Critical Theory: The Podcast: Recent Episodes
Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought
From Bernard E. Harcourt at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, Critical Theory: The Podcast explores the very front lines of critical thought. Season One, Praxis 13/13, Professor Harcourt sits down with writers and thinkers to explore the relationship of critique and praxis and to grapple with the question "What is to be Done?".
http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/praxis1313/
The philosopher Étienne Balibar reads and discusses with Bernard E. Harcourt Marx’s last texts (The Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and Letters to Vera Zasulich (1881)) at Marx 13/13 @Columbia in Paris. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/13-13/ The full-length introduction to Marx 13/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1313The recording of the seminar is here: https://youtube.com/live/5nwOCRrql4w Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *This is the seminar with Étienne Balibar at Marx 13/13 at which we read and discuss Marx's last writings, including his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), his conspectus and critique of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and his letter and drafts to the Russian revolutionary, Vera Zasulich (1881).What makes these final texts so utterly fascinating and important is that they encapsulate Marx’s post-economic political thought: his political thinking after he had fully developed and articulated his mature political-economic theories. These political texts of the Late Marx—by contrast to the Communist Manifesto (1848), the Eighteenth Brumaire (1852), or the earlier articles on the thefts of wood (1842)—formulate political views within the framework of Marx’s mature economic thinking.What we have, in effect, here, is the unwritten final political volume of Capital.In this political moment, it is especially important to end here, on these political writings, in this last seminar of Marx 13/13, in order to discuss their contemporary relevance. We will study them at the seminar Marx 13/13 with the philosopher Étienne Balibar, with whom we began this seminar series eight months ago and who has been a constant companion on this journey—perhaps since at least the early 1960s.In this final, closing session of Marx 13/13, the philosopher Étienne Balibar joins us to discuss the final texts of Marx and to reflect on our discussions during the year-long seminar.Welcome to Marx 13/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces the final session of the Marx 13/13 seminars on the Late Marx (Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and Letters to Vera Zasulich (1881)) with the philosopher Étienne Balibar @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/13-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 11/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1313The video recording of the seminar Marx 13/13 with Étienne Balibar is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/5nwOCRrql4w?si=vskXmMsLgZeVrZs6Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *This is the full-length introduction to the final session of Marx 13/13 at which we read and discuss Marx's last writings, including his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), his conspectus and critique of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and his letter and drafts to the Russian revolutionary, Vera Zasulich (1881).What makes these final texts so utterly fascinating and important is that they encapsulate Marx’s post-economic political thought: his political thinking after he had fully developed and articulated his mature political-economic theories. These political texts of the Late Marx—by contrast to the Communist Manifesto (1848), the Eighteenth Brumaire (1852), or the earlier articles on the thefts of wood (1842)—formulate political views within the framework of Marx’s mature economic thinking.What we have, in effect, here, is the unwritten final political volume of Capital.In this political moment, it is especially important to end here, on these political writings, in this last seminar of Marx 13/13, in order to discuss their contemporary relevance. We will study them at the seminar Marx 13/13 with the philosopher Étienne Balibar, with whom we began this seminar series eight months ago and who has been a constant companion on this journey—perhaps since at least the early 1960s.Let me here introduce these final texts in this video before turning to our seminar with Étienne Balibar. Welcome to Marx 13/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces the Marx 12/13 seminar on Marx’s The Civil War in France, in conversation with Voltairine de Cleyre’s “The Commune is Risen” and Plotino Rhodakanaty’s “The American Commune,” with Bruno Bosteels @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/12-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 11/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1213The video recording of the seminar Marx 12/13 with Bruno Bosteels is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/crkWG1wzGAU?si=H3Bq-SOxc75pZkMP Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *This is the full length introduction to the seminar, Marx 12/13, where we read and discuss Marx’s The Civil War in France, in conversation with Voltairine de Cleyre’s “The Commune is Risen” and Plotino Rhodakanaty’s “The American Commune,” with Bruno Bosteels.Few historical events or great defeats have inspired as much hope and inspiration, against all odds, as the Paris Commune of 1871. Voltairine de Cleyre's “The Commune is Risen” (1912) and Plotino Rhodakanaty's “The American Commune" (1877) are two brilliant illustrations of the lasting spirit of the Commune in the Americas. Marx's address "The Civil War in France" is of course another standard-bearer. With Bruno Bosteels, we will be exploring these texts and their interrelations.In this seminar we turn to the penultimate historical period of Marx’s life: the creation of the International Workingmen’s Association (1864–1876), the rise and fall of the Paris Commune (March-May 1871), Marx’s addresses to the IWA on the situation in Paris, and his famous essay The Civil War in France read to the General Council of the IWA just a few days after the collapse of the Paris Commune.We are delighted to welcome to the seminar Columbia University Professor Bruno Bosteels, one of the world’s leading experts on Marx, to discuss The Civil War in France. Bruno Bosteels will put Marx’s writings on the Commune in conversation with Voltairine de Cleyre’s “The Commune is Risen” and Plotino Rhodakanaty’s “The American Commune,” as well as in relation to the second part of his book La comuna mexicana (The Mexican Commune).Welcome to Marx 12/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces the Marx 11/13 seminar on the Late Marx in conversation with Kohei Saito and his manifesto for degrowth communism, Slow Down (2020) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/11-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 11/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1113The video recording of the seminar Marx 11/13 with Kohei Saito is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/zn6HwiRh23E?si=Kjt3PRHyH61WrdPfInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *This is the full length introduction to the seminar, Marx 11/13, where we read and discuss the late work of Karl Marx in conversation with Kohei Saito from the University of Tokyo and his manifesto for degrowth communism, titled Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto (2020).The late Marx is of particular importance to scholars like Kohei Saito because it is during his final years that Marx expands his repertoire to engage a wide range of areas outside the classic corpus of political economy that he had focused on from the 1840s to the 1860s. In his final years, Marx explores scholarship in chemistry and the natural sciences on the effects of advanced agricultural technologies and practices on the ecosystem. He reads works on the history of political development in India, Russia, and Algeria. He consults the work of anthropologists on pre-capitalist societies and on land use and communal practices in ancient Rome, among early Germanic peoples, in South America, and among the indigenous peoples in America.During the period, Marx publishes far less than he had in earlier decades but takes copious notes that fill volumes of the new MEGA2 edition of his and Engels’ collected works. His most important writings from these final years include the drafts and final letter he wrote to the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich in February-March 1881; the preface to the second Russian edition of The Communist Manifesto that he and Engels published in 1882; the Critique of the Gotha Program that he published a few years earlier in 1875; and the Ethnological Notebooks that he kept during his late studies.These texts form the backbone of the late Marx that Kohei Saito analyzes in his work Slow Down. What is unique about Saito’s work is that he marries the late Marx with an argument for degrowth communism. While others have wedded the late Marx to ecological movements and ecosocialism, Saito goes further and argues for degrowth. His theory of degrowth includes, at its heart, an argument for worker cooperatives, consumer coops, and mutual aid. It embraces the idea of an economic regime of mutually reinforcing cooperative initiatives and thus forms a direct link to the idea of coöperism. It is deeply provocative and represents a formative interpretation of Marx and Marxism.This full-length introduction provides background on the late Marx and Kohei Saito's work. Welcome to Marx 11/13!
