Gjesteredaktør Gabriel Rockhill

This veritable tour de force unearths the complex network of forces operative in Cold War cultural production. It reveals the central role played by the American secret service in the promotion of a particular aesthetic agenda, and it demonstrates the extent to which culture was at the frontlines of political battles in the postwar era. For all of those who have been lulled into the dogmatic consensus according to which art is autonomous from politics, this is absolutely essential reading.

In this phenomenal essay, Elias marshals refined sociological and historical arguments in order to reach deep into the philosophic undergirding of the modern era and call into question some of the most widespread assumptions regarding time. He launches a veritable assault against the Kantian and phenomenological understandings of temporality, ultimately showing that time itself—rather than being a constitutive aspect of human experience—is a temporal formation. He demonstrates, in other words, that ‘time itself’ does not exist but that there are only sedimented conceptions of ‘temporality’ that result from social and historical processes. If this strikes you as unfeasible or even outlandish due to the commonly held view on the objectivity of scientific time, this book will make for unsettling—but absolutely necessary—reading.

It is arguable that Castoriadis is one of the most underappreciated European philosophers of the 20th century. His profound and expansive project stretches from political philosophy and ontology to psychoanalysis and the philosophy of science. However, the visibility of his work still suffers from the extent to which it does not fit easily within the established trends of 20th century French philosophy (une raison de plus de le lire). This impressive book, which is the transcription of one of his seminars, explores the crucial questions of subjectivity and the social-historical creation of truth.

A timely collection of essays by some of the most prominent contemporary thinkers in Europe and the United States, this book serves as a much needed critique of one of the dominant value-concepts in the current political imaginary: democracy. From a myriad of points of view and motley intellectual traditions, these authors raise questions that we should all be asking ourselves in an era when the value of democracy tends to remain unquestioned.

This is a classic and important reflection on colonialism that deserves close study and analysis. In spite of the fact that the first text was written in the postwar era, it continues to be highly relevant to the contemporary era. And the second text includes an insightful and thought-provoking exploration into the cultural and historical dimensions of Négritude, which is at one point defined as “the seizure, by ourselves, of our past and, through poetry, through the imaginary, through the novel, through works of art, the intermittent fulguration of our possible becoming.”

Hugo’s last novel, which focuses on the French Revolution, merits rereading in the current conjuncture of revolutionary uprisings. In it, he grapples with the meaning of revolution, the role of the Terror, the status of republicanism, the relation between morality and politics, the power of writing to transform the world and the place of transcendent values. He also pursues his revolution in writing, in which the ‘little people’ of history come to play a central role and his “revolutionary wind” blows away “peasant words and senator words.”

This is an enlightening investigation into the social formation of the vocation of the artist since the 18th century. By exploring, more generally, the emergence of the vocational regime of art in the modern era and juxtaposing it with previous regimes, it calls into question many of the prevalent historical myths concerning both art and artists. It is, among other things, a welcome antidote to the widespread tendency to naturalize the modern concept of art and project it back onto the entire history of ‘artistic’ practices.