If, as Walter Benjamin believed, 'historical understanding is to be viewed primarily as an afterlife of that which is to be understood', what are the afterlives of the central concepts of modern European philosophy today? These essays reflect on the afterlives of three such concepts - 'the transcendental', 'the universal' and 'otherness' - as they continue to animate philosophical discussion at and beyond the limits of the discipline. Anthropology, law, mathematics and politics each provide occasions for testing the historical durability and transformative capacity of these concepts.

This book offers an exciting look at the important and often uneasy place of philosophy in cultural theory today. In the United States and Britain, cultural studies has taken a largely non-philosophical form. Yet, in its hostility to disciplinary boundaries and its search for theoretical generality, cultural studies has much in common with a philosophical tradition of totalization from which it has historically distanced itself. Throughout, Osborne shows how and why concepts currently popular in cultural theory have brought philosophical questions to center stage. He discusses many important thinkers who have straddled the philosophy-cultural divide such as Benjamin, Adorno, Jameson, and Clement Greenberg.

Since 1972, the journal Radical Philosophy has provided a forum for the discussion of radical and critical ideas in philosophy. It is the liveliest and probably the most widely read philosophical journal in Britain. This anthology reprints some of the best articles to have appeared in the journal during the past five years. It covers topics in social and moral philosophy which are central to current controversies on the left, focusing on theoretical issues raised by the socialist, feminist and environmental movements.Topics covered include feminist perspectives on a range of traditional philosophical issues and contemporary problems; theoretical questions involved in the rethinking of socialism and Marxism; and questions about the relation between humanity and nature raised by environmental debates. The pieces included engage with contemporary issues in critical terms, and represent the best of recent philosophical work on the left. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of radical thought.

Criticism of contemporary art is split by an opposition between activism and the critical function of form. Yet the deeper, more subterranean terms of art-judgment are largely neglected on both sides. These essays combine a re-examination of the terms of judgement of contemporary art with critical interpretations of individual works and exhibitions by Luis Camnitzer, Marcel Duchamp, Matias Faldbakken, Anne Imhof and Cady Noland. The book moves from philosophical issues, via the lingering shadows of medium-specificity (in photography and art music), and the changing states of museums, to analyses of the peculiar ways that works of art relate to time.To give artistic form to crisis, it is suggested, one needs to understand contemporary art's own constitutive crisis of form.

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, 'philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

Philosophy in Cultural Theory boldly crosses disciplinary boundaries to offer a philosophical critique of cultural theory today. Drawing on the legacy of Walter Benjamin, Peter Osborne looks critically at central philosophical debates in cultural theory, such as:
* the relationship between sign and image
* the technological basis of cultural form
* the conceptuality of art
* the place of fantasy in human affairs.
It will appeal to those in philosophy, cultural studies and art theory.

A Critical Sense brings together in a single volume the leading figures of contemporary radical theory. Moving freely between philosophy, politics and cultural studies, it offers a fascinating overview of the lines of thought of today's intellectual left.
Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and critical theory, literary studies, deconstruction, pragmatism, postcolonial and queer theory are discussed in a series of interviews from the journal Radical Philosophy. Those interviewed are:
Judith Butler
Cornelius Castoriadis
Drucilla Cornell
Axel Honneth
Istvan Meszaros
Edward Said
Renata Salecl
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Cornel West
Slavoj Zizek
For those unfamiliar with the often daunting work of some of today's most important thinkers, ACritical Sense will offer an ideal introduction; for those already acquainted with the writings of the theorists interviewed here, the collection will throw new - and often surprising - light on familiar ground.

A Critical Sense brings together in a single volume the leading figures of contemporary radical theory. Moving freely between philosophy, politics and cultural studies, it offers a fascinating overview of the lines of thought of today's intellectual left.
Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and critical theory, literary studies, deconstruction, pragmatism, postcolonial and queer theory are discussed in a series of interviews from the journal Radical Philosophy. Those interviewed are:
Judith Butler
Cornelius Castoriadis
Drucilla Cornell
Axel Honneth
Istvan Meszaros
Edward Said
Renata Salecl
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Cornel West
Slavoj Zizek
For those unfamiliar with the often daunting work of some of today's most important thinkers, ACritical Sense will offer an ideal introduction; for those already acquainted with the writings of the theorists interviewed here, the collection will throw new - and often surprising - light on familiar ground.

This collection explores Walter Benjamin's "philosophy directed against philosophy". The essays, from 11 contributors, aim to cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings. Subjects range from his early work in the philosphy of art and language, through his cultural criticism, to his final reflections on the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

Since 1972, the journal "Radical Philosophy" has provided a forum for the discussion of radical and critical ideas in philosophy. This anthology reprints some of the articles which have appeared in the journal during the past five years. It covers topics in social and moral philosophy which are central to current controversies on the left, focusing on theoretical issues raised by the socialist, feminist and environmental movements. Topics covered include feminist perspectives on a range of traditional philosophical issues and contemporary problems, theoretical questions involved in the rethinking of socialism and Marxism, and questions about the relation between humanity and nature raised by environmental debates. The pieces included engage with contemporary issues in critical terms, and represent the recent philosophical work on the left. The book should be interesting reading for anyone involved in studying the current state of radical thought.