The philosopher Cornel West reads and discusses Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Capital (1867), in conversation with Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/10-13/ The full-length introduction to Marx 10/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1013The video recording of the seminar Marx 10/13 with Cornel West is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/Jt1hvsZcHSQ?si=Yn-uQSYm0flWElOJInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *We now reach, on our year-long journey, the most famous political economic writings of Marx—first, his publication of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859 and, second, the release of his magnum opus, Capital, Volume I, in 1867. In this session, Marx 10/13, we read Marx through the lens of Cedric Robinson’s landmark work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Although famous today, Robinson’s book almost fell through the cracks when it was published, and likely would have had it not been for a provocative book review published in the Monthly Review in 1988 by Cornel West, who at the time was professor of religion and director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Princeton University.Cornel West shattered what critics would later call the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounded Robinson’s book. In West’s characteristic way, he propelled Black Marxism into contemporary debate. For this and many other reasons, it is an absolute privilege and honor to welcome our dear colleague and friend—and a faithful friend to these 13/13 seminars—Dr. Cornel West, back to Columbia University and to Marx 13/13.This is the seminar recording with Cornel West. Welcome to Marx 10/13!
The philosophers Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra read and discuss with Bernard E. Harcourt Marx’s Grundrisse and Toni Negri's Marx Beyond Marx at Marx 9/13 @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/9-13/ Wednesday March 5, 2025 at Columbia University. The full text of the introduction to Marx 9/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx913Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13*** The Grundrisse, a hefty volume running about a thousand pages long, has become the urtext for those readers of Marx who have sought to infuse the more scientific and economistic later Marx of the Capital with the earlier philosophical, political, and social theoretic Marx of the 1840s. For these readers, it serves as the final bridge to Capital. It still contains traces of the early philosophical theory of alienation from the Paris manuscripts and in fact hints at how those ideas are transformed into questions of fetishism. It still retains a conversation with Hegel, this time with his Science of Logic. Marx emphasizes the centrality of social relations, in other words of social theory, in all the economic categories that he develops—money, value, capital. Marx speaks to the subjectivities of the workers, he discusses their consciousness of self, of “being for another” and “being for self.” Marx emphasizes the conflict and struggle between capital and the workers. “The biggest exchange process,” Marx writes, “is not that between commodities, but that between commodities and labor.”To which Toni Negri exclaims, “boom! The first big leap, the first of the political excursuses of the Grundrisse.”At Marx 9/13, Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra will highlight the political reading of the Grundrisse, drawing on the work of Toni Negri, from his lectures on the Grundrisse from 1978 published under the title Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. In that work, Negri meticulously demonstrates how the Grundrisse operates as a praxis-oriented manual to guide revolutionary action. Negri shows how, in his words, “the revolutionary subject emerges from the relation with capital” through a process that makes possible the “auto-determination of the subject” that can then modify the processes of capitalism.For this session, we are privileged to welcome Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra, who themselves collaborated closely with Negri for decades. Notably, in Toni Negri’s book Marx in Movement, Negri traces the different phases of the workerist movement and its development, from its origins in the 1960s, through the work on social reproduction and the wages for housework movement of the 1970s, beyond the European focus in the 1980s, to the third phase in the 1990s with the birth of neoliberalism and financial mediations in post-Fordism. Negri concludes with the seminal work of our two guests: “And then there were the studies of Michael Hardt, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson on global migration and the international dimension of the class struggle.”Welcome to Marx 9/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 10/13 on Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Capital (1867), in conversation with Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism, with the philosopher Cornel West @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/10-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 9/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1013The video recording of the seminar Marx 10/13 with Cornel West is here: TBDInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *We now reach, on our year-long journey, the most famous political economic writings of Marx—first, his publication of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859 and, second, the release of his magnum opus, Capital, Volume I, in 1867. In this session, Marx 10/13, we read Marx through the lens of Cedric Robinson’s landmark work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Although famous today, Robinson’s book almost fell through the cracks when it was published, and likely would have had it not been for a provocative book review published in the Monthly Review in 1988 by Cornel West, who at the time was professor of religion and director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Princeton