Episodit
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Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 5/13 on Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology and Monique Wittig’s The Category of Sex, with the philosopher Jules Joanne Gleeson @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/5-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 5/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx513
The video recording of the seminar Marx 5/13 with Jules Gleeson is here: TBD
Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13
*****
The German Ideology represents, famously, the exact point of rupture, according to Louis Althusser, between the early, philosophical, ideological Marx and the mature, scientific, economic works. It is the precise location of what Althusser called the “epistemological break in Marx’s intellectual development” because it is there, Althusser argued, that Marx self-consciously shed his philosophical skin (but still in a philosophical way). The German Ideology, written in 1845-46 and only published in full in 1932, has been the source of myriad interpretations and controversies over the materialist conception of history, the advent of revolution and communism, and divergent theories of ideology.
Most recently, The German Ideology has been a key reference point for new writings in the field of Transgender Marxism. And so, to help us read, discuss, and actualize The German Ideology and Monique Wittig’s 1982 article “The Category of Sex,” we are privileged to welcome to Marx 5/13 the brilliant critical theorist Jules Joanne Gleeson, who most recently co-edited with Elle O’Rourke the collection titled Transgender Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2021).
This is the full-length introduction to the seminar by Bernard E. Harcourt. Join us for the seminar with Jules Gleeson here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/5-13/
Welcome to Marx 5/13! -
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 4/13 on Marx’s 1844 Paris Manuscripts and Jacques Lacan's 1958 seminar on Formations of the Unconscious, with the philosopher Renata Salecl @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 4/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/25/bernard-e-harcourt-on-marxs-paris-manuscripts-of-1844-jacques-lacan-and-renata-salecl-introduction-to-marx-4-13/
The video recording of the seminar Marx 4/13 with Renata Salecl is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/iTiYK500190?si=RiCDweIBjujI0RJr
Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
*****
When Marx’s Paris manuscripts on political economy and on Hegelian philosophy were posthumously published in 1932, in German, under the title Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, the publication produced shock waves in the intellectual world and in Marxist circles.
Their publication rejuvenated the reception of Marx’s writings. It opened new interpretations of his work. It gave birth to an entire field of philosophical investigation on alienation. And it gave rise to contentious debates over the value of the youthful, philosophical writings of Marx, as opposed to the more mature, scientific, economic writings.
In the Paris manuscripts, Marx develops, famously, a theory of human self-alienation, a first sketch of his signature historical account, focusing mostly on the transition from capitalism to communism, with the abolition of private property, and insights from his work on the critique of Hegel, specifically focused on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit rather than his Philosophy of Right. The Paris manuscripts have generated a large body of remarkable scholarship along all of these dimensions.
At Marx 4/13, we return to the question of alienation in conversation with a brilliant philosopher in the psychoanalytic tradition, Renata Salecl, who joins us in New York from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Renata Salecl will discuss forms of social and political alienation that are currently being experienced and spreading widely across extreme right-wing movements in the West today. She will also reflect on apathy in today’s times and how it differs from alienation. Lacan’s text will help us understand the logic of desire and anxiety. In the seminar, we will look at the role anxiety, desire, and jouissance play in people’s fascination with populist authoritarian leaders—and how those emotions are experienced as well on the other side of the political spectrum.
Renata Salecl proposes that we reread Marx’s theory of alienation from the Paris manuscripts in conversation with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic writings, more specifically, paired with Lacan’s lecture “The Dream by the Butcher’s Beautiful Wife,” from a seminar he delivered on April 9, 1958, at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris.
Welcome to Marx 4/13!
Readings for Marx 4/13 here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13-readings-marxs-economic-and-philosophical-manuscripts-of-1844-and-jacques-lacan/ -
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 3/13 on Marx’s 1844 articles on the Critique of Hegel and "On the Jewish Question" and Claude Lefort's commentary in "Human Rights and Politics," with the critical theorist Jean Louise Cohen @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 3/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/08/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-marx-3-13-marxs-1844-articles-on-the-critique-of-hegel-and-the-jewish-question-claude-lefort-on-human-rights-and-politics-with-jean-louise-cohen/
Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13
***
In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Annals”), which he and Arnold Ruge edited in Paris: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.”
