Essays by Austin Hayden Smidt
Progress in Political Economy , 2020
A review of Cedric Robinson’s seminal work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradit... more A review of Cedric Robinson’s seminal work, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Originally published on the Progress in Political Economy website.
Progress in Political Economy, 2020
Originally written for the Progress in Political Economy website
Books by Austin Hayden Smidt
There are assumptions that undergird the discipline and practice of political economy. We address... more There are assumptions that undergird the discipline and practice of political economy. We address this by focusing on one contracted point of tension within political economy that is of great concern post-GFC. Namely, how are the presuppositions concerning the nature of temporality within the field of political economy determinate of deficient accounts of speculation, value, and even financialization more broadly? Thus, we argue that the temporal assumptions of political economy are abstractions that demand a demystifying critique. In particular, we contest linear notions of time that presume 1) a sequence of moments and 2) the idea that the future – as such – exists. We appeal to the speculative theories of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze to provide both a critique of temporality and also a prescriptive theoretical apparatus for constructive engagement with financial temporality. This takes place, first, through an elaboration of Bergson’s conception of duration and in Deleuze’s Three Syntheses of Time. Once elaborated, we, second, use our theoretical apparatus as a heuristic to critically engage three prominent political economic persuasions: the Marxian, Keynesian, and Critical Finance traditions. Each of these open an aperture on finance that is valuable but limited. These limitations reveal how and in what ways each are formalist projects trapped within their own schematic limitations because of the ways they think about time and finance in extensional terms; which in turn impacts how they understand the logic(s) of finance. Therefore, in order to avoid reproducing these schematic limitations, we, third, close our project by speculatively proposing a novel conception of financial temporality: what we call the ‘techno-temporal logic of finance’. This concept allows us to sidestep the limitations revealed in the Marxian, Keynesian, and Critical Finance approaches, while also constructively indicating novel ways we might be able to think according to finance.
Rowman & Littlefield International, 2023
*This is a chapter from an edited volume in which I contributed.
Earthly Engagements: Reading Sa... more *This is a chapter from an edited volume in which I contributed.
Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene brings together scholars from the Sartre studies community to think through the planetary ecological crisis. Edited by Matthew C. Ally and Damon Boria, the collection explores ways in which Sartre’s existential thought can be read socio-ecologically, illuminating the tightly imbricated earthly and worldly crises of our post-Holocene epoch. Contributors variously discuss phenomenology, ethics, politics, ontology, and metaphysics. Earthly locations include the Icelandic coast, the Minnesota woods, the Indiana Dunes, the Chinese Great Plain, the Venetian Lagoon, and more; worldly situations include that of the artist, the activist, the consumer, the tourist, and more. Through their diversity of methods and substantive concerns, the chapters reveal a wealth of critical and heuristic resources within Sartre’s thought for thinking through and engaging the planetary ecological crisis and its direct ties to global social, economic, and political crises. In full recognition of Sartre’s personal distaste for agrarian settings and wilderness, and some ostensibly anti-environmental philosophical and literary moments, the contributors take the proper Sartrean line that how we view nature and our relationship to nature is neither closed nor predetermined. Like life itself, our worldly relationship to earthly nature is rooted in the sufficiency and open-endedness of freedom.
Sartre, Imagination, and Dialectical Reason: Creating Society as a Work of Art, 2019
(from the blurb on the back cover)
There are perpetual debates about the extent of freedom in po... more (from the blurb on the back cover)
There are perpetual debates about the extent of freedom in politics. Are we free to choose? Are we overdetermined by our material conditions? Some hybrid between the two? What is more, how are we to comprehend ourselves as creators of history if freedom itself is a problematic concept? And what would it mean if self-comprehension were foreclosed by this problematic? In this text, Austin Hayden Smidt analyzes an oft-overlooked text by Jean-Paul Sartre in order to ground a logical framework for exploring this paradox.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre sought to develop an historical and structural heuristic; one that would enable future theorists and activists alike to assess the pressing problems facing the various milieux of capitalist life. Through this heuristic, his intent was to develop an orientation enabling humans to transform their world in their perpetual creation of themselves (and vice versa).
