- Latin-American Film, Latin American and Caribbean History, Political Theory, Latin American Cultural Studies, Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Theory, and 27 moreLatin American politics, Latin American Literature (Literature), Comparative Literature, Autonomia, Social Theory, Gilles Deleuze, Humanities, Marxism, History of Piracy, Antonio Negri, Political Philosophy, Latin American Studies, Posthegemony, Cultural Studies, Latin American History, Literature, Autonomist Marxism, Critical Theory, Neoliberalism, Jose Maria Arguedas, Affect Studies, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Affect (Cultural Theory), Peruvian Literature, Social and Cultural Capital, Peronism, and Cultural Capitaledit
- I am an Assosciate Professor in Hispanic Studies, specializing in Latin American studies and in social and political ... moreI am an Assosciate Professor in Hispanic Studies, specializing in Latin American studies and in social and political theory.
My book Posthegemony is a critique of cultural studies and civil society theory. It proposes a new theory that brings together Gilles Deleuze's conception of affect, Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, and Toni Negri's multitude. Case studies are taken from Argentina, Peru, El Salvador, Chile, and Venezuela.
Now I am working on a number of long projects.
One, which I call "Projections," looks at the ways in which Latin America is treated in Hollywood and European film.
Another traces the Latin American multitude through Atlantic piracy and New World indigenous rebellions to the nineteenth-century wars of Spanish-American independence.
And a third examines "American Ruins" from Chile to Canada, and from the Incas to Henry Ford.edit
This is a survey of twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American literature. What is the “play”—again, the “freedom, opportunity, or room for action; scope for activity”—that literature offers, once we realize that there is no one... more
This is a survey of twentieth and twenty-first century Latin American literature. What is the “play”—again, the “freedom, opportunity, or room for action; scope for activity”—that literature offers, once we realize that there is no one “right” way of reading (though there still may of course be wrong ways)? How to take literature both more seriously, as something other than mere reflection or degraded copy of the “real,” and at the same time more playfully, with less anxiety about always getting the “right” meaning, the “correct” interpretation. For meaning is never finite and fixed, and in any case there may well be other, sometimes more interesting, things to do with texts beyond simply interpreting them. This is all a matter of method more than theme: asking less what (Latin American or any other) literature is, and more how we should read it.
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What is Romance Studies? Or, better, what might Romance Studies be? For this is a discipline that at present does not exist; at best it is an administrative fiction, a product of top-down managerial fiat to divide up and categorize... more
What is Romance Studies? Or, better, what might Romance Studies be? For this is a discipline that at present does not exist; at best it is an administrative fiction, a product of top-down managerial fiat to divide up and categorize languages, literatures, and cultures. Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to invent Romance Studies, from the ground up. Is this possible? Is it desirable? Could we imagine a Romance Studies that would be an intellectual project, something other than the bits and pieces of whatever does not fit elsewhere? Can we construct a Romance Studies whose rationale is conceptually (and pedagogically) stimulating, rather than simply a bureaucratic convenience? The wager of this book is that yes, we can!
Now updated and expanded.
Now updated and expanded.
Research Interests: Comparative Literature, French Literature, Literature, Spanish Literature (Peninsular), Italian Literature, and 15 moreRomanian Literature, Latin American literature, Marcel Proust, ROBERTO BOLAÑO, Mercè Rodoreda, Maria Luisa Bombal, Carlos Fuentes, Javier Cercas, Catalan Literature, Alberto Moravia, Romance Studies, Norman Manea, Elena Ferrante, Françoise Sagan, and Joseph Zobel
A challenging new work of cultural and political theory rethinks the concept of hegemony Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Challenging dominant... more
A challenging new work of cultural and political theory rethinks the concept of hegemony
Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Challenging dominant strains in social theory, Jon Beasley-Murray contends that cultural studies simply replicates the populism that conditions it, and that civil society theory merely nourishes the neoliberalism that it sets out to oppose.
"In Posthegemony, Jon Beasley-Murray provides a superbly written and insightful theoretical evaluation of the shifting relation between culture and state in Latin America."