The first article, Jean Hyppolite referred to as “a first communist manifesto.” The second article, “On the Jewish Question,” called for human, as opposed to merely legal or political emancipation. Together, these two articles from 1844 push Marx beyond the legal remedies that he had proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood, which we discussed at Marx 2/13. There, you will recall, Marx called for a legal settlement based on an internationalist customary right of the poor, universal as to the class of poor peoples of all countries, because of their condition in the social order. By contrast, in these 1844 articles, Marx recognizes the thoroughgoing political and social nature of the struggle and turns instead to the working class and to social revolution for the realization of human emancipation.
From Marx’s juridical writings in 1842, then, we turn now in Marx 3/13 to his political writings on the state and the true nature of human emancipation. At Marx 3/13, we will read and discuss Marx’s 1844 articles with the philosopher and political theorist Jean Louise Cohen of Columbia University, in conversation with a commentary on Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” by the French political philosopher Claude Lefort. A former Trotskyist and co-founder with Cornelius Castoriadis of the journal and social movement Socialisme ou Barbarie (“Socialism or Barbarism”) in the 1950s, Claude Lefort became a staunch critic of the Soviet régime and an expert on questions of totalitarianism. In an article published in 1980, under the title “Politics and Human Rights,” Claude Lefort returned to Marx’s article “On the Jewish Question” to discuss the rise of human rights discourse within dissident movements in the East Bloc.
Welcome to Marx 3/13!
Readings for Marx 3/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13-readings-marxs-critique-of-hegel-and-on-the-jewish-question/ -
This is the Marx 2/13 seminar with philosopher Judith Revel and Bernard E. Harcourt on Marx’s 1842 articles on the Debates on the Law on the Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault's 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society @CGCParis.
Read more here: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/2-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 2/13 is here: the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...
The video recording of Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel can be watched here: https://youtu.be/pY_T7rdQYvc?si=bCMA4SvmeTwS2fb_
Information about Marx 13/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...
Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s.
Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson.
Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction.
In Marx 2/13, the philosopher Judith Revel will discuss these texts.
This is the full seminar.
Welcome to Marx 2/13! -
This is the seminar Marx 1/13 with the philosopher Etienne Balibar and Bernard E. Harcourt on Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach and Ernst Bloch’s Commentary from The Principle of Hope @CGCParis.
Read more here: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 1/13 is here: the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...
The video recording of the seminar Marx 1/13 with Étienne Balibar can be watched here: https://youtu.be/gAB6FveTjEc?si=ERuOf5jssUdvDwY3
Information about Marx 13/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...
Ludwig Feuerbach’s writings served both as a foil and a springboard for Marx to develop his radical philosophical approach. Feuerbach was a pivotal thinker, for Marx, who put him on the path to a new materialism having the standpoint of “human society, or socialized humanity,” as Marx wrote in Thesis #10. Feuerbach turned idealist systematicity on its head in order to focus attention on the being of humans (what was called human essence, human nature, species being). Although Feuerbach did not complete that turn to the satisfaction of Marx, Feuerbach launched a movement that would give Marx momentum.
Marx wrote extensively about Feuerbach in the years 1844-1845 in The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticisms (1844) and The German Ideology (unpublished, 1845). In 1888, Frederick Engels published Marx's jottings from a notebook under the title "Theses on Feuerbach" as an appendix to his book, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1888).
Engels' publication of the Theses on Feuerbach has been a source of controversy and commentary since, with the Theses themselves entering what Étienne Balibar calls the pantheon of "emblematic formularies of Western philosophy." With that, of course, comes the risk of distortions or misreadings or projections or, as well, excellent commentaries on such emblematic formulas. Engels had a project in mind when he published the Theses, possibly to systematize Marx's thought, perhaps to solidify his interpretation of historical materialism. Was that Marx's project as well?