However, the stylistic difficulties of the text, as well as a general agreement among previous interpreters, has prevented the richness of the investigation from taking root. This book sets a new course, and invites further collaboration as – together – we create society as a work of art.
Journal Articles by Austin Hayden Smidt
Review of International Political Economy, 2022
One hundred years that shook the world. This is one way of receiving History and Class Consciousn... more One hundred years that shook the world. This is one way of receiving History and Class Consciousness by György Lukács, a text that is considered by many to be one of the most important in Marxist philosophy and dialectics since its first appearance in 1923. However, in approaching its centenary, how does the focus on dialectics that is at the text's centre travel to address contemporary interdisciplinary concerns in political economy and radical geography? This article delivers a fresh reading of dialectics in and beyond History and Class Consciousness to distil the relevance of Lukács for contemporary political economists and radical geographers that, it is argued, necessarily lies in engaging with his method and understanding of totality. The focus dwells on totality and the 'life-nerve' of the dialectic, referring to the process of interiorising theory and practice in constituting a relational approach to analysing the metabolism of socio-nature. By so doing, the possibilities and limits of both totality and dialectics are revealed to political economists and radical geographers interested in furthering the case for methodological relationalism in their conceptions of the production of space and socio-nature.
Finance and Society, 2021
Conor Husbands' defense and expansion of Elena Esposito's temporality of finance is a much-needed... more Conor Husbands' defense and expansion of Elena Esposito's temporality of finance is a much-needed intervention. However, in this response essay, I will show a few of the fundamental weaknesses of Esposito's project, and by extension will highlight some shortcomings of Husbands' defense-expansion. The point is not to dismiss either project; the goal is rather to bring attention to certain philosophical presuppositions that ground both, and that enclose each in what Markus Gabriel would call an ontotheological orientation. In short, Esposito and Husbands operate via an orientation that attempts to think 'the world' as an all-encompassing domain, despite claims to the contrary. How this occurs will be explained below, paying particular attention to the stakes of thinking from such an ontotheological orientation in and to the world. After first presenting Husbands' argument, I develop some critiques of Esposito and Husbands via the work of Suhail Malik, Ray Brassier, Elie Ayache, Jon Roffe, and Quentin Meillassoux. I then open the aperture towards emerging trends in philosophy that contest the foundations upon which Esposito's project is built, in order to suggest more robust readings of finance and society. The work of Sergei Prozorov and Markus Gabriel will be the focus here, but these thinkers merely serve as stand-ins for larger trends in speculative-and neo-realism.
This article attempts to wed together two supposedly disparate works of Jean-Paul Sartre, The Psy... more This article attempts to wed together two supposedly disparate works of Jean-Paul Sartre, The Psychology of the Imagination (1940) and Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) in order to construct a theory of the imagination that will aid progressive political theory in its pursuit of perpetual 'mediated reciprocity'. Often assumed incapable of providing a viable theory of positive intersubjective relations, this article asserts that Sartre's work does in fact have the resources for such an endeavor. Through the continual creation of 'images' , the group-infusion is shown to be able to sustain a perpetual project of negating original negation throughout the milieu of scarcity. Although 'images' themselves are incapable of creating novelty, they do have use insofar as they are able to reproduce aective impressions that can motivate group praxis, which in turn creates new situations of exigence from which apocalyptic moments might arise. Therefore, by tethering the balance between the real and the imaginary, a novel social theory emerges that is both faithful to the work of Sartre and that also pushes it into new, fruitful directions.