No other single author has so commanding a critical presence across so many disciplines within the arts and humanities, in so many national contexts, as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The belated reception of his work as a literary critic (dating from the late 1950s) has been followed by a rapid series of critical receptions in different contexts: Frankfurt Critical Theory and Marxism, Judaism, Film Theory, Post-structuralism, Philosophical Romanticism, and Cultural Studies.
This collection brings together a selection of the most critically important items in the literature, across the full range of Benjamin's cultural-theoretical interests, from all periods of the reception of his writings, but focusing upon the most recent, to produce a comprehensive overview of the best critical literature.

On July 22, 1779, one of the most lethal battles of the American Revolution, in terms of the ratio of participants to numbers killed, took place on a hill above Minisink Ford along the Delaware River north of Port Jervis, New York. The Battle at Minisink Ford, New York was a disaster for the American militia units. More than one third of the militiamen perished. This important work reveals primary sources about the battle that have not been seen in more than one hundred and fifty years. So Many Brave Men, the first major work written on the battle in thirty years, will encourage new interest in the battle, and the men who fought there. Many of the veterans of that catastrophe speak to us about that fateful day from the distance of more than 230 years. They also speak of their dedication to the cause of freedom and liberty. 828 Pages, 7" x 10" Indexed, Bibliography, 15 illustrations, 5 maps

Emphasizing the Romantic heritage and modernist legacy of Karl Marx's writings, Peter Osborne presents Marx's thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings. Drawing on passages from a wide range of Marx's writings, and showing the links among them, Osborne refutes the myth of Marx as a reductively economistic thinker. What Marx meant by "materialism," "communism," and the "critique of political economy" was much richer and more original, philosophically, than is generally recognized. With the renewed globalization of capitalism since 1989, Osborne argues, Marx's analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before. Extracts are taken from the full breadth of Marx's writings, including Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and The Communist Manifesto to Capital.

If Aristotle sought to understand time through change, might we not reverse the procedure and seek to understand change through time? Once we do this, argues Peter Osborne, it soon becomes clear that ideas such as avant-garde, modern, postmodern and tradition-which are usually only treated as markets for empirically discrete periods, movements or styles-are best understood as categories of historical totalization. More specifically, Osborne claims, such ideas involve distinct "temporalizations" of history, giving rise to conflicting politics of time. His book begins with a consideration of the main aspects of modernity and develops though a series of critical engagements with the major twentieth-century positions in the philosophy of history. He concludes with a fascinating history of the avant-garde intervention into the temporality of everyday life in surrealism, the situationists and the work of Henri Lefebvre.

Race and ethnicity have become two of the most loaded and contested concepts in teh contemporary world. Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity aims to disentangle this complexity and guide the reader to a clearer understanding of the debates. Analysing the genealogy, meanings and political uses of the concepts of race and ethnicity, Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity draws on the best scholarship from philosophy, history, post-colonial studies, political theory and literary studies to explore the structure, status and scope of these concepts. Contributors: Linda Martin Aicoff, Chetan Bhatt, Rey Chow, Rebecca Karl, David Macey, Naoki Sakai, Bill Schwarz, Denise da Silva, Francolse Verges, Robert J. C. Young

Winner of the 2014 Annual Book Prize of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (USA). Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. But what kind of discourse can open it up effectively to critical analysis? Anywhere or Not at All is a major philosophical intervention in art theory that challenges the terms of established positions through a new approach at once philosophical, historical, social and art-critical. Developing the position that "contemporary art is postconceptual art," the book progresses through a dual series of conceptual constructions and interpretations of particular works to assess the art from a number of perspectives: contemporaneity and its global context; art against aesthetic; the Romantic pre-history of conceptual art; the multiplicity of modernisms; transcategoriality; conceptual abstraction; photographic ontology; digitalization; and the institutional and existential complexities of art-space and art-time. Anywhere or Not at All maps out the conceptual space for an art that is both critical and contemporary in the era of global capitalism.

The first collection of essays on Gerhard Richter, who has been called "the greatest modern painter." The contemporary painter Gerhard Richter (born in 1932) has been heralded both as modernity's last painter and as painting's modern savior, seen to represent both the end of painting and its resurrection. Richter works in a dizzying variety of styles, from abstraction to a German cool pop that combines painterly technique and appropriation; his work includes photo paintings, large abstract canvases, and stained glass windows. This collection features writing by prominent critics, including Hal Foster, Gertrud Koch, and Thomas Crow; an essay by Rachel Haidu on Richter's family pictures that is published here for the first time; and an essay and two interviews with the artist by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Richter's "longtime sparring partner" (as the curator Robert Storr has called him). These writings examine Richter's work as a whole, from October 18, 1977, his dreamlike series of paintings depicting the dead Baader-Meinhof gang, to his abstract trio Abstract Paintings; from his unsettling portrait of "Uncle Rudi" in Nazi garb to his late series of portraits of his wife and young child. This addition to the October Files series will be an essential handbook to one of the most enigmatic figures in contemporary artContents Gerhard Richter and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Interview (1986) Gertrud Koch The Richter-Scale of Blur (1992) Thomas Crow Hand-Made Photographs and Homeless Representation (1992) Birgit Pelzer The Tragic Desire (1993) Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Divided Memory and Post-Traditional Identity: Gerhard Richter's Work of Mourning (1996) Peter Osborne Abstract Images: Sign, Image, and Aesthetic in Gerhard Richter's Painting (1998) Hal Foster Semblance According to Gerhard Richter (2003) Johannes Meinhardt Illusionism in Painting and the Punctum of Photography (2005) Rachel Haidu Arrogant Texts: Gerhard Richter's Family Pictures (2007) Gerhard Richter and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Interview (2004)