— Gareth Williams, author of The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America
Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Challenging dominant strains in social theory, Jon Beasley-Murray contends that cultural studies simply replicates the populism that conditions it, and that civil society theory merely nourishes the neoliberalism that it sets out to oppose.
"In Posthegemony, Jon Beasley-Murray provides a superbly written and insightful theoretical evaluation of the shifting relation between culture and state in Latin America."
— Gareth Williams, author of The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America
Research Interests: Social Theory, Latin American Studies, Political Philosophy, Latin American and Caribbean History, Political Theory, and 16 moreCultural Theory, Argentina History, Gilles Deleuze, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, History of Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, El Salvador, Hegemony, Latin American Cultural Studies, Peronism, New social movements, and Posthegemony
Vivimos tiempos poshegemónicos: la ideología ha dejado de ser la fuerza motriz de la política y la teoría de la hegemonía ya no refleja con exactitud el orden social actual. La crítica ideológica –es decir, el análisis de los discursos en... more
Vivimos tiempos poshegemónicos: la ideología ha dejado de ser la fuerza motriz de la política y la teoría de la hegemonía ya no refleja con exactitud el orden social actual. La crítica ideológica –es decir, el análisis de los discursos en busca de distorsiones producidas por efecto de operaciones ideológicas–, se ha vuelto superflua. Esto, al menos, es lo que Jon Beasley-Murray plantea en este apasionante libro, basado en el análisis y la crítica de los discursos culturales. A partir de una minuciosa investigación histórica de los movimientos políticos latinoamericanos del siglo XX –desde el populismo clásico a los movimientos nacionales de liberación, las nuevas corrientes sociales e, incluso, las relaciones entre cultura y política que ellos encarnan–Beasley-Murray desgrana tres aspectos fundamentales del concepto de poshegemonía: el afecto (examinado desde la perspectiva de Gilles Deleuze), el hábito (derivado de la noción de habitus de Pierre Bourdieu) y la multitud (noción tomada de Antonio Negri). Para aquellos interesados en los estudios culturales y en las ciencias sociales, pero antes y sobre todo en América Latina, Poshegemonía propone un fascinante recorrido para el cual el autor efectuó un profundo trabajo de campo en El Salvador, Perú, Chile, Argentina y Venezuela, por un lado, y en aquellos lugares donde habitualmente desarrolla su labor profesional: Canadá, Inglaterra, y Estados Unidos, por el otro.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Social Theory, Latin American Studies, Political Philosophy, New Media, and 22 moreLatin American and Caribbean History, Political Theory, Cultural Theory, Argentina History, Gender, Community Media, Gilles Deleuze, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, History of Chile, Justice, Venezuela, Peru, Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, El Salvador, Hegemony, Latin American Cultural Studies, Peronism, Peace, Grassroots, and Posthegemony
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Al parecer, los estudios culturales ya son bastante impopulares. 1 Incluso los que en su momento se habían identificado con el proyecto, ...
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Abstract Venezuela's short-lived coup may appear at first sight relatively insignificant: at the best of times, the country has a low profile (perhaps surprisingly, given the geopolitical importance of its oil) even among... more
Abstract Venezuela's short-lived coup may appear at first sight relatively insignificant: at the best of times, the country has a low profile (perhaps surprisingly, given the geopolitical importance of its oil) even among Latin Americanists; and a coup that ends after two days with what would seem to be merely the restoration of the previous regime, all without too much bloodshed, understandably raises few eyebrows. Moreover, it is true enough that the coup itself was, if such an event ever can be, rather run-of-the-mill. Hardly unexpected, ...
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The concept of" cultural capital" is among Pierre Bourdieu's most distinctive contributions to critical theory.[1] The term has found remarkable success, and has probably been taken up and disseminated more than has any... more
The concept of" cultural capital" is among Pierre Bourdieu's most distinctive contributions to critical theory.[1] The term has found remarkable success, and has probably been taken up and disseminated more than has any other item from his critical terminology;" habitus," for instance, has scarcely demonstrated such widespread appeal. Cultural capital has even inspired a book of its own (Guillory, Cultural Capital). Faced with this reception of the term, Bourdieu himself would no doubt be the first to see this as a distortion and to agree with ...
