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FORTHCOMING BOOK FROM VERSO (2023)
Andrew Feenberg, who holds the holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, is the author of Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (1981), Critical Theory of Technology (1991), Alternative Modernity (1995), Questioning Technology (1999), When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The May Events of 1968 (2001), Transforming Technology (2002), Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (2005), and Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (2010), The Philosophy of Praxis (2014), Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason (2017), and Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity (2019).
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CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Virtual Workshop on Departures and Arrivals: Space in the
Frankfurt School
Due Date for Abstracts:
September 9, 2022
Convened by:
Dr. Margath Walker and the University of Louisville Urban Student Collective
University of Louisville, USA
With generous support from the International Herbert Marcuse Society
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Departures and Arrivals: Space in the Frankfurt School is a 6-month long workshop beginning in October 2022 and running to April 2023. The workshop will consist of a small, committed group of scholars gathering on a regular basis (exact dates TBA) to discuss ideas, empirical research, and work-in-progress related to theoretical concepts and applied meanings of space and spatiality, broadly construed, in the work of the Frankfurt School.
We envision an interdisciplinary, international group of participants (emerging and senior scholars alike) from across the social sciences and humanities with diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives. The culminating aim of the workshop is to produce a theoretically innovative edited Special Issue. The workshop is guided by the idea that the work of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory has been informed and enriched by questions of space and place. The experiences of displacement, exile, and migration, which Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Marcuse, and other members associated with the Institute for Social Research have lived through, are substantially reflected in their writings. Thinking through these experiences and their meaning suggests that the spatial dimension is central to the philosophical tradition of Critical Theory. Spatial transitions, boundary crossings, and periods of flux imbued the writings and the thought of Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, yet the legacies of geographical unmooring and their socio-spatial resonance have not been at the forefront of scholarly inquiry so far. For various historical, social, and political reasons, explicitly spatial questions have been sidelined by dimensions of time and temporality, encapsulated by a seemingly nostalgic clinging to better, pre-capitalist times and a preoccupation with a utopian future of redeemed humankind. The entangled nature of space and place -- rarely distilled or teased apart conceptually -- too often serves as a background upon which to view larger intellectual or personal histories of members associated with the Institute for Social Research. As a result, a robust spatial perspective is yet to be solidified. Reckoning with the material aspects of space means that possibilities for considering re-actualizations of "the political" can be reimagined and further elaborated.
Considering the role of transitions, migrations, exiles, diasporas, and mobilities more generally, this workshop will strive to articulate the formative, significance of space, spatiality, and geography in the history and theory of the Frankfurt School. Our starting point has the materiality of space as fundamentally productive, where social relations become concrete and necessarily infused with the politics of scale. We hope to develop the spatial dimension, taking this perspective forward through studies within Frankfurt School scholarship and across multiple sites, augmenting our understanding of politics as relationally constituted and of space as integral to the political present.
Contributions may include work related to intellectual histories, key concepts, applied research, and grounded case studies. Possible topics and questions we would seek to explore are:
* Places and spaces in Frankfurt School intellectual biographies. The place of personal, social, political, and geographical spaces -- and spatial transitions -- in the lives and thought of Frankfurt School thinkers.
* The spatial dimensions of key concepts in the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory.
* Geographically applied Critical Theory: Case studies of critical, social/political geography that pursue the concepts and methods of Critical Theory.
* The Frankfurt School works, concepts, and arguments in different regional locations, such as, for example, Marcuse’s success and influence in Brazil; Benjamin’s reception in Palestine; The Frankfurt School in Africa, Adorno’s reception in Japan.
Anyone interested in participating should submit a 500-750 word abstract by September 9, 2022. A committee will review abstracts and provide potential participants additional details by the end of September 2022.
- All abstracts and queries should be sent to: departures@louisville.edu
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Margath A. Walker, Spatializing Marcuse: Critical Theory for Contemporary Times (Bristol University Press, 2022).
"Moving clearly between philosophy, social theory, and a range of contemporary examples, this is a compelling political and geographical account of why Herbert Marcuse's work remains of enduring importance today."
—Stuart Elden, University of Warwick
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"...the point is to change it"
15th Biennial Conference
November 16-19, 2022
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL / USA
Radical Philosophy Association
--40th Anniversary of the RPA
Conference Theme:
The past several years have been characterized by an onslaught of crises and catastrophes: a global pandemic, a continual lethal battle against racism, dramatic weather patterns and forest fires, and the culmination of an imperial tug-of-war between NATO and Russia. We have a lot to critique, from neglectful and exclusionary healthcare policies to inequitable and gendered care burdens to systemic racism to industrial perpetrators of climate change and the entanglement of all this with the profit motive of capitalism and colonial logics. But along with our critiques, we are inspired to build anew as we divest from systems and structures that enforce injustice.
Fredric Jameson said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Imagining a new world requires a bold and courageous imagination, one that is capable of conceiving radical new realities. Do we truly believe that "another world is possible"? Can we speculate about the concrete details of that world (and/or look to the past for inspiration for the future)? As the title of this year's conference is a nod to Karl Marx's famous adage, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it," we hope to share ideas about this process of social transformation, so that theory can transform into practice and the future we hope to see.
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The Marcuse Society welcomes your thoughts on our future direction as well as your participation in moving things forward.
If you have ideas or questions about the Marcuse Society, please do not hesitate to contact Terry Maley <maley@yorku.ca>, Savita Singh <savita.singh6@gmail.com>, Arnold Farr <arnold.farr@uky.edu>, or Andy Lamas <ATLamas@sas.upenn.edu>.
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For archives of fascinating material on HERBERT MARCUSE, visit the website
curated by Prof. Harold Marcuse.
You are also invited to visit the MARCUSE SOCIETY website for past newsletters and more information.
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