Debates

“If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban” (Norman Finkelstein)

Of course, the above …
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In 1955, Theodor Adorno famously declared, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” In the new century, the barbaric takes new forms. Nature rebels against humanity’s voracity and foolishness. What …
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What comes to mind when we hear about Ukrainian cinema today? I’m certain that for most readers, images related to the terrible war that has been destroying cities and grinding …
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The first part of this three-part essay began with the near-universal assumption that we are independent subjects, ultimately identified with a center of conscious experience outside of social life. Both …
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The traumatized hold particular sway in the cultural imaginary. The category is almost interchangeable with that of the victim, though we also can entertain how the victimizer/oppressor/occupier can be traumatized …
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As Lacanians, we should be especially attentive to shifts and inconsistencies in Lacan’s own teaching. Perhaps the greatest shift occurs in the course of his seminar on the ethics of …
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As the Democratic Party scrambled to make sense of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, some of the American “moderates” and rightwing analysts, including long-standing New York Times commenter David Brooks and …
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For to comprehend reality means to comprehend what things really are, and this in turn means rejecting their mere factuality. (Herbert Marcuse)[i]

Some things seem utterly unproblematic. We think …
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After wearing glasses for a while, you stop noticing them on your nose because the brain filters out the information as irrelevant. Life, after all, is tiring and demands maximum …
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In a fascinating essay “Marx’s Coat,” Peter Stallybrass traces the origins of the concept of fetishism with the help of thinkers such as William Pietz, Marcel Mauss and others to …
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