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Información del artículo The ambivalent legacy of pablo Neruda: articulation and hegemony in latin americanist intellectual culture.
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Abstract In the wake of a series of electoral victories, often dubbed a 'pink tide'by the media, there has seldom been a moment more propitious for the diverse parties, movements and... more
Abstract In the wake of a series of electoral victories, often dubbed a 'pink tide'by the media, there has seldom been a moment more propitious for the diverse parties, movements and leaders of the Latin American Left. Yet the Left faces daunting challenges, and the diversity of responses to these challenges suggests that there is not one but many left turns. This article, like the collection of essays that it introduces, critiques conventional distinctions between 'populist'and 'social democratic'currents of the Latin American Left, and argues ...
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Vivimos tiempos poshegemónicos: la ideología ha dejado de ser la fuerza motriz de la política y la teoría de la hegemonía ya no refleja con exactitud el orden social actual. La crítica ideológica –es decir, el análisis de los discursos en... more
Vivimos tiempos poshegemónicos: la ideología ha dejado de ser la fuerza motriz de la política y la teoría de la hegemonía ya no refleja con exactitud el orden social actual. La crítica ideológica –es decir, el análisis de los discursos en busca de distorsiones producidas por efecto de operaciones ideológicas–, se ha vuelto superflua. Esto, al menos, es lo que Jon Beasley-Murray plantea en este apasionante libro, basado en el análisis y la crítica de los discursos culturales. A partir de una minuciosa investigación histórica de los movimientos políticos latinoamericanos del ...
Research Interests: Latin American Studies, New Media, Latin American and Caribbean History, Cultural Theory, Argentina History, and 15 moreGender, Community Media, Gilles Deleuze, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, History of Chile, Justice, Peru, Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, El Salvador, Hegemony, Latin American Cultural Studies, Peronism, Peace, and Grassroots
All of which prompts the question as to the purpose of this biography. If the life does not illuminate the work, and if the life is of no particular intrinsic interest itself (as is especially the case of Deleuze, who seems mostly to have... more
All of which prompts the question as to the purpose of this biography. If the life does not illuminate the work, and if the life is of no particular intrinsic interest itself (as is especially the case of Deleuze, who seems mostly to have read, written, and taught, and to have occasionally tagged along to events with his buddy Guattari), then why bother? Dosse suggests that one of his aims is to underline Guattari's contribution to the collaboration, but a slim article rather than a bloated book could have achieved the same end. Especially compared to the brio and bravado of ...
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Peruvian writer Jose Maria Arguedas’s final book, an unfinished and posthumously published novel entitled El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo , is set in the coastal boomtown of Chimbote during the late 1960s. Rapid industrialization... more
Peruvian writer Jose Maria Arguedas’s final book, an unfinished and posthumously published novel entitled El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo , is set in the coastal boomtown of Chimbote during the late 1960s. Rapid industrialization has led to the town being dominated by fish-processing factories belching out smoke, and surrounded by slums in which thousands of recent immigrants from the Andes eke out a living at the margins of this intense capitalist exploitation. The novel’s main concern is with these margins, with the slums or barriadas in which all of Peru’s cultures and languages are thrown together in chaos and misery, if also in vital intercommunication and restless striving. But at the center of the novel is a strange scene of epiphany that takes place at the heart of the industrial enterprise.
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Each volume consists of four issues, published in January, April, July and October of each year. Its 1000+ annual pages are divided roughly equally between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature in the languages of... more
Each volume consists of four issues, published in January, April, July and October of each year. Its 1000+ annual pages are divided roughly equally between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature in the languages of Europe, and over 500 reviews of books in these areas. All contributions are in English, and each section is edited by a noted scholar in the field, under the overall supervision of the General Editor. Articles are chosen not only for their scholarly worth and originality but also, as far as possible, for their potential interest ...
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Padrón argues that the concepts of space expressed in such texts about the New World were as intimately connected to the emergence of Spain as a global empire as they were to the emergence of new cartographic styles. Padrón links Edmundo... more
Padrón argues that the concepts of space expressed in such texts about the New World were as intimately connected to the emergence of Spain as a global empire as they were to the emergence of new cartographic styles. Padrón links Edmundo O'Gorman's brilliant idea of America as a territory that was not so much discovered as invented to the development of the early modern map, and the practical and symbolic roles of both geographical and ideological mappings to the emergence of Spain as a global empire and its own self- ...
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Beasley-Murray probes the relationship between ruins and utopia, discussing how a utopian program may have disappeared, but the impulse remains, reconfiguring social identities. He illustrates these claims with an account of a ruined... more
Beasley-Murray probes the relationship between ruins and utopia, discussing how a utopian program may have disappeared, but the impulse remains, reconfiguring social identities. He illustrates these claims with an account of a ruined Chilean hospital, a project of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity that has been left perpetually incomplete in the aftermath of Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup and thus challenges the neoliberal discourse on market logic and a posttransition hegemony. From this perspective, the author analyzes how the hospital in ruins becomes a site of artistic interventions and a performance in itself.
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Molina. Although Gómez Martos notes that it was common for these plays to have a Spanish setting, even when written by French or English authors, this play is quite unique in its exploration of the favorite’s conflicts between their... more
Molina. Although Gómez Martos notes that it was common for these plays to have a Spanish setting, even when written by French or English authors, this play is quite unique in its exploration of the favorite’s conflicts between their personal interests and their life as the monarch’s favorite. The final chapter focuses on England, and discusses several English plays, but concentrates mainly on Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson. While both French and English works are studied from a Neostoic perspective—much like La paciencia en la fortuna—the author hints at other possible lenses through which these plays could be read. The brief concluding chapter brings all three plays back together, noting that the newly discovered La paciencia could add significantly to our knowledge of dramas on favorites from Spain particularly as well as within the wider European context. He reprises the importance of Neostoicism in the early modern European world, particularly its relationship to the figure of t...
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Brennan proposes an anti-imperialist common sense that has no truck with the “effeteness of literary modernism.” In brief, I don't think that an “anti-imperialist” common sense is much improvement on an imperialist one; and I'm... more
Brennan proposes an anti-imperialist common sense that has no truck with the “effeteness of literary modernism.” In brief, I don't think that an “anti-imperialist” common sense is much improvement on an imperialist one; and I'm suspicious of all homilies, and suggest that you should be, too. But back to Brennan's project: naturally enough, cosmopolitanism is out (being merely the “literary ethos” appropriate to “the imperial aspects of globalization”). It is surely ironic that he marshals in support of this anti-cosmopolitan, anti-literary, anti-elitism a “who's who” of third-world ...
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A favored slogan for the Left in times of difficulty and crisis (and contemporary glo-balization is generally regarded as a prime cause of difficulty and crisis for the Left) is one often attributed to Antonio Gramsci, urging pessimism... more
A favored slogan for the Left in times of difficulty and crisis (and contemporary glo-balization is generally regarded as a prime cause of difficulty and crisis for the Left) is one often attributed to Antonio Gramsci, urging pessimism of the intellect, opti-mism of the will. This formula ...
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(Cesar Hildebrandt, Hildebrandt, 3 June 1998) In our current era of globalization—or rather in as much as our current era is characterized in terms of globalization—social scientific discourse about civil society has come to serve as the... more
(Cesar Hildebrandt, Hildebrandt, 3 June 1998) In our current era of globalization—or rather in as much as our current era is characterized in terms of globalization—social scientific discourse about civil society has come to serve as the standard discourse of the Left. 1 When the framework of analysis is above all the global, the operative political polarity seems almost inexorably to be that of global capital faced with more or less regional networks of civil society relations. Civil society discourse catches hold at the point at which national or ...
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What were they thinking when they assigned I, Rigoberta Menchú at Stanford? Mary Louise Pratt, one of those involved in this piece of curricular revision, has at various times presented herself as somewhat overwhelmed by the extent of... more
What were they thinking when they assigned I, Rigoberta Menchú at Stanford? Mary Louise Pratt, one of those involved in this piece of curricular revision, has at various times presented herself as somewhat overwhelmed by the extent of what she calls the'brouhaha'that resulted. 1 For this was the gesture that, intentionally (or innocently) or not, put testimonio on the North American map, placing the issues raised not only by Menchu's book, but also by testimonioin general and the practices of Latinamericanist intellectuals, on the public ...
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I take my title,'el arte de la fuga'('the art of flight'), from a section found near the end of Nelly Richard's 1998 Residuos y... more
I take my title,'el arte de la fuga'('the art of flight'), from a section found near the end of Nelly Richard's 1998 Residuos y metáforas: ensayos de crõtica cultural sobre el Chile de la Transición. Fuga, flight, figures frequently in this book, and especially in its concluding chapters: the very last section of the final chapter is entitled 'fugas y excedentes'('flights and remainders'), in which Richard calls for:… a politics of space that could put the local or the process that establishes locality [localización] to work, not as a fixed point or as familiar ...
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The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of words, and ask no more than complicitous silence. It follows, incidentally, that any analysis of ideologies, in the narrow sense of"... more
The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of words, and ask no more than complicitous silence. It follows, incidentally, that any analysis of ideologies, in the narrow sense of" legitimating discourses," which fails to include an analysis of the corresponding institutional mechanisms is liable to be no more than a contribution to the efficacy of those ideologies.
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killed (separately), Albert flees further, to Austria, where he briefly works for the Allies in the war's dying days. Picked up by the Americans, he refuses the chance of refuge in the United States and is transferred... more
killed (separately), Albert flees further, to Austria, where he briefly works for the Allies in the war's dying days. Picked up by the Americans, he refuses the chance of refuge in the United States and is transferred to France, where he faces trial as a collaborator. The second section of the book concentrates on the narrator, Marie, who has been born in 1943, and her relations with her father during his post-war trial and imprisonment. Piecing events and feelings together from sources as diverse as her memories, her father's prison diaries, and ...
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Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Jon Beasley-Murray grounds his theoretical discussion with accounts of historical movements in Latin America,... more
Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Jon Beasley-Murray grounds his theoretical discussion with accounts of historical movements in Latin America, from Columbus to Chávez, and from Argentine Peronism to Peru's Sendero Luminoso. Challenging dominant strains in social theory, Beasley-Murray contends that cultural studies simply replicates the populism that conditions it, and that civil society theory merely nourishes the neoliberalism that it sets out ...
The Nomos of the Earth ends with the statement that ''The earth has been promised to the peacemakers. The idea of a new nomos of the earth belongs only to... more
The Nomos of the Earth ends with the statement that ''The earth has been promised to the peacemakers. The idea of a new nomos of the earth belongs only to them.''1 The rest of the book, however, resonates with the fear that the Second World War has merely ushered in a period of interminable warfare. Indeed, Schmitt seems to anticipate the analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, that ''war is becoming a general phenomenon, global and interminable''in the constitution of limitless sovereignty they term ''Empire.''2 Schmitt, too, in ...
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Consent, though still a political football, and rightly so, insofar as acts of power so often operate in the utter absence of the consent of the victim, is of limited use theoretically. The function of most forms of totalitarianism,... more
Consent, though still a political football, and rightly so, insofar as acts of power so often operate in the utter absence of the consent of the victim, is of limited use theoretically. The function of most forms of totalitarianism, remember, has been to set up a system in which familiarity breeds consent, just as in democracies.(Redding, 1998, p. 248)
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Cultural studies and civil society theory purport to be progressive projects, liberatory alternatives to the dominant social order. Yet cultural studies' concept of “counterhegemony” only reinforces all the populist assumptions upon which... more
Cultural studies and civil society theory purport to be progressive projects, liberatory alternatives to the dominant social order. Yet cultural studies' concept of “counterhegemony” only reinforces all the populist assumptions upon which hegemony rests, leaving the state unquestioned. Likewise, for all its talk of “society against the state,” civil society theory also merely entrenches state power, by excluding other logics that might unsettle sovereign claims to legitimacy and universality.
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Critique of Anthropology 27 (3) cultural studies'(p. 6). It is not clear, however, that the essays that follow achieve either of these objectives. This double failure is no coincidence. In other words, it is in part precisely because the... more
Critique of Anthropology 27 (3) cultural studies'(p. 6). It is not clear, however, that the essays that follow achieve either of these objectives. This double failure is no coincidence. In other words, it is in part precisely because the essays fail to engage seriously with either iconography or the state that they also fail to do more than repeat, perhaps even help entrench, the now familiar gestures of (not just Latin American) cultural studies. The first rule of cultural studies would seem to be an insistent rhetoric of complexity.
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Each volume consists of four issues, published in January, April, July and October of each year. Its 1000+ annual pages are divided roughly equally between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature in the languages of... more
Each volume consists of four issues, published in January, April, July and October of each year. Its 1000+ annual pages are divided roughly equally between articles, predominantly on medieval and modern literature in the languages of Europe, and over 500 reviews of books in these areas. All contributions are in English, and each section is edited by a noted scholar in the field, under the overall supervision of the General Editor.
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The millenarian devotion to Mary across the Hispanic world is more readily understood from a perspective whereby the diverse images venerated are seen not merely as statues, paintings or tapestries, but as images with which the faithful... more
The millenarian devotion to Mary across the Hispanic world is more readily understood from a perspective whereby the diverse images venerated are seen not merely as statues, paintings or tapestries, but as images with which the faithful interact, turning them into 'conduit [s] between the human being and the divine'(p. 4). As such, they provide a tangible link with the celestial, especially when they are cared for, venerated and carried in procession. The resulting interaction sometimes gives rise to rivalry between the followers ...
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The last-mentioned failing was obvious in the disastrous outcome of his premature and ill-conceived 1806 invasion of Venezuela and in his failure as a leader of the First Republic. Racine makes abundantly clear that Miranda was poorly... more
The last-mentioned failing was obvious in the disastrous outcome of his premature and ill-conceived 1806 invasion of Venezuela and in his failure as a leader of the First Republic. Racine makes abundantly clear that Miranda was poorly suited for the practical task of leading an independence movement: he had been away from America too long and had trouble adapting his course of action to specific local conditions. But the Latin Americanist whose primary interest is in the actual struggle for independence will find her coverage, ...
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Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus surely has some of the most remarkable opening lines of any work of philosophy or cultural critique. First published in France in 1972, just a few years after the demonstrations of May... more
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus surely has some of the most remarkable opening lines of any work of philosophy or cultural critique. First published in France in 1972, just a few years after the demonstrations of May 1968, its stylish bravado immediately reminds us of the attitudes struck by student agitators, and proclaims that their radical energies persist. [. . .]
All of which prompts the question as to the purpose of this biography. If the life does not illuminate the work, and if the life is of no particular intrinsic interest itself (as is especially the case of Deleuze, who seems mostly to have read, written, and taught, and to have occasionally tagged along to events with his buddy Guattari), then why bother? Dosse suggests that one of his aims is to underline Guattari’s contribution to the collaboration, but a slim article rather than a bloated book could have achieved the same end. Especially compared to the brio and bravado of Deleuze and Guattari’s own work, which gets to the point so quickly and so memorably (“What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines . . .”), it is a shame that their biography proceeds with so little drive or desire.
All of which prompts the question as to the purpose of this biography. If the life does not illuminate the work, and if the life is of no particular intrinsic interest itself (as is especially the case of Deleuze, who seems mostly to have read, written, and taught, and to have occasionally tagged along to events with his buddy Guattari), then why bother? Dosse suggests that one of his aims is to underline Guattari’s contribution to the collaboration, but a slim article rather than a bloated book could have achieved the same end. Especially compared to the brio and bravado of Deleuze and Guattari’s own work, which gets to the point so quickly and so memorably (“What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines . . .”), it is a shame that their biography proceeds with so little drive or desire.
