Emancipations Podcast

We turn to a study group on Domenico Losurdo's Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, a crucial text for understanding class struggle within Marx and Engels’ thought that challenges populist understandings of class struggle and seriously incorporates gender, race, and post-colonial thought within the framework of class struggle. If you are interested in joining, we encourage you to support our efforts by becoming a paid patron if you can swing it, although that is not required (https://www.patreon.com/c/torsiongroups). 

READING SCHEDULE:

Nov 12 - Read to page 52

Nov 26 - Read to page 120

Dec 10 - Read to page 198

Jan 7 - Finish book, final session (link will be provided for final session)

A new interview with Henry Holland from Nietzsche POParts, a recently-founded Swiss magazine dedicated to debating Nietzsche's relevance today—essayistic yet grounded in the latest scholarship. Henry interviewed me on my book How to Read Like a Parasite (https://a.co/d/3RxOrXO). A meticulous reader and a careful scholar, Henry asks very intelligent questions that reflect a deep immersion into my book. It's clear that he had not only read the book but he was challenged by it.

If you feel so inclined or even challenged, be sure to pick up the book, available in Audible and in paperback (https://a.co/d/3RxOrXO). Read more from Nietzsche POParts and the text version of the interview will be published here (https://www.nietzsche-poparts.ch). Nietzsche POParts is set to expand to include English-language articles from 2025; until then browser translation extensions guarantee fascinating reads for those of you who don't read German!

We are joined by philosopher and Marxist intellectual Gabriel Rockhill to discuss the relevance and importance of the recently translated work, Western Marxism (Monthly Review Press, 2024) by Domenico Losurdo. In this discussion, we analyze Losurdo's book with a focus on extracting the most seminal insights and lessons from the text. We discuss the various Western Marxist thinkers that are critiqued in the text, from Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, to Theodor Adorno and others. We discuss how this text can promote a shift in the western Marxist left in today's time and why it is hitting a nerve. Learn more about Western Marxism by Losurdo please visit (https://monthlyreview.org/product/western-marxism/). 

Dr. Gabriel Rockhill is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy and Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University, and the author or editor of ten books, as well as numerous scholarly and general public articles. He is also the Associate Director of Cultural Studies at Villanova University, Research Associate at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique – LAP (EHESS, Paris), one of the editors-in-chief of the World Marxist Review, and co-editor of the book series AIM–Anti-Imperialist Marxism.

We welcome Lacanian philosopher Samo Tomšič for a presentation and discussion on Lacan's relationship to structuralism and politics. We center this discussion around Seminar XVI, "From an Other to the Other" where we witness a shift in Lacan’s structuralism, indicated in the very seminar title: from an Other (symbolic order) to the other (enjoyment). It is not unimportant that Lacan's sole thorough engagement with Marx appears precisely in this context, an engagement that can, and probably should, be read together with the shift from the indefinite to the definite article in the Seminar’s title: “an” Other (language) is abstract, unspecified, and therefore detached from historicity; “the” other is specific and historically contextualized (surplus-value).

In this talk, Samo revisits this and other open issues regarding the transformation of Lacanian structuralism, initiated in this ground-breaking Seminar. Above all, he argues for a “partisan reading” of Lacan’s references to Marx. Although these may have been circumstantial (May ‘68) and perhaps even opportunistic (pleasing the radical students), they nevertheless open the horizon of a consistently left Lacanianism.

Please support our work to bring these presentations and new research to a public audience by joining and contributing to our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/torsiongroups). 

We welcome philosopher Christopher Satoor for a discussion on the philosophy of Schelling, the great German idealist. We will focus our conversation on two Marxist critiques of Schelling in Lukács' The Destruction of Reason, to Engels' critique of Schelling from his notes on attending Schelling's lectures as a younger student.

Christopher Satoor is an expert in German idealism and a strident Schellingian, so this conversation is sure to be of interest! Get access to the readings for this discussion and seminar with Dr. Satoor by joining our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/posts/schelling-with-109208386). 

2011 witnessed a resurgence of protest movements from the Movement of the Squares, Occupy Wall Street, to the Arab Spring. These events propelled Marxist intellectuals Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou into the limelight, resulting in a surge in their popularity. But was the precondition of their popularity based on the absence of anti-imperialism in their work? In this study group, we examine Losurdo's criticism of Žižek and Badiou regarding how they understand existing state socialism, how they theorize liberation, freedom and justice. We debrief on the text and we discuss how Western Marxism can be reborn.

We discuss Part IV: "The Triumph and Death of Western Marxism" with particular focus on the work of Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism and On Revolution. We discuss Losurdo's analysis of "recognition" from Hegel and how revolution is theorized as recognition in Marx and Engels and how subsequent liberal theories of revolution in Arendt and Nietzschean theories of Foucault promote what Losurdo sees as the "death" of Western Marxism.

We welcome Lacanian scholar Robert Beshara back to the show to discuss his new book A Psychoanalytic Biography of Ye: The Legacy of Unconditional Love. It particularly focuses on the 5-year period from 2016 to 2021 (the Shaky-Ass Years) in an effort to think psychoanalytically about Ye's complex subjectivity, his struggle with manic-depression, the thin line between the personal and the political when it comes to celebrity culture, and, of course, his aesthetic productions – be they in the form of music, video, or fashion – which the author regards as also being ethical and political projects/objects. The book takes what Ye says seriously, as opposed to dismissing him through the use of stigmatizing terms. Beshara specifically aligned his desire with Donda’s in an attempt to see him from her point of view – that is, through the legacy of unconditional love.

Buy the book from the publishers website with the following discount code PROMO25 https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-2886-4

Learn more about Robert Beshara's work at https://sites.google.com/site/robertkbeshara. 

We examine Losurdo's criticism of western Marxism in relation to anticolonial revolution following the Second World War. We discuss Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Max Horkheimer's Authoritarian State, Althusser's antihumanist turn, Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, Adorno's Nietzschean pessimism, and Tronti's workerism. We discuss how Losurdo pinpoints an aversion to the anticolonial revolution in the Marxist theories that are generated by these thinkers. We discuss the merits of Losurdo's polemic, where it hits the mark and where it falls short.

Please join us at https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups. 

In our second session, we discuss Domenico Losurdo's theory of the birth of Western Marxism as a response to the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We begin with a few remarks on the Marxist theory of intellectuals and power, particularly how imperialism fragments the intellectual in relationship to the working class. We then discuss Losurdo's arguments about how western and eastern Marxism begin to take form and contrast one another in terms of the national struggle, state theory, messianism, and priorities of emancipation.

We discuss Losurdo's theory that, at least in practice, western Marxists develop an anarchist political practice. Our aim in this study group is to learn the practical challenges facing Marxist politics in our time. Please join our Patreon to study this text with us: https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups