set on
dismantling the hierarchies and segregations that the partisans of
Order and Tradition seek to revive and reimpose.
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Primo Levi (Paperback)
Matteo Mastragostino; Illustrated by Alessandro Ranghiasci; Translated by Alberto Toscano
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R364
Discovery Miles 3 640
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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It's a pretty long story, Primo Levi tells a classroom of children,
so I'll try to make it simple. Translated from the original
Italian, this hauntingly illustrated comic tells the story of the
Italian Jewish chemist who survived the camps at Auschwitz against
all odds. Matteo Mastragostino draws on historical research,
interviews, and Levi's own landmark books to piece together a
fictionalized yet profoundly intimate portrait of a courageous
figure. In the scene that emerges, Levi visits a group of
schoolchildren to retell his life story and keep the memory of the
Holocaust alive, answering innocent questions with hard truths.
Sobering yet tender, Primo Levi extends a rare opportunity for
readers both young and old to deepen their understanding of life,
death, and the human spirit.
Italy, 1943\. Although allied with Hitler, there were those who
refused to accept the fascist policies of racial discrimination and
deportation. Among them was Gino Bartali. A champion cyclist, he
won the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) three times and the Tour de
France twice. But these weren't his only achievements. Deeply
religious, Bartali never spoke about what he did during those dark
years, when he agreed to work with the Resistance and pass messages
from one end of the country to the other. Despite the dangers,
Bartali used his training as a pretext to criss-cross Italy, hiding
documents in the handlebars and saddle of his bicycle, all the
while hoping that each time he was searched they wouldn't think to
disassemble his machine. As a result of his bravery, 800 Jews
including numerous children were saved from deportation. He died in
Florence in 2000 and was recognised as one of the 'Righteous Among
the Nations' in 2013. In this book, Alberto Toscano shares the
incredible story of this great sportsman and recalls the dramatic
moments in Italy and Europe in the twentieth century.
Didacticism, romanticism, and classicism are the possible schemata
for the knotting of art and philosophy, the third term in this knot
being the education of subjects, youth in particular. What
characterizes the century that has just come to a close is that,
while it underwent the saturation of these three schemata, it
failed to introduce a new one. Today, this predicament tends to
produce a kind of unknotting of terms, a desperate dis-relation
between art and philosophy, together with the pure and simple
collapse of what circulated between them: the theme of education.
Whence the thesis of which this book is nothing but a series of
variations: faced with such a situation of saturation and closure,
we must attempt to propose a new schema, a fourth type of knot
between philosophy and art. Among these "inaesthetic" variations,
the reader will encounter a sustained debate with contemporary
philosophical uses of the poem, bold articulations of the
specificity and prospects of theater, cinema, and dance, along with
subtle and provocative readings of Fernando Pessoa, Stephane
Mallarme, and Samuel Beckett.
The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in Marxism
both within and without the academy. Marxian frameworks, concepts
and categories continue to be narratively relevant to the features
and events of contemporary capitalism. Most crucially, an attention
to shifting cultural conditions has lead contemporary researchers
to re-confront some classical and essential Marxist concepts, as
well as elaborating new critical frameworks for the analysis of
capitalism today. The SAGE Handbook of Marxism showcases this
cutting-edge of today's Marxism. It advances the debate with essays
that rigorously map and renew the concepts that have provided the
groundwork and main currents for Marxist theory, and showcases
interventions that set the agenda for Marxist research in the 21st
century. A rigorous and challenging collection of scholarship, this
book contains a stunning range of contributions from contemporary
academics, writers and theorists from around the world and across
disciplines, invaluable to scholars and graduate students alike.
Part 1: Reworking the critique of political economy Part 2: Forms
of domination, subjects of struggle Part 3: Political perspectives
Part 4: Philosophical dimensions Part 5: Land and existence Part 6:
Domains Part 7: Inquiries and debates
A timely book addressing the burning concerns of our times, from
the excesses of capitalism to the global crisis of leadership.