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In this presentation, my intent is to investigate the consequences for intellectual and political work (or, to put this another way, for the politics of intellectual work) of the theory and the condition of posthegemony. I will be... more
In this presentation, my intent is to investigate the consequences for intellectual and political work (or, to put this another way, for the politics of intellectual work) of the theory and the condition of posthegemony. I will be particularly concerned with the contributions to the debate over posthegemony provided by Alberto Moreiras on the one hand and Michael Hardt and Toni Negri on the other.
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Brennan proposes an anti-imperialist common sense that has no truck with the “effeteness of literary modernism.” In brief, I don’t think that an “anti-imperialist” common sense is much improvement on an imperialist one; and I’m... more
Brennan proposes an anti-imperialist common sense that has no truck with the “effeteness of literary modernism.” In brief, I don’t think that an “anti-imperialist” common sense is much improvement on an imperialist one; and I’m suspicious of all homilies, and suggest that you should be, too. But back to Brennan’s project: naturally enough, cosmopolitanism is out (being merely the “literary ethos” appropriate to “the imperial aspects of globalization”). It is surely ironic that he marshals in support of this anti-cosmopolitan, anti-literary, anti-elitism a “who’s who” of third-world literary intellectuals, practically all of whom are male, middle-class, and ethnically privileged, from Chinua Achebe to César Vallejo, Alejo Carpentier to Mo Yan.
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The issue of “access” is in the first place about providing the public with the goods generated by public institutions. This should be obvious: universities exist for the public good, and the knowledge and skills that they develop should... more
The issue of “access” is in the first place about providing the public with the goods generated by public institutions. This should be obvious: universities exist for the public good, and the knowledge and skills that they develop should be immediately available to the public. With the rise of digitalization, the Internet, and the various technical capabilities for almost unlimited reproduction and dissemination of information, this should be the heyday of the university as an organization oriented towards the common good.
But despite the best efforts of many within the institution, in fact the university’s reputation has reached a new low. In part this is because of the work of lobbies that struggle valiantly against access at every level (rapacious academic publishers, for instance). In part it is because of a new right-wing populism that denigrates the very notion of the public and scorns any effort of the state to foster or protect the common good. But in part is is also because the university has been slow to realize the possibilities enabled in this new information age.
My talk will examine what I have elsewhere called “Knowledge 3.0″ and outline the ways in which universities should proactively encourage engagement with the new forms taken by the public sphere and the common good in the twenty-first century. This entails not merely sitting back and allowing the public to access the halls of academia. It also requires an interactive intervention into the new ways in which knowledge is produced and disseminated.
But despite the best efforts of many within the institution, in fact the university’s reputation has reached a new low. In part this is because of the work of lobbies that struggle valiantly against access at every level (rapacious academic publishers, for instance). In part it is because of a new right-wing populism that denigrates the very notion of the public and scorns any effort of the state to foster or protect the common good. But in part is is also because the university has been slow to realize the possibilities enabled in this new information age.
My talk will examine what I have elsewhere called “Knowledge 3.0″ and outline the ways in which universities should proactively encourage engagement with the new forms taken by the public sphere and the common good in the twenty-first century. This entails not merely sitting back and allowing the public to access the halls of academia. It also requires an interactive intervention into the new ways in which knowledge is produced and disseminated.
This dissertation is an analysis and critique of discourses on culture both within cultural studies and within the social sciences. It is also a historical investigation of (primarily) twentieth-century Latin American political movements,... more
This dissertation is an analysis and critique of discourses on culture both within cultural studies and within the social sciences. It is also a historical investigation of (primarily) twentieth-century Latin American political movements, from classical populism to national liberation movements, new social movements, and beyond, and of the relations between culture and politics that they incarnate.