In this seminar, the philosopher Étienne Balibar rereads the Theses in conversation with Ernst Bloch's commentary on the Theses from The Principle of Hope. Balibar uses the Theses as an entry point for our study of Marx this year.
Why start with Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach? you may ask. How does Ernst Bloch's commentary reorient the interpretation of Marx and shape a style of Marxism? Please join us for the seminar to hear Étienne Balibar address these questions.
Welcome to Marx 1/13!
Readings for Marx 1/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-1... -
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 2/13 on Marx’s 1842 articles on the Debates on the Law on the Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault's 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society, with the philosopher Judith Revel @CGCParis. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/2-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 2/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...
The video recording of Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel can be watched here: https://youtube.com/live/8uQ2LPyrbtE
Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...
Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s.
Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson.
Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction.
In Marx 2/13, the philosopher Judith Revel will discuss these texts.
This is the full introduction to the seminar.
Welcome to Marx 2/13! -
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 1/13 on Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach and Ernst Bloch’s Commentary from The Principle of Hope, with the philosopher Étienne Balibar @CGCParis.
Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-13/
The full text of this introduction to Marx 1/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...
The video recording of the seminar Marx 1/13 with Étienne Balibar can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/live/x7jOhfgF...
Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...
Ludwig Feuerbach’s writings served both as a foil and a springboard for Marx to develop his radical philosophical approach. Feuerbach was a pivotal thinker, for Marx, who put him on the path to a new materialism having the standpoint of “human society, or socialized humanity,” as Marx wrote in Thesis #10. Feuerbach turned idealist systematicity on its head in order to focus attention on the being of humans (what was called human essence, human nature, species being). Although Feuerbach did not complete that turn to the satisfaction of Marx, Feuerbach launched a movement that would give Marx momentum.
Marx wrote extensively about Feuerbach in the years 1844-1845 in The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticisms (1844) and The German Ideology (unpublished, 1845). In 1888, Frederick Engels published Marx's jottings from a notebook under the title "Theses on Feuerbach" as an appendix to his book, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1888).
Engels' publication of the Theses on Feuerbach has been a source of controversy and commentary since, with the Theses themselves entering what Étienne Balibar calls the pantheon of "emblematic formularies of Western philosophy." With that, of course, comes the risk of distortions or misreadings or projections or, as well, excellent commentaries on such emblematic formulas. Engels had a project in mind when he published the Theses, possibly to systematize Marx's thought, perhaps to solidify his interpretation of historical materialism. Was that Marx's project as well?
In this seminar, the philosopher Étienne Balibar rereads the Theses in conversation with Ernst Bloch's commentary on the Theses from The Principle of Hope. Balibar uses the Theses as an entry point for our study of Marx this year.
Why start with Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach? you may ask. How does Ernst Bloch's commentary reorient the interpretation of Marx and shape a style of Marxism? Please join us for the seminar to hear Étienne Balibar address these questions.
Welcome to Marx 1/13!
Readings for Marx 1/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-1... -
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces the new seminar series Marx 13/13.
This seminar series is part of the "13/13 Seminars" hosted by the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought at Columbia University.
Information about Marx 13/13 is available at https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu. -
Recording of automated telephone message from the Montgomery County Courthouse, Montgomery, Alabama, on Monday, June 6, 1994, recorded by Bernard E. Harcourt:
"Thank you for calling! The courthouse is closed in memory of our great president, Jefferson Davis. We will open at 8 o'clock Tuesday, June 7th. For weekend and nighttime calls, please consult the directory for direct dial numbers. Have a great and happy holiday!" -
Joselyn Chuquillanqui joins Charles Smith and Giselle Williams of Columbia's WKCR for a conversation on union organizing at Starbucks.
