Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift. Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s (...) adverse effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Marx's central concern, consistent throughout his works, is to challenge and overcome hierarchical oppositions, which he considers as the core of modern, capitalist societies and the cause of alienation. The young Marx critiques the hierarchical idealism/materialism opposition. In this opposition, idealism abstracts from and reduces all material elements to the mind (or spirit), and materialism abstracts from and reduces all mental abstractions to the body (or matter). The mature Marx sophisticates this critique with his (...) theory of the commodity fetish. The commodity fetish abstracts the exchange-value (the mind) from the commodity's use-value (the body). Although Marx aims to challenge capitalism by abolishing the hierarchical relation among binary oppositions, I show that in his early and later writings on the working-class woman, he reinforces hierarchical binaries, pointing at the gendered unconscious structure of capitalism. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to David McIvor’s and Lars Rensmann’s discussion of my recent book, The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (2018, Edinburgh University Press). Both invited me to clarify my use of Arendt in my conception of embodied reflective judgment. I argue for a stronger connection between judgment and emotions than Arendt because one can effectively shut down critical thinking if one uses defense mechanisms to repress feelings of guilt. In response to McIvor, I (...) discuss the idea of the “subject-in-outline” and “embodied reflective spaces” to overcome the guilt/defense complex to engender a reparative politics of justice. Finally, in response to Rensmann, I point out that the lingering culture of repressed guilt helps us explain the general conditions that contributed to the rise of the far and extremist right in Austria, which I develop further in my new book Analyzing the Far Right. (shrink)

In this article, I bring Marx and Adorno into conversation with affect theory to establish three points: First, an affective reading of the concepts of alienation and exploitation via Marx’s metaphor of the “vampire capital” explains how capitalism depletes raced, gendered, and sexed working class of their bodily and mental powers. Second, discussing these thinkers’ ideas in the context of the larger mind and body opposition revives attention to the body in contemporary political theory and exposes how the mind and (...) body opposition covers the suffering caused by capitalism. Third, it shows that we must theorize the mind and body, feeling and thinking, as a mediated relation to grasping how particularly negative feelings can generate critical thinking, necessary to rebel against the vampire capital. (shrink)

In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in the (...) broader sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Instead, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and allow her to elaborate her work for her audience. (shrink)

In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in the (...) broader sense), after which I pose a few questions. These questions are not meant to prove that there are any serious problems with her argumentation. Instead, they are meant in the spirit of dialogue and allow her to elaborate her work for her audience. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on Adorno's concept of the non-identical in conjunction with Lacan's concept of the Real to propose a "theoretical outline of the subject" as central for feminist political theorizing. A theoretical outline of the subject recognizes the limits of theorizing, the moment where meaning fails, and we are confronted with the impossibility of grasping the subject entirely. At the same time, it insists on the importance of a coherent subject to effect transformations in the sociopolitical sphere. (...) Since the non-identical is more grounded in the material world than the Real, and the Real allows us more than the non-identical to grasp the anxieties and desires that lead to totalizing theories, a complementary Adornian-Lacanian theoretical framework holds a central promise for feminist political theorizing. (shrink)

Feminist thinkers have appropriated the central concepts of the early Frankfurt School thinker Theodor W. Adorno, such as his concept of the non-identical, and pointed at his problematic depictions of the feminine. However, despite the growing literature on the latter, there is so far no scholarship that shows how the feminine interacts with class in Adorno’s works. Working-class women appear in the Dialectic of Enlightenment and his later works in the three figurations of the phallic, castrating, and castrated woman. I (...) draw on the theoretical framework of the French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan to grasp the deeper desires and fears that implicate Adorno in the very same instrumental rationality he aims to counter with his critical theory. (shrink)

In this article, I develop an account of judgment that I term embodied reflective judgment, which implies that thinking and feeling are connected, entangled, and crucial for critical judgment. How we think about something can prompt an emotional response, and that response can prompt further reflection necessary for critical judgment. I clarify the relationship between thinking and feeling in judgment by foregrounding guilt feelings as a specific issue that individuals and political collectivities must deal with to make embodied reflective judgment (...) possible. I ground the concept of embodied reflective judgment in an engagement with Theodor W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

