Merry Christmas and happy holidays! In this surprise gift of an episode, we’re visited by the spectre of Jacques Derrida and his deconstruction of the gift. Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, he forces us to ask whether we have given enough, whether we know how to give without reciprocity, and why it is so hard to give in the first place. The gang reflects on the phenomenology of gift-giving and the insidious politics of philanthropy, and even takes shots at the big guy himself: Santa Claus. S...

28 | A Very Special Holiday Episode: Learning How to Give with Jacques Derrida

In What’s Left of Philosophy Gil Morejón (@gdmorejon), Lillian Cicerchia (@lilcicerch), Owen Glyn-Williams (@oglynwil), and William Paris (@williammparis) discuss philosophy’s radical histories and contemporary political theory. Philosophy isn't dead, but what's left? Support us at patreon.com/leftofphilosophy

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In this episode, we are joined by Jeff Diamanti to discuss what it looks like to watch the climate change. Our conversation shifts from analytical, aesthetic, and political perspectives, as we turn our attention from critical raw materials to the future cartographies already being carved out. We explore Jeff’s notion of the terminal as the kind of space where capitalism abstracts matter and value becomes concrete. As it turns out, there’s more to see in the logistics than philosophers might t...

90 | Ecological Materialism and Logistical Strategy w/ Dr. Jeff Diamanti

In this episode, we discuss essays from throughout G.A. Cohen’s philosophical career. Cohen is known as one of the founders of Analytical Marxism, so we talk about what this tradition in Marxist thinking is about and how it handles the problems of political let-down and disillusionment that affect us all. We also get into his polemics against the libertarians and John Rawls in his essays on exploitation, freedom, and justice.This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available ...

89 TEASER | G.A. Cohen's Analytical Red Sublime

In this episode, we are joined by Alberto Toscano to talk about his analysis of contemporary far-right movement and ideology. We discuss his new book Late Fascism and consider the strategic and rhetorical  downsides of analogizing the present moment to past instantiations of fascist politics in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. We try to get a grip on what distinguishes contemporary fascism, why liberal discourse’s fixation on ‘totalitarianism’ fails to grasp the specificity of fascism...

88 | On Late Fascism w/ Alberto Toscano

In this episode, we are joined by Ajay Chaudhary to discuss his book The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World and the political, economic, and affective sites of exhaustion reproduced through climate degradation. We examine the expanding colonial relations of what Chaudhary calls the “extractive circuit” between the both the Global South and Global North as well as widening segments of the working classes in the Global North. We dispel fantasies of both the hope that climate ch...

87 | The Politics of Left-Wing Climate Realism w/ Dr. Ajay Singh Chaudhary

In this episode, we are joined by Matt McManus to discuss his research into the history and philosophy of right-wing politics in his book The Political Right and Equality. We discuss the nature of conservatism as an irrationalist reaction to modernist ideas about human egalitarianism, the rhetorical strategies of the right, and the historical conditions under which moderate conservatism turns over into extremist fascist reaction. We pay special attention to Edmund Burke’s aestheticization of ...

28 | A Very Special Holiday Episode: Learning How to Give with Jacques Derrida

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