 There is widespread agreement, across a voluble political
spectrum and around the planet, that we live in times of
intensifying insecurity and turmoil. If ours is an age of
transition, its direction is anything but certain. Momentous
transformations in ecology, geopolitics, and everyday life are
shadowed by a suffocating sense of stasis. The limits to capital
and the limits of nature are entangled in frightful ways, while the
profoundly obsolete form of leadership, domination, and conflict
exacerbate an already baleful situation. And yet struggles for
liberation have not been quelled. Terms of Disorder confronts this
moment by probing some of the defining terms in the modern
vocabulary of emancipation, with the aim of testing their capacity
to name and orient collective action set on abolishing the present
state of things. Ranging from communism to leadership, the eleven
keywords addressed in this book provide a set of interlocking
points of entry into the common task of forging a political
language capable of navigating our disorientation. If, as Gramsci
famously noted, the interregnum is a time when the new struggles to
be born while the old order is moribund, we may wish to heed Cedric
Robinson’s call to “choose wisely among the dying.†Â
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Studiolo (Hardcover)
Giorgio Agamben; Translated by Alberto Toscano
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R603
Discovery Miles 6 030
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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A brief study of select Western art from Italy's foremost
philosopher. In Renaissance palaces, the studiolo was a small room
to which the prince withdrew to meditate or read, surrounded by
paintings he particularly loved. This book is a kind of studiolo
for its author, Giorgio Agamben, as he turns his philosophical lens
on the world of Western art. Studiolo is a fascinating take on a
selection of artworks created over millennia; some are easily
identifiable, others rarer. Though they were produced over an arc
of time stretching from 5000 BCE to the present, only now have they
achieved their true legibility. Agamben contends that we must
understand that the images bequeathed by the past are really
addressed to us, here and now; otherwise, our historical awareness
is broken. Notwithstanding the attention to details and the
critical precautions that characterize the author's method-they
provoke us with a force, even a violence, that we cannot escape.
When we understand why Dostoevsky feared losing his faith before
Holbein's Body of the Dead Christ, when Chardin's Still Life with
Hare is suddenly revealed to our gaze as a crucifixion or Twombly's
sculpture shows that beauty must ultimately fall, the artwork is
torn from its museological context and restored to its almost
prehistoric emergence. These artworks are beautifully reproduced in
color throughout Agamben's short but significant addition to his
scholarly oeuvre in English translation.
Logics of Worlds is the sequel to Alain Badiou's masterpiece, Being
and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being
and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou
supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a
daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and
subjects make their mark - what he calls a materialist dialectic.
Drawing on his most ambitious philosophical predecessors - Leibniz,
Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze - Badiou ends this
important later work with an impassioned call to 'live for an
Idea'.
Didacticism, romanticism, and classicism are the possible schemata
for the knotting of art and philosophy, the third term in this knot
being the education of subjects, youth in particular. What
characterizes the century that has just come to a close is that,
while it underwent the saturation of these three schemata, it
failed to introduce a new one. Today, this predicament tends to
produce a kind of unknotting of terms, a desperate dis-relation
between art and philosophy, together with the pure and simple
collapse of what circulated between them: the theme of education.
Whence the thesis of which this book is nothing but a series of
variations: faced with such a situation of saturation and closure,
we must attempt to propose a new schema, a fourth type of knot
between philosophy and art.
Among these "inaesthetic" variations, the reader will encounter a
sustained debate with contemporary philosophical uses of the poem,
bold articulations of the specificity and prospects of theater,
cinema, and dance, along with subtle and provocative readings of
Fernando Pessoa, Stephane Mallarme, and Samuel Beckett.
Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was
immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian
intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was
clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and
concerns of the New Left, which is no surprise, given that Fortini
had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological
debates over anti-Fascism, organizing, the alliance between
progressivism and literature, and other topics that found their way
into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays,
the book also features essays on a range of writers who influenced
Fortini, including Kafka, Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Proust, and
Brecht. Praise for Fortini's The Dogs of the Sinai "An elegant and
provocative project -- the first book of Fortini's prose to appear
in English translation -- that challenges one's political
assumptions about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, not
only at the time of the Six-Day War but also today. . . . Toscano
has done a masterful job of rendering Fortini's often difficult
prose into a fluid and concise English."--Los Angeles Review of
Books "Forensic and devastating."--Times Literary Supplement
"Fortini's poetic production, literary criticism, political
writings, translations, and journalism have assured him a position
of the first rank among intellectuals of the Italian postwar
period."--Italica
A celebrated theorist examines the conditions of work, employment,
and unemployment in neoliberalism's flexible and precarious labor
market. In Experimental Politics, Maurizio Lazzarato examines the
conditions of work, employment, and unemployment in neoliberalism's
flexible and precarious labor market. This is the first book of
Lazzarato's in English that fully exemplifies the unique synthesis
of sociology, activist research, and theoretical innovation that
has generated his best-known concepts, such as "immaterial labor."