How can we radically change the inhuman conditions existing in the world today? In this paper, I answer this question by explaining the how, when, and who of radical socio-political transformation. We need both critical theorizing and transformative practice to explain how we can change the world. We must theorize the moment of the limit in the objective domain of power to answer when the transformative agency becomes possible. I introduce the idea of the “political subject-in-outline” that moves within the (...) tension of minimal closure and permanent openness to theorize a who, which remains inclusive and has the strength to transform the status quo. Marx’s and Adorno’s thought remains central to theorize socio-political transformation today. (shrink)

The feminist subject, which refers to the category "woman" as a shared identity for all women, has excluded women who do not fit neatly into its boundaries. In response, Judith Butler suggested that feminists must give up theorizing the feminist subject or invoke it as a pragmatic strategy only. Since Butler's solution is a dead-end for feminist politics, I propose the idea of a feminist subject-in-outline for emancipatory feminist politics. The feminist subject-in-outline emerges in what Jacques Lacan has termed the (...) moment of the real, which refers to the gap in the signifier "woman." In this gap, all those women who have been rendered invisible and without a proper place in the feminist community can become subjects and transform its boundaries. (shrink)

In this book, I develop the novel concept of embodied reflective judgment, which outlines the interconnection between feeling and thinking in judgment. I explain that defense mechanisms to repress feelings of guilt can effectively shut down critical judgment. Finally, I analyze post-war trial cases of Austrian Nazi perpetrators and contemporary debates about Austria’s involvement in Nazi crimes to expose the mechanisms used by individuals and nations to fend off individual and political guilt. Only by confronting guilt can individuals and nations (...) take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims of crimes and their descendants, and ensure that such crimes are not repeated. I also develop two concepts to break the cycle of negative consequences resulting from repressed guilt about a nation’s violent past: Embodied reflective spaces, which allow us to reflect on our guilt feelings, and subjects-in-outline, which means that we abstain from wholly identifying with a nation to counter defensive mechanisms when confronting guilt. I ground my analysis in critical theory (Arendt and Adorno) and psychoanalytic theory. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to Laury Naranch’s and Mary Caputi’s discussion of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In response to Naranch, I clarify how the political subject-in-outline translates into collective political action through the figure of the Chicana working-class woman. I also explain why the proletariat, more so than the precariat, implies a radical political imaginary if we rethink this concept in the context of my idea of the political subject-in-outline. I also clarify that my (...) chapters on Marx expose how Adorno and Marx have problematic imaginations of the working-class woman, which counter their otherwise radical imaginary. In response to Caputi, I clarify the meaning of capitalism in my book and underline that we need a rigorous critique of capitalism to counter the rise of the Far Right. I also explain why the fluid subject does not have agency and why the subject-in-outline is a better way to theorize transformative feminist agency. I also clarify that my conception of feminist political subjectivity does not assume a privileged vantage point outside power structures. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 447-449, September 2021.

This article considers the question ‘What makes hope rational?’ We take Adrienne Martin’s recent incorporation analysis of hope as representative of a tradition that views the rationality of hope as a matter of instrumental reasons. Against this tradition, we argue that an important subset of hope, ‘fundamental hope’, is not governed by instrumental rationality. Rather, people have reason to endorse or reject such hope in virtue of the contribution of the relevant attitudes to the integrity of their practical identity, which (...) makes the relevant hope not instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. This argument also allows for a new analysis of the reasons people have to abandon hope and for a better understanding of non-fundamental, ‘prosaic’ hopes. (shrink)

The use of psychoanalytic ideas to explore social and political questions is not new. Freud began this work himself and social research has consistently drawn on his ideas. This makes perfect sense. Social and political theory must find ways to conceptualise the relation between human subjects and our social environment; and the distinctive and intense observation of individual psychical structuring afforded within clinical psychoanalysis has given rise to rich theoretical and methodological resources for doing just this. However, psychoanalytic concepts do (...) not remain the same when they are rearticulated in the context of research. This book traces the reiteration and transformation of concepts in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Klein and Lacan, the social theory of Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau and Zizek, and case studies of empirical research ranging from the classic Tavistock Institute studies to contemporary work in politics, gender studies, cultural studies and education. Each chapter explores one cluster of concepts: Melancholia, loss and subjectivity Overdetermination and free association Resistance, reflexivity and the compulsion to repeat Repression, disavowal and foreclosure Psychic defenses and social defenses Arguing against the reification of psychoanalytic concepts, Claudia Lapping suggests the need for a reflexive understanding of the play of attachments and substitutions as concepts are reframed in the contrasting activities of psychoanalysis and research. (shrink)