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Essays by Austin Hayden Smidt
Books by Austin Hayden Smidt
Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene brings together scholars from the Sartre studies community to think through the planetary ecological crisis. Edited by Matthew C. Ally and Damon Boria, the collection explores ways in which Sartre’s existential thought can be read socio-ecologically, illuminating the tightly imbricated earthly and worldly crises of our post-Holocene epoch. Contributors variously discuss phenomenology, ethics, politics, ontology, and metaphysics. Earthly locations include the Icelandic coast, the Minnesota woods, the Indiana Dunes, the Chinese Great Plain, the Venetian Lagoon, and more; worldly situations include that of the artist, the activist, the consumer, the tourist, and more. Through their diversity of methods and substantive concerns, the chapters reveal a wealth of critical and heuristic resources within Sartre’s thought for thinking through and engaging the planetary ecological crisis and its direct ties to global social, economic, and political crises. In full recognition of Sartre’s personal distaste for agrarian settings and wilderness, and some ostensibly anti-environmental philosophical and literary moments, the contributors take the proper Sartrean line that how we view nature and our relationship to nature is neither closed nor predetermined. Like life itself, our worldly relationship to earthly nature is rooted in the sufficiency and open-endedness of freedom.
There are perpetual debates about the extent of freedom in politics. Are we free to choose? Are we overdetermined by our material conditions? Some hybrid between the two? What is more, how are we to comprehend ourselves as creators of history if freedom itself is a problematic concept? And what would it mean if self-comprehension were foreclosed by this problematic? In this text, Austin Hayden Smidt analyzes an oft-overlooked text by Jean-Paul Sartre in order to ground a logical framework for exploring this paradox.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre sought to develop an historical and structural heuristic; one that would enable future theorists and activists alike to assess the pressing problems facing the various milieux of capitalist life. Through this heuristic, his intent was to develop an orientation enabling humans to transform their world in their perpetual creation of themselves (and vice versa).
However, the stylistic difficulties of the text, as well as a general agreement among previous interpreters, has prevented the richness of the investigation from taking root. This book sets a new course, and invites further collaboration as – together – we create society as a work of art.
Journal Articles by Austin Hayden Smidt
Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene brings together scholars from the Sartre studies community to think through the planetary ecological crisis. Edited by Matthew C. Ally and Damon Boria, the collection explores ways in which Sartre’s existential thought can be read socio-ecologically, illuminating the tightly imbricated earthly and worldly crises of our post-Holocene epoch. Contributors variously discuss phenomenology, ethics, politics, ontology, and metaphysics. Earthly locations include the Icelandic coast, the Minnesota woods, the Indiana Dunes, the Chinese Great Plain, the Venetian Lagoon, and more; worldly situations include that of the artist, the activist, the consumer, the tourist, and more. Through their diversity of methods and substantive concerns, the chapters reveal a wealth of critical and heuristic resources within Sartre’s thought for thinking through and engaging the planetary ecological crisis and its direct ties to global social, economic, and political crises. In full recognition of Sartre’s personal distaste for agrarian settings and wilderness, and some ostensibly anti-environmental philosophical and literary moments, the contributors take the proper Sartrean line that how we view nature and our relationship to nature is neither closed nor predetermined. Like life itself, our worldly relationship to earthly nature is rooted in the sufficiency and open-endedness of freedom.
There are perpetual debates about the extent of freedom in politics. Are we free to choose? Are we overdetermined by our material conditions? Some hybrid between the two? What is more, how are we to comprehend ourselves as creators of history if freedom itself is a problematic concept? And what would it mean if self-comprehension were foreclosed by this problematic? In this text, Austin Hayden Smidt analyzes an oft-overlooked text by Jean-Paul Sartre in order to ground a logical framework for exploring this paradox.
In Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre sought to develop an historical and structural heuristic; one that would enable future theorists and activists alike to assess the pressing problems facing the various milieux of capitalist life. Through this heuristic, his intent was to develop an orientation enabling humans to transform their world in their perpetual creation of themselves (and vice versa).
However, the stylistic difficulties of the text, as well as a general agreement among previous interpreters, has prevented the richness of the investigation from taking root. This book sets a new course, and invites further collaboration as – together – we create society as a work of art.