The book (published in France in 2009) is also groundbreaking in
the way it brings Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari to bear on the
analysis of concrete political situations and real social
struggles, while making a significant theoretical contribution in
its own right. Lazzarato draws on the experiences of casual workers
in the French entertainment industry during a dispute over the
reorganization ("reform") of their unemployment insurance in 2004
and 2005. He sees this conflict as the first testing ground of a
political program of social reconstruction. The payment of
unemployment insurance would become the principal instrument for
control over the mobility and behavior of the workers. The flexible
and precarious workforce of the entertainment industry prefigured
what the entire workforce in contemporary societies is in the
process of becoming: in Foucault's words, a "floating population"
in "security societies." Lazzarato argues further that parallel to
economic impoverishment, neoliberalism has produced an
impoverishment of subjectivity-a reduction in existential
intensity. A substantial introduction by Jeremy Gilbert situates
Lazzarato's analysis in a broader context.
Can capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the
disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers,
writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the
crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis
of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new visions and
artefacts that wrestle with the vastness, invisibility and
complexity of the abstractions that rule our lives.
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Class (Hardcover)
Andrea Cavalletti; Translated by Elisa Fiaccadori; Edited by Alberto Toscano
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R549
Discovery Miles 5 490
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In 1936, Walter Benjamin defined the revolutionary class as being
in opposition to a dense and dangerous crowd, prone to fear of the
foreign, and under the spell of anti-Semitic madness. Today, in
formations great or small, that sad figure returns the hatred of
minorities is rekindled and the pied-pipers of the crowd stand
triumphant.Class, by Andrea Cavalletti, is a striking montage of
diverse materials Marx and Jules Verne, Benjamin and Gabriel Tarde.
In it, Cavalletti asks whether the untimely concept of class is
once again thinkable. Faced with new pogroms and state racism, he
challenges us to imagine a movement that would unsettle and
eventually destroy the crowd.
Alain Badiou is arguably the most important and original
philosopher working in France today. Swimming against the tide of
postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou's thought revitalizes philosophy's
perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. This
volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents
for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's
ambitious system. Starting from the controversial assertion that
ontology is mathematics, this volume sets out the theory of the
emergence of truths from the singular relationship between a
subject and an event. Also included is a substantial excerpt from
Badiou's forthcoming work on the logics of appearance and the
concept of world, presented here in advance of its French
publication. Ranging from startling re-readings of canonical
figures (Spinoza, Kant and Hegel) to decisive engagements with
poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics, Theoretical Writings
is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of
our time. The volume includes a preface by Alain Badiou, an
extensive editor's introduction, and a glossary of key terms.
Logics of Worlds is the long-awaited sequel to Alain Badiou's
much-heralded masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions
that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of
his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering
treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the
worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark - what he calls
a materialist dialectic. The radical recasting of ontology in Being
and Event is followed and complemented here by a thoroughgoing
transformation in our very understanding of logic, conceived as a
theory not of being but of appearing. Unafraid to resurrect and
reinvent the classical themes of philosophy, Badiou gives new
meaning to concepts such as object, body and relation, mobilising
them in arresting studies that range from the architectural
planning of Brasilia to contemporary astronomy, and confronting
himself with towering philosophical counterparts (Leibniz, Kant,
Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze). The book culminates in an
impassioned call to 'live for an Idea'.
Antonio Negri, the renowned co-author of 'Empire', provides this
study of the founder of modern philosophy. The book is available in
English for the first time.
The idea of fanaticism as a deviant or extreme variant of an
already irrational set of religious beliefs is today invoked by the
West in order to demonize and psychologize any non-liberal
politics. Alberto Toscano's compelling and erudite counter-history
explodes this accepted interpretation in exploring the critical
role fanaticism played in forming modern politics and the liberal
state. Tracing its development from the traumatic Peasants' War of
early sixteenth-century Germany to contemporary Islamism, Toscano
tears apart the sterile opposition of 'reasonableness' and
fanaticism. Instead, in a radical new interpretation, he places the
fanatic at the very heart of politics, arguing that historical and
revolutionary transformations require a new understanding of his
role. Showing how fanaticism results from the failure to formulate
an adequate emancipatory politics, this illuminating history sheds
new light on an idea that continues to dominate debates about faith
and secularism.
Badiou and Hegel: Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity offers
critical appraisals of two of the dominant figures of the
Continental tradition of philosophy, Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel.
Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno bring together established and
emerging authors in Continental philosophy to discuss the
relationship between the thinkers, creating a multifarious
collection of essays by Hegelians, Badiouans, and those sympathetic
to both. The text privileges neither thinker, nor any particular
topic shared between them; rather, this book lays a broad and sound
foundation for future scholarship on arguably two of the greatest
thinkers of infinity, universality, subjectivity, and the enduring
value of philosophy in the modern Western canon. Assuredly overdue,
this volume will attract Hegel and Badiou scholars, as well as
those interested in post-structuralism, political philosophy,
cultural studies, ontology, philosophy of mathematics, and
psychoanalysis.
Alain Badiou is arguably the most original and influential
philosopher working in France today. Working against the tide of
postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou revitalizes philosophy's perennial
attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. Theoretical
Writings presents, in Badiou's own words, 'the theoretical core of
[his] Philosophy'. Beginning with the controversial assertion that
ontology is mathematics, the chapters step the reader through his
key concepts of being, subject and truth via startling re-readings
of canonical figures including Spinoza, Kant and Hegel and
engagements with poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics.
Theoretical Writings is an indispensable introduction to one of the
great thinkers of our time.
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The Idea of Communism (Paperback)
Costas Douzinas, Slavoj Zizek; Contributions by Alain Badiou, Alberto Toscano, Antonio Negri, …
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R790
R686
Discovery Miles 6 860
Save R104 (13%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You've had your
anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it-time to get serious
once again!-Slavoj Zizek Responding to Alain Badiou's 'communist
hypothesis', the leading political philosophers of the Left
convened in London in 2009 to take part in a landmark conference to
discuss the perpetual, persistent notion that, in a truly
emancipated society, all things should be owned in common. This
volume brings together their discussions on the philosophical and
political import of the communist idea, highlighting both its
continuing significance and the need to reconfigure the concept
within a world marked by havoc and crisis.
Alain Badiou is arguably the most important and original
philosopher working in France today. Swimming against the tide of
postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou's thought revitalizes philosophy's
perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. This
volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents
for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's
ambitious system. Starting from the controversial assertion that
ontology is mathematics, this volume sets out the theory of the
emergence of truths from the singular relationship between a
subject and an event. Also included is a substantial excerpt from
Badiou's forthcoming work on the logics of appearance and the
concept of world, presented here in advance of its French
publication. Ranging from startling re-readings of canonical
figures (Spinoza, Kant and Hegel) to decisive engagements with
poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics, Theoretical Writings
is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of
our time. The volume includes a preface by Alain Badiou, an
extensive editor's introduction, and a glossary of key terms.
Alain Badiou is arguably the most important and original
philosopher working in France today. Swimming against the tide of
postmodern orthodoxy, Badiou's thought revitalizes philosophy's
perennial attempt to provide a systematic theory of truth. This
volume, assembled with the collaboration of the author, presents
for the first time in English a comprehensive outline of Badiou's
ambitious system. Starting from the controversial assertion that
ontology is mathematics, this volume sets out the theory of the
emergence of truths from the singular relationship between a
subject and an event. Also included is a substantial excerpt from
Badiou's forthcoming work on the logics of appearance and the
concept of world, presented here in advance of its French
publication. Ranging from startling re-readings of canonical
figures (Spinoza, Kant and Hegel) to decisive engagements with
poetry, psychoanalysis and radical politics, Theoretical Writings
is an indispensable introduction to one of the great thinkers of
our time. The volume includes a preface by Alain Badiou, an
extensive editor's introduction, and a glossary of key terms.
Badiou and Hegel: Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity offers
critical appraisals of two of the dominant figures of the
Continental tradition of philosophy, Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel.
Jim Vernon and Antonio Calcagno bring together established and
emerging authors in Continental philosophy to discuss the
relationship between the thinkers, creating a multifarious
collection of essays by Hegelians, Badiouans, and those sympathetic
to both. The text privileges neither thinker, nor any particular
topic shared between them; rather, this book lays a broad and sound
foundation for future scholarship on arguably two of the greatest
thinkers of infinity, universality, subjectivity, and the enduring
value of philosophy in the modern Western canon. Assuredly overdue,
this volume will attract Hegel and Badiou scholars, as well as
those interested in post-structuralism, political philosophy,
cultural studies, ontology, philosophy of mathematics, and
psychoanalysis.
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