Addressing studying as a distinct educational concept and phenomenon in its own right, the essays in this volume consider study and studying from a range of perspectives. Countering dominant educational discourses, which place a heavy emphasis on learning and instruction, the contributors explore questions such as: What does it mean to study something? How is studying something different from being taught about it, or learning something about it? What does the difficulty demanded by study mean for the one who studies (...) and for the teacher? What mode of existence does study induce? The book highlights the significance of study not only, or even primarily, for its educational outcome, but as a human activity. (shrink)

Scientists engaged in global health research are increasingly faced with barriers to access and use of human tissues from the developing world communities where much of their research is targeted. In part, the problem can be traced to distrust of researchers from affluent countries, given the history of 'scientific-imperialism' and 'biocolonialism' reflected in past well publicized cases of exploitation of research participants from low to middle income countries. To a considerable extent, the failure to adequately engage host communities, the opacity (...) of informed consent, and the lack of fair benefit-sharing have played a significant role in eroding trust. These ethical considerations are central to biomedical research in low to middle income countries and failure to attend to them can inadvertently contribute to exploitation and erode trust. A 'tissue trust' may be a plausible means for enabling access to human tissues for research in a manner that is responsive to the ethical challenges considered. Preventing exploitation and restoring trust while simultaneously promoting global health research calls for innovative approaches to human tissues research. A tissue trust can reduce the risk of exploitation and promote host capacity as a key benefit. (shrink)

Die Studie richtet sich gegen die verbreitete Auffassung, Senecas Tragödien und Lucans Bürgerkriegsepos demonstrieren die Enttäuschung ihrer Autoren darüber, dass die stoische Doktrin angesichts des Bösen im menschlichen Handeln oder unvermeidbarer Schicksalsschläge keine überzeugende Antwort bereithalte. Die Werke beider Dichter setzen gezielt und in paralleler Behandlung die stoischen Fragestellungen zum Spannungsfeld von menschlicher Entscheidungsfreiheit und Determinismus literarisch um.

Providing a unique interpretation of Kant's theory of judgement as integral to his overall project, Claudia Brodsky explores his continued relevance to contemporary theoretical concerns. The Linguistic Condition traces how Kant combined sensus communis, or common sense with the communicative nature of judgement to reveal that, for him, acts of judgement are dependent on their linguistic articulation, so that in Kantian philosophy language and judgement are inextricably linked. In this first in-depth analysis of language in the Critique of Judgement, (...) Brodsky forms creative connections between literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Welche Rolle spielt Augenzeugenschaft in Kunst und visueller Kultur von ca. 1800 bis heute? Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen diese Frage an einem breiten Spektrum von Gegenständen: künstlerischen und nicht-künstlerischen Bildern, Aktionen und Installationen sowie Kunstinstitutionen und -literatur. Im Zentrum des Interesses steht, wie Effekte von Augenzeugenschaft hervorgerufen und Konstruktionen von Augenzeugenschaft bei der Produktion und Rezeption von Artefakten wirksam werden. Die Reihe der Beispiele ermöglicht erstmals einen vergleichenden und interdisziplinär anschlussfähigen Blick auf einen Diskurs und eine Praxis der Authentifizierung, (...) die im 18. bis 21. Jahrhundert immer wieder von Belang gewesen sind. (shrink)

This book examines the premises and principles of Kant's explicitly interdisciplinary philosophy in its specific relation to the defining features, means and aims of literature. It provides readers with analyses of Kant's relationship to literature along intersecting, internal and external lines.

Queste ricerche esplorano i sentieri articolati e complessi del pensiero di Vico prima delle Scienze nuove, intervenendo sui temi della libertas philosophandi, della critica al cartesianesimo, della filosofia della mens e della moderna antropologia con originali proposte interpretative tese anche ad aggiornare la didattica intorno all'opera vichiana tra Cartesio e Kant.