University.Cornel West shattered what critics would later call the “conspiracy of silence” that surrounded Robinson’s book. In West’s characteristic way, he propelled Black Marxism into contemporary debate. For this and many other reasons, it is an absolute privilege and honor to welcome our dear colleague and friend—and a faithful friend to these 13/13 seminars—Dr. Cornel West, back to Columbia University and to Marx 13/13.This is the full-length introduction to the seminar. Welcome to Marx 10/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 9/13 on Marx's Grundrisse and Toni Negri's Marx Beyond Marx, with the philosophers Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/9-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 9/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx913The video recording of the seminar Marx 9/13 with Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/A-ox1NlJElg?si=52nL_qWUqQ2Er2tmInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *The Grundrisse, a hefty volume running about a thousand pages long, has become the urtext for those readers of Marx who have sought to infuse the more scientific and economistic later Marx of the Capital with the earlier philosophical, political, and social theoretic Marx of the 1840s. For these readers, it serves as the final bridge to Capital. It still contains traces of the early philosophical theory of alienation from the Paris manuscripts and in fact hints at how those ideas are transformed into questions of fetishism. It still retains a conversation with Hegel, this time with his Science of Logic. Marx emphasizes the centrality of social relations, in other words of social theory, in all the economic categories that he develops—money, value, capital. Marx speaks to the subjectivities of the workers, he discusses their consciousness of self, of “being for another” and “being for self.” Marx emphasizes the conflict and struggle between capital and the workers. “The biggest exchange process,” Marx writes, “is not that between commodities, but that between commodities and labor.”To which Toni Negri exclaims, “boom! The first big leap, the first of the political excursuses of the Grundrisse.”At Marx 9/13, Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra will highlight the political reading of the Grundrisse, drawing on the work of Toni Negri, from his lectures on the Grundrisse from 1978 published under the title Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. In that work, Negri meticulously demonstrates how the Grundrisse operates as a praxis-oriented manual to guide revolutionary action. Negri shows how, in his words, “the revolutionary subject emerges from the relation with capital” through a process that makes possible the “auto-determination of the subject” that can then modify the processes of capitalism.For this session, we are privileged to welcome Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra, who themselves collaborated closely with Negri for decades. Notably, in Toni Negri’s book Marx in Movement, Negri traces the different phases of the workerist movement and its development, from its origins in the 1960s, through the work on social reproduction and the wages for housework movement of the 1970s, beyond the European focus in the 1980s, to the third phase in the 1990s with the birth of neoliberalism and financial mediations in post-Fordism. Negri concludes with the seminal work of our two guests: “And then there were the studies of Michael Hardt, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson on global migration and the international dimension of the class struggle.”This is the full-length introduction to the seminar. Welcome to Marx 9/13!
Seyla Benhabib presents a keynote lecture for Marx 13/13 @columbia on Hannah Arendt's reading and critique of Marx. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/seyla-benhabib-on-hannah-arendts-reading-of-marx/ Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at Columbia University in the City of New York. Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten... *In her chapter on “Labor” in The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt developed a critique of Marx for not differentiating properly between the concepts of “labor” and “work.” This distinction and Arendt’s reading of Marx played a significant role in late twentieth-century debates in political theory. As Seyla Benhabib notes in her book The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (2003), “the aspect of Arendt’s theory of human activity that has been most criticized and discussed … is the distinction between labor and work.” (130)In this keynote lecture by Professor Benhabib, the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy emeritus at Yale University, senior research scholar at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT), professor at Columbia Law School, and a foremost authority on Arendt, we will explore the controversy over Arendt’s reading of Marx.Welcome to this keynote for Marx 13/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt and guests, W.J.T. Mitchell, Kendall Thomas, Michaela Soyer, and others, read and discuss Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Engels' Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848, in conversation with Herbert Marcuse's Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/8-13/ Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at Columbia University in the City of New York. The full length introduction to Marx 7/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx813Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *We are witnessing today a new and radical offensive in the American Counterrevolution. We are, right now, in the demolition phase of this new offensive. In the first few weeks of his mandate, President Trump is taking a bulldozer to the existing federal government and wrecking its foundations, in an effort to eradicate the federal regulatory state and replace it with an oligarchic-theological, fealty-based cult with an authoritarian grip.The times could not be more urgent