Joselyn Chuquillanqui, 28, of Elmont, was fired on July 27 after what she describes as months of being targeted by managers, who she also claims caused the Great Neck store’s April union vote to fail. While all 11 store employees initially signed petition cards for a union vote, the vote failed 5-6.
This conversation is part of the Utopia 13/13 seminars at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. Chuquillanqui joined us for Utopia 3/13 at the Jerome Greene Annex on October 26, 2022. You can find the full recording from the seminar and additional resources on the Utopia 3/13 page here: blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/3-13/
You can learn more about Chuquillanqui's organizing work here: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62426940
More on Starbucks unionizing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBGwcCZK6Ok -
Professor Alyssa Battistoni joins Charles Smith and Giselle Williams of Columbia's WKCR for a conversation on union organizing and the future of work.
This conversation is part of the Utopia 13/13 seminars at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. Professor Battistoni joined us for Utopia 3/13 at the Jerome Greene Annex on October 26, 2022. You can find the full recording from the seminar and additional resources on the Utopia 3/13 page here: https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/3-13/
We discussed Professor Battistoni's essay "Spadework" at Utopia 3/13. You can read her essay here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-34/politics/spadework/
She reflects further on her essay in her blog post here: https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/alyssa-battistoni-on-spadework/
At the seminar, Professors Battistoni and Harcourt discussed “Spadework” and “Labor Without Love” by Alyssa Battistoni and “Debt and Study” in The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney. -
Professor Étienne Balibar joins Charles Smith and Giselle Williams of Columbia's WKCR for a conversation on the critical theoretic foundations for concrete utopias.
This conversation is part of the Utopia 13/13 seminars at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. Professor Balibar joined us for Utopia 1/13 at the Maison Française on September 28, 2022. You can find the full recording from the seminar and additional resources on the Utopia 1/13 page here: https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/1-13/
At the seminar, Professor Balibar presented a new paper, “Uncovering lines of escape: towards a concept of concrete utopia in the age of catastrophes." You can read the full paper in English here: https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/etienne-balibar-uncovering-lines-of-escape-towards-a-concept-of-concrete-utopia-in-the-age-of-catastrophes/
In his lecture, “Uncovering lines of escape: towards a concept of concrete utopia in the age of catastrophes,” the philosopher Étienne Balibar develops three dimensions of the urgency of rethinking concrete utopias in these times of crises: first, Balibar discusses the dilemmas surrounding the concept of utopia and utopian thinking, without which there could be no “radical” politics, but at a time and in an age of at least three major catastrophes (the climate, the nuclear, and the digital); second, Balibar explores “real” or “concrete” utopias in light of the Foucauldian distinction between “utopias” and “heterotopias,” which could also be interpreted as a conversion of utopia into heterotopias; third, Balibar concludes on the transcendental problems of the different modalities of the “possible,” the “impossible,” the “necessary,” the “inevitable,” in their relationship to a concept of time (e.g. Bloch’s time of “not-yet”), as displaced by the questioning of “utopia” in today’s catastrophic circumstances.
At the seminar, Professors Balibar and Harcourt discussed Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia (1918); Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” (1967/1984); Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future (2005); Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847; Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (2013; Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (Verso 2010); and Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandonia (2005). -
In episode 5 of Critical Theory: Bernard E. Harcourt explores the utility of genealogical critique for revolutionary praxis. This presentation serves as a conclusion to this year’s 13/13 seminar that has interrogated the relationship between critical theory and revolutionary practice by examining the written works of worldly, revolutionary philosophers.
This episode focuses precisely on the place where critique can nourish worldly activity—and vice versa. It explores the activist writings of Nietzsche and Foucault in relation to praxis. It locates specifically when, how, and where critical philosophy and worldly activism can work together productively.
“In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.”
