Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto - Alyson Escalante
Alyson Escalante's critiques of the trans community's reliance on gender essentialism and a proposal for a radical negation as the solution to gendered alienation and oppression. To be included in the upcoming anthology Fuck Your Gender Neutral Prison! A Nihilist Insurrection Against Gender.
Grey is the golden tree of life, green is theory - Robert Kurz
In this 2007 essay, Robert Kurz examines the question of theory and practice from the perspective of the “categorical” “critique of value-dissociation”, with extensive discussions of Marx, Engels, Bloch, Adorno, Horkheimer, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Debord, Negri, and Holloway, and concludes, in the face of the prevalent urge for immediate “action” and the equally widespread denigration of theory, that “critical theory must consciously maintain a distance from all existing praxis”.
Contemporary anarchist studies: an introductory anthology of anarchy in the academy
This volume of collected essays by some of the most prominent academics studying anarchism bridges the gap between anarchist activism on the streets and anarchist theory in the academy.
Review: Anarchism and sexuality
DD Johnston's review of Anarchism and Sexuality, a multi-authored book edited by Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2011).
Domination without a subject (part one) - Robert Kurz
In Part One of this 1993 essay, Robert Kurz criticizes the largely unexamined assumptions underpinning the “vulgar Marxist” use of such political concepts as power, interest and domination; discusses the development of the more nuanced understanding of these concepts expressed in theories associated with the names of Weber, Michels, Trotsky and Freud; and assesses the role played by structuralism and systems theory in the establishment of an “apologetic” theory of subjectless domination which must be replaced by a “critical and revolutionary praxis” that is no longer Marxism of a “subjective-ideological type”.
Sokal Hoax - 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' by Alan Sokal
In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal performed an experiment after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the abuses of science and mathematics by writers and academics under the umbrella of 'cultural studies/poststructuralism/postmodernism. Here is the original hoax text, laced with nonsense phrases, meaningless mathematics, and topped with flattering citations of the editors of the journal to which it was submitted, Social Text. When the article was accepted and published, Sokal revealed his deliberate hoax, and threw petrol on the flames of the already burning 'Science Wars'.
Sokal Hoax - 'A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies' by Alan Sokal
Physicist Alan Sokal reveals the motivations behind his infamous 'Sokal hoax' article - an experiment after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the abuses of science and mathematics by writers and academics under the umbrella of 'cultural studies/poststructuralism/postmodernism'.
Welcome to the desert of the Real - Slavoj Žižek
The philosopher-psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek’s take on the aftermath of the September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks, including his trademark references to popular culture to explain his Lacanian psychoanalysis. He presents a choice: “there are two fundamental ways to react to such traumatic events which cause unbearable anxiety: the way of superego and the way of the act”, and it is in ‘the act’ in which he sees the possibility to escape “the reassertion of the barbaric violence” (note: this is not the longer book of the same name).
Anarchism and the politics of ressentiment - Saul Newman
This essay critiques classical anarchism using Nietzsche’s concept of ‘ressentiment’ and Michel Foucault’s ideas on power. While Newman caricatures 'classical anarchism' in his haste to define his own ‘post-anarchism’, and tends to favour individual identity over collective revolutionary action, he does make important points about the need for anarchism to be more than just a reaction to the state, and the fact that “we come from the same world as power, not from a 'natural' world removed from it”.
Intellectuals and power: A conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze
This is a transcript of a 1972 conversation between the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, which discusses the links between the struggles of women, homosexuals, prisoners etc to class struggle, and also the relationship between theory, practice and power
