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Debates

Reloading Laughter: Žižek and a Theory of Comedy
4 years ago

Reloading Laughter: Žižek and a Theory of Comedy

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Despite his reputation for telling jokes and the central role that humor plays in his philosophy, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek does not have a theory of comedy. In his …
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Mother Earth and the Maternal Body
4 years ago

Mother Earth and the Maternal Body

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The personification of nature as a maternal figure has a long history, spanning many different cultural belief systems: within Greek mythology, she is Mother Gaia; in Inca belief, Pachamama; and, …
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The Cult of Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: A Proletarian Critique
4 years ago

The Cult of Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: A Proletarian Critique

It has been over four decades since Cedric Robinson published his widely-acclaimed study, Black Marxism.[1] In recent years the work has enjoyed a celebratory renaissance.  It has become increasingly influential …
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On “Legitimate Rapes”
4 years ago

On “Legitimate Rapes”

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An obscene event occurred back in 2012. In an effort to explain his stance on abortion, Representative Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, provoked ire across the political …
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The Age of the Dislocated Spectacle
4 years ago

The Age of the Dislocated Spectacle

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We live in the age of the dislocated spectacle. As the procession of death carrying forth the body of the deceased Queen passed by, all hands were held aloft in …
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Peace to the World, or How Empires Are Made: The 2022 Edition
4 years ago

Peace to the World, or How Empires Are Made: The 2022 Edition

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From many quarters, particularly on the global Left, we hear appeals to peace at the time of a brutal war, which Russia is currently waging against Ukraine. At first glance …
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A System on Life Support
4 years ago

A System on Life Support

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We have entered a global cycle of secular inflation that is unique in history. The cynical attempt to preserve a system based on the ontological assumption of permanent monetary injections …
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Has Transgender Identity Politics Gone Too Far?
4 years ago

Has Transgender Identity Politics Gone Too Far?

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I was recently reading the introduction to the inaugural edition of the Transgender Studies Quarterly (University of Arizona, 2014). The authors of that introduction very helpfully explained that two head-crunching …
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Is the Center Neoliberal?
4 years ago

Is the Center Neoliberal?

It may seem strange to resurrect a neoconservative thinker to address questions of neoliberalism, yet Irving Kristol’s largely forgotten Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978) helps us understand the turn to …
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What Is It Like to Be a Bot?
4 years ago

What Is It Like to Be a Bot?

Blake Lemoine is – or was – a Google engineer who recently made a disturbing claim: the LaMDA chatbot he was working on had developed a child-like consciousness. The transcripts …
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