It is with those words of Goethe, you will recall, that Nietzsche opened his untimely meditations on the value of history. Today, history has been eclipsed by the genealogical method, within critical circles. Foucault’s genealogical approach now dominates historically inflected critique. But not all genealogical work today encourages praxis. Not all genealogies, nor all philosophical debates over genealogy, directly invigorate our activity.
In part because of its proliferation and now ubiquity, the genealogical method has essentially become what history was in the nineteenth century. It is crucial now that we assess the value of genealogical critique for praxis. The proper metric against which to evaluate genealogical writings is whether they contribute to transforming ourselves, others, and society.
Here, Bernard E. Harcourt proposes that we use the term “critical genealogy” to identify those genealogical practices that nourish our activity and thereby advance the ambition of critical philosophy, namely to change the world. It is time, once again, Harcourt argues, that we test whether our historical critiques are productive or demobilizing. It is imperative that we knock on them to determine which are hollow and which are robust—which discourage and which nourish action. It is time, once again, that we do philosophy with a hammer.
The more polished and updated paper can be found on SSRN here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4147668 -
Episode 4: George Jackson and Revolutionary Prison Writings with Paul Redd former member of the Short Corridor Collective, Pelican Bay State Prison, California.
In episode 4 of Critical Theory: The Podcast, Bernard E. Harcourt sits down with Paul Redd, who was incarcerated for 46 years in California, 35 of them in solitary confinement, and was released on May 21, 2020, to discuss the influence of prison writings and the experience of the Short Corridor Collective at Pelican Bay State Prison. The members of the Short Corridor read and exchanged the critical works of George Jackson, Assata Shakur, Eldridge Cleaver, Michel Foucault, Bobby Sands, and others, leading to the country’s largest ever prison hunger strike, in 2013, involving more than thirty thousand women and men throughout California prisons who refused to eat, as part of a series of prison hunger strikes that began in July 2011. The hunger strikes and aggressive litigation ultimately led to California’s agreement to end indeterminate solitary confinement based on gang affiliation. Paul Redd participated in organizing the hunger strikes on the Short Corridor, was part of the efforts to end hostilities, and was a signatory to the agreement. He discusses the role of reading Bobby Sands, George Jackson and others with us in preparation for the public seminar, Revolution 7/13, at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought.
Join us at: http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/revolution1313/7-13/ -
Episode 3: The Counterrevolution in Brazil, with Augusto Jobim do Amaral, Fernanda Martins, Antonio Pele, and Jesús Sabariego. Taped in Brazil.
In episode 3 of Critical Theory: The Podcast, Columbia University Professor Bernard E. Harcourt investigates the shockingly high rates of police violence in Brazil, in an effort to understand, in conversation with four brilliant critical theorists in Brazil, how best to comprehend the ongoing state violence. Discussing theories of civil war, of counterrevolution, of necropolitics, biopolitics and biopower, Harcourt and his four guests—Augusto Jobim do Amaral, Fernanda Martins, Antonio Pele, and Jesús Sabariego—engage in a wide-ranging empirical and theoretical examination of the current crisis of police violence in Brazil. Taped in Porto Alegre and Rio in October 2019, this episode offers a stimulating and haunting analysis of contemporary state violence in Brazil today. -
In Episode 2 of Critical Theory: The Podcast, Bernard E. Harcourt sits down with Banu Bargu (UC Santa Cruz) to discuss her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) and the weaponization of life in relation to praxis.
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Episode 1: The New Age of Riots, with Joshua Clover.
In the first episode of Critical Theory: The Podcast, Professor Bernard E. Harcourt (Columbia University) and Professor Joshua Clover (UC Davis) discuss Clover's new book Riot. Strike. Riot. (Verso, 2016), its implications for a critical practice of revolt, and the frontiers of contemporary critical thought. Clover provocatively opens his book: “Riots are coming, they are already here, more are on the way, no one doubts it. They deserve an adequate theory.” This podcast explores that theory and the broader question of the relationship between thought and action. Join us for a stimulating hour on The New Age of Riots.