to critically analyze and understand this moment. Few texts are more important to do that than Engel’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 and Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. So we turn to those texts at our seminar, Marx 8/13, in the context of our own Counterrevolution. And to enrich our understanding, we will place these texts in conversation with Herbert Marcuse’s book, Counterrevolution and Revolt, published in 1972, at the time of a previous triumphal offensive of counterrevolution in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and during the Vietnam War protests.This is the full seminar Marx 8/13. Welcome to Marx 8/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 7/13 on Marx's Class Struggles in France 1848-1850 and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, with the philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/7-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 7/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx713The video recording of the seminar Marx 7/13 with Gayatri Spivak is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/XHzuttBLKFY?si=oWWOihVLfYlsd_wjInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *In a series of articles published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1850, Marx offers a sweeping historical account of the French revolution of 1848. Marx theorizes at the same time as he recounts history, and vice versa: he confronts theoretical insights and hypotheses with historical developments, statistics, economic research, and first-hand accounts. The articles are political, engaged, opinionated, often satirical and witty, biting at times, punchy, and rallying. Reading them, one senses that they are a call to revolution.In the articles, collected by Engels and published in 1895 under the title Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, Marx develops a central thesis: the French revolution of 1848 may not have brought about the emancipation of the proletariat, but it turned the proletariat into a more self-conscious class, into a “real revolutionary party.” All the wins and the many more losses of the workers—and their defeat in the bloody June days of 1848—gave birth to a revolutionary working class. The February Revolution effectively created a counterrevolutionary front that helped crystalize the workers into a revolutionary party. What was defeated, Marx asserts, was not the revolution, but instead “the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages” that had not yet sharpened into real class struggle. That would only happen, Marx maintained, “not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats.”W.E.B. Du Bois, in his magisterial Black Reconstruction in America, returns to Marx’s analysis of class conflict to understand the postbellum era. Black Reconstruction in America can be read through the lens of Marxian class conflict, which, in Amy Allen’s words, “renders the emancipation of slaves as the first successful workers’ revolution, prefiguring the Bolshevik revolution by more than 50 years. This claim follows directly from the argumentative backbone of DuBois’s text whereby the slave becomes the black worker, the slave rebellion a general strike, the Reconstruction Era the dictatorship of the proletariat in the states of the former Confederacy, and the subsequent dismantling of Reconstruction as a counterrevolution of property.”Few scholars have worked more productively on the relationship between Marx and Du Bois than Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who dedicated her Du Bois lectures at Harvard and her forthcoming book from those lectures to Marx and Du Bois. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, is a preeminent expert on Marx and Du Bois, and is also an activist in rural education and feminist and ecological social movements since 1986. It is a privilege to welcome Gayatri Spivak back to these 13/13 seminars to discuss and read Marx’s Class Struggles in France 1848-1850 in conversation with W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America.This is the full length introduction to the seminar Marx 7/13. Welcome to Marx 7/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 8/13 on Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Engels' Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848, in conversation with Herbert Marcuse's Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/8-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 7/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx813The video recording of the seminar Marx 8/13 is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/HIkB-GDCm6U?si=dBvYsnZEr0VR-M0LInformation about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *We are witnessing today a new and radical offensive in the American Counterrevolution. We are, right now, in the demolition phase of this new offensive. In the first few weeks of his mandate, President Trump is taking a bulldozer to the existing federal government and wrecking its foundations, in an effort to eradicate the federal regulatory state and replace it with an oligarchic-theological, fealty-based cult with an authoritarian grip.The times could not be more urgent to critically analyze and understand this moment. Few texts are more important to do that than Engel’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 and Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. So we turn to those texts at our seminar, Marx 8/13, in the context of our own Counterrevolution. And to enrich our understanding, we will place these texts in conversation with Herbert Marcuse’s book, Counterrevolution and Revolt, published in 1972, at the time of a previous triumphal offensive of counterrevolution in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and during the Vietnam War protests.This is the full-length, long-form introduction to the seminar Marx 8/13. This introduction discusses the texts we will be reading in the seminar as a foundation for our discussion of the current Counterrevolution. Welcome to Marx 8/13!
