Author Archives: stuartelden

Peter E. Gordon, A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity – University of Chicago Press, January 2024 (and podcast interview)

Posted on June 23, 2024 by stuartelden

Peter E. Gordon, A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity – University of Chicago Press, January 2024 A strikingly original account of Theodor Adorno’s work as a critique animated by happiness. “Gordon’s confidently gripping and persistently subtle interpretation brings a … Continue reading →

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Commentaries on Perry Anderson’s Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State

Posted on June 23, 2024 by stuartelden

John Breuilly, Introduction The three texts published here were written in the mid-1970s…. Here I explain how these came about. Back in 1974, I was teaching on a Modern Politics and History degree at Manchester. This involved modern historians from the … Continue reading →

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Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations – beginning of a list of essays and translations

Posted on June 22, 2024 by stuartelden

I previously grumbled about how hard it was to navigate Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations. I went looking for an essay in the French, only to find it was in one volume of the original edition and a different volume of the revised edition. I … Continue reading →

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Keith Gandal, Firsthand: How I Solved a Literary Mystery and Learned to Play Kickass Tennis while Coming to Grips with the Disorder of Things – Universty of Michigan Press, July 2024 

Posted on June 22, 2024 by stuartelden

Keith Gandal, Firsthand: How I Solved a Literary Mystery and Learned to Play Kickass Tennis while Coming to Grips with the Disorder of Things – Universty of Michigan Press, July 2024  I almost missed this, given the subtitle, but Gandal was one … Continue reading →

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Marco Filoni and Massimo Palma (eds.), Tyrants at Work: Philosophy and Politics in Alexandre Kojève – Editions ETS, 2024 (print and open access)

Posted on June 21, 2024 by stuartelden

Marco Filoni and Massimo Palma (eds.), Tyrants at Work: Philosophy and Politics in Alexandre Kojève – Editions ETS, 2024 (print and open access) This volume wants to restore the depth and contradictions – both theoretical and biographical, political and speculative – of … Continue reading →

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Nick Nesbitt, Reading Capital’s Materialist Dialectic: Marx, Spinoza and the Althusserians – Brill, May 2024 (print and open access)

Posted on June 20, 2024 by stuartelden

Nick Nesbitt, Reading Capital’s Materialist Dialectic: Marx, Spinoza and the Althusserians – Brill, May 2024 (print and open access) While the explicit Althusserian engagement with Marx’s Capital remained largely limited to Reading Capital, after 1968, Nick Nesbitt argues, this theoretical intervention remained … Continue reading →

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Beverley Best, The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Value in Marx’s Capital – Verso, May 2024

Posted on June 19, 2024 by stuartelden

Beverley Best, The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Value in Marx’s Capital – Verso, May 2024 Why the neglected third volume of Capital holds the key to Marx’s theory of value The Automatic Fetish traces Marx’s analysis of capital, step by step, through … Continue reading →

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Olivia Weisser (ed.), Early Modern Medicine: An Introduction to Source Analysis – Routledge, March 2024

Posted on June 18, 2024 by stuartelden

Olivia Weisser (ed.), Early Modern Medicine: An Introduction to Source Analysis – Routledge, March 2024 Part of the Routledge series – Guides to Using Historical Sources This collection offers readers a guide to analyzing historical texts and objects using a diverse selection … Continue reading →

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The chaos of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations

Posted on June 17, 2024 by stuartelden

I just looked for an essay in one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations. What a chaotic mess the different editions and translations are. The English text with the title Situations (1965) is a partial translation of volume IV. Qu’est-ce que la … Continue reading →

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Richard Wilson, Shakespeare’s Fascist Followers – Bloomsbury, February 2025

Posted on June 17, 2024 by stuartelden

Richard Wilson, Shakespeare’s Fascist Followers – Bloomsbury, February 2025 Very good to see this book scheduled. (update May 2025: it is now scheduled for August 2025. I’ve added the cover.) ‘Richard Wilson’s meticulously researched, powerfully argued and brilliantly written account … Continue reading →

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