In honor of Fredric Jameson‘s 90th birthday this month, we’re publishing a series of short essays focused on the major books in Jameson’s oeuvre. Here, Daniel Hartley revisits Jameson’s first book, Sartre: The Origins of a Style (1961).
Gramsci saw the whole of the Italian “South” as a kind of goblin, as a character who got and keeps getting a bad rap, like Rumpelstiltskin. In late 1926, a month or so prior to his arrest, he was at work on a long essay about the Italian South, Alcuni temi della questione Meridionale—Some Aspects on the Southern Question. The piece was never completed; it was rudely interrupted; and while there’s a lot left dangling, there’s plenty for us still to glean. Gramsci was addressing his Marxist comrades, notably comrades from the north, in a tone that’s critical, enquiring, taking to task all camps, typically trying to get at the truth—warts and all. Gramsci chastised a Right northern bourgeoisie as well as a Left industrial proletariat, northern Marxists as well as southern liberals, workers from the north as well as a gentry from the south.
Point is that all this is voiced by a lad from the south. Gramsci’s political awakening occurred in the north, yet his cultural allegiances always rested with the south. He grew up in peasant society, spoke local Ghilarza dialect, and probably didn’t hear Italian itself until he reached grammar school; and then, in Turin, through his college professors. As a poor, set-apart kid, encountering official Italian was likely both a source of liberation and a lesson in officialdom, the tenor of a ruling class authority he was out to smash. [continues here]
The Daily Nous has a short piece about the decline in the number of book reviews at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), with some comments about why this might be. Daily Nons will share news of open access book reviews, provided journals alert them.
I’ve noticed too that publishers are now reluctant to send physical copies of books to reviewers. Given that a copy of the book is the only recompense for the work of reviewing, I’ve refused to review a pdf or other e-format. I’ve also tried to avoid reviewing when the review would only be available to journal subscribers. But these seem to be losing battles.
(Update: I should clarify that I do sometimes review for subscriber-only outlets, but in those cases do try to make the review available easily by sharing a link along with contact details so people can ask me for the copy.)
How are poor people in South Africa confronting the persistent legacy of apartheid spatial segregation and anti-blackness? And what can movements across the world engaged in a global struggle against racial capitalism learn from the South African experience? This book explores the relationship between shack dwellers and the municipal government in South Africa. Grounded in the local realities of the struggle for housing and basic survival, the project makes broader interventions in national, continental and global debates about urban geography, African studies, social movements and race. The author argues that the shack settlement is emblematic of a democratic South Africa still profoundly shaped by apartheid’s afterlife.
In 1958, during the insurrectionary events that preceded General de Gaulle’s return to power, 57-year-old Henri Lefebvre faced two ‘comrades’ from the French Communist Party in an austere room. His request for minutes to be taken had just been curtly refused. The Commission central de contrôle politique was only there to question him about his ‘behaviour’.
The interview began: ‘Did you ask the Party’s permission to write an article about the Nouvelle Vague in L’Express?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Did you ask the Party’s permission to write a response to André Philip in France-Observateur?’ – ‘No.’ After this comedy of an interrogation, the philosopher was expelled from the PCF, in which he had been an activist for thirty years. He was part of the first generation of Marxist philosophers, along with his friends Norbert Guterman (1900-84) and Georges Politzer (1903-42).
Originally published by Mediapart in 2023 (this requires subscription)
Anticommunism in French Society and Politics, 1945-1953 evaluates the prevalence of anticommunism among the French population in 1945 to 1953, and examines its causes, character, and consequences through a series of case studies on different segments of French society. These include the scouting movement; family organisations; agricultural associations; middle-class groups; and trade unions and other working-class organisations. Aaron Clift contends that anticommunism was more widespread and deeply rooted than previously believed, and had a substantial impact on national politics and on these social groups and organisations. Furthermore, he argues that the study of anticommunism allows us a deeper understanding of the values they regarded as the most important to defend.
Although anticommunism was a diverse phenomenon, this work identifies common discourses, including portrayals of communism as a threat to the nation; the colonial empire; the traditional family; private property; religion; the rural world; and Western civilisation. It also highlights common aims (such as the rehabilitation of wartime collaborators) and tactics (such as the invocation of apoliticism). While acknowledging the importance of the Cold War, it rejects the assumption that anticommunism was an American import or foreign to French society and demonstrates links between anticommunism and anti-Americanism. It concludes that anticommunism drew its strength from the connection or even conflation of communism with perceived negative social changes that were seen to threaten traditional French civilisation, interacting with the postwar international and domestic environment and the personal experiences of individual anticommunists.
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 new tone to the debate about Adorno’s negativism.”—Jürgen Habermas
Theodor Adorno is often portrayed as a totalizing negativist, a scowling contrarian who looked upon modern society with despair. Peter E. Gordon thinks we have this wrong: if Adorno is uncompromising in his critique, it is because he sees in modernity an unfulfilled possibility of human flourishing. In a damaged world, Gordon argues, all happiness is likewise damaged but not wholly absent. Through a comprehensive rereading of Adorno’s work, A Precarious Happiness recovers Adorno’s commitment to traces of happiness—fragments of the good amid the bad. Ultimately, Gordon argues that social criticism, while exposing falsehoods, must also cast a vision for an unrealized better world.
The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth-century thought
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a deterministic, predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of individual consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him “the most dangerous man in the world.”
In Herald of a Restless World, Emily Herring recovers how Bergson captivated a society in flux. She shows how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, laughter, and the creative continue to shape how we see the world around us.
Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect. Bergson’s extraordinary insight into life’s fundamental questions remains urgent and relevant to this day.
Cover of the book, with Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova’s painting King of Hearts
The idea of ‘hybrid sovereignty’ describes overlapping relations between public and private actors in important areas of global power, such as contractors fighting international wars, corporations regulating global markets, or governments collaborating with nongovernmental entities to influence foreign elections. This innovative study shows that these connections – sometimes hidden and often poorly understood – underpin the global order, in which power flows without regard to public and private boundaries. Drawing on extensive original archival research, Swati Srivastava reveals the little-known stories of how this hybrid power operated at some of the most important turning points in world history: spreading the British empire, founding the United States, establishing free trade, realizing transnational human rights, and conducting twenty-first century wars. In order to sustain meaningful dialogues about the future of global power and political authority, it is crucial that we begin to understand how hybrid sovereignty emerged and continues to shape international relations.