The philosophers Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser read and discuss with Bernard E. Harcourt Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto and Lenin's April Theses @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/6-13/ Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at Columbia University in the City of New York. For a full introduction to Marx 6/13: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx613Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *What we know today as “The Communist Manifesto” is a document that was commissioned by the Communist League at its first congress, held in London in June 1847, written by Marx and Engels between November 1847 and January 1848, and printed in London anonymously in German in late February 1848 under the title “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).The Manifesto was intended to be the platform and program of the newly formed Communist League—successor to the League of the Just founded a little more than a decade earlier by German emigrés in Paris. Its mission was to set forth the principles and beliefs of the Communist League. In draft form, written by Engels, it was a confession of faith, a credo. When first printed, it was only 23 pages long.Few documents have had such a world historic impact.In the seminar Marx 6/13, we will read and discuss the Manifesto in conversation with another short pamphlet that both interpreted it and put it into practice: Lenin’s April Theses, delivered to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in April 1917, at the time of Lenin’s return to Russia after the February revolution.To study these works, we are privileged to have with us three brilliant critical philosophers, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, the authors of another manifesto, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, published by Verso in 2019.This is the recording of the seminar Marx 6/13 with Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser. Welcome to Marx 6/13!
Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 6/13 on Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Lenin's April Theses, with the philosophers Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, authors of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso, 20190) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/6-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 6/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx613Also on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/MwY4cQrozy0 The video recording of the seminar Marx 6/13 with Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/KxVnCaudZ_M?si=Mt7P8DgnIzHRJoPa Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *What we know today as “The Communist Manifesto” is a document that was commissioned by the Communist League at its first congress, held in London in June 1847, written by Marx and Engels between November 1847 and January 1848, and printed in London anonymously in German in late February 1848 under the title “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).The Manifesto was intended to be the platform and program of the newly formed Communist League—successor to the League of the Just founded a little more than a decade earlier by German emigrés in Paris. Its mission was to set forth the principles and beliefs of the Communist League. In draft form, written by Engels, it was a confession of faith, a credo. When first printed, it was only 23 pages long.Few documents have had such a world historic impact.In the seminar Marx 6/13, we will read and discuss the Manifesto in conversation with another short pamphlet that both interpreted it and put it into practice: Lenin’s April Theses, delivered to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in April 1917, at the time of Lenin’s return to Russia after the February revolution.To study these works, we are privileged to have with us three brilliant critical philosophers, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, the authors of another manifesto, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, published by Verso in 2019.This is the full length introduction to the seminar Marx 6/13. Welcome to Marx 6/13!
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/IntroMarx513The video recording of the seminar Marx 5/13 with Jules Gleeson is here: TBDInformation 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=RiCDweIBjujI0RJrInformation 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=ERuOf5jssUdvDwY3Information 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/8uQ2LPyrbtEInformation 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!"
Courte présentation par Prof. Bernard E. Harcourt (Columbia University/EHESS) pour le lancement de la nouvelle édition du livre, Nietzsche. Cours, conférences et travaux (Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS, 2024) de Michel Foucault, paru aujourd'hui, le 31 mai 2024.
Lecture (in French) of Professor Bernard E. Harcourt at the Collège de France in Paris, France, on the topic of "Abolition and Cooperation," on May 21, 2024. The lecture develops chapter 6 of Harcourt's book Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory (Columbia University Press, 2023)
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-62426940More 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.
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.
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.