In this classic exposition of Marxist thought, Raya Dunayevskaya, with clarity and great insight, traces the development and explains the essential features of Marx's analysis of history. Using as her point of departure the Industrial and French Revolutions, the European upheavals of 1848, the American Civil War, and the Paris Commune of 1871, Dunayevskaya shows how Marx, inspired by these events, adapted Hegel's philosophy to analyze the course of history as a dialectical process that moves "from practice (...) to theory." The essence of Marx's philosophy, as Dunayevskaya points out, is the human struggle for freedom, which entails the gradual emergence of a proletarian revolutionary consciousness and the discovery through conflict of the means for realizing complete human freedom. But freedom for Marx meant freedom not only from capitalist economic exploitation but also from all political restraints. Continuing her historical analysis, Dunayevskaya reveals how completely Marx's original conception of freedom was perverted through its adaptations by Stalin in Russia and Mao in China, and the subsequent erection of totalitarian states. The exploitation of the masses persisted under these regimes in the form of a new "state capitalism." Yet despite the profound derailment of Marxist political philosophy in the twentieth century, Dunayevskaya points to developments such as the Hungarian revolt of 1956, and the Civil Rights struggles in the United States as signs that the indomitable quest for freedom on the part of the downtrodden cannot be forever repressed. The Hegelian dialectic of events propelled by the spirit of the masses thus moves on inexorably with the hope for the future achievement of political, economic, and social freedom and equality for all. (shrink)

Few thought systems have been as distorted and sometimes misconstrued as those of Marx and Hegel. Philosophy and Revolution, presented here in a new edition, attempts to save Marx from interpretations which restrict the revolutionary significance of the philosophy behind his theory. Developing her breakthrough on Hegel's Absolute Idea, Raya Dunayevskaya, who died in the June of 1987, aims at a total liberation of the human person—not only from the ills of a capitalist society, but also from the (...) equally oppressive state capitalism of established communist governments. (shrink)

Raya Dunayevskaya is hailed as the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States. In this new collection of her essays co-editors Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson have crafted a work in which the true power and originality of Dunayevskaya's ideas are displayed. This extensive collection of writings on Hegel, Marx, and dialectics captures Dunayevskaya's central dictum that, contrary to the established views of Hegelians and Marxists, Hegel was of signal importance to the theory and practice (...) of Marxism. The Power of Negativity sheds light not only on Marxist-Humanism and the rooting of Dunayevskaya's Marxist-Humanist theories in Hegel, but also on the life of one of America's most penetrating and provocative critical thinkers. (shrink)

I wish to take issue with a statement in the report by Dr. Max Rieser on the International Congress for the Philosophy of Science, which appeared in the October 1955 issue of your journal. It reads: “As for an explanation of the unexpected absence of the scholars of the satellite countries, it should be borne in mind that they were all educated and grown up before the communist revolutionary upheaval and therefore naturally more susceptible of defection from the Marxist orthodoxy (...) than the Russians. …”. (shrink)

The philosophic moment of Marx : Marx's transformation of the Hegelian dialectic -- Preface to the Iranian edition of Marx's humanist essays -- The theory of alienation : Marx's debt to Hegel -- The todayness of Marx's humanism -- A 1981 view of Marx's 1841 dialectic -- The inseparability of Marx's economics, humanism, and dialectic -- Capitalist development and Marx's capital, 1863-1883 -- Today's epigones who try to truncate Marx's capital -- Letter to Herbert Marcuse on automation -- Marx's grundrisse (...) and the dialectic in life and in thought -- Capitalist production/alienated labor -- Marx's critique of culture -- Post-Marx marxism and the battle of ideas -- Post-Marx marxism as a category -- Hobsbawm and Rubel on the Marx centenary, but where is Marx? -- Marx's philosophy of revolution vs. non-marxist scholar-careerists in "marxism" -- Paul Mattick : economism vs. Marx's humanism -- Bertell Ollman : pitting "human nature" against Marx's humanism -- The dialectic of labor in Marx and "critical thought" -- Gramsci's "philosophy of praxis" -- Rosdolsky's methodology and Lange's revisionism -- Adorno, Kosik, and the movement from practice -- Marx as philosopher of revolution in permanence-reading Marx for today -- Section A: Marxist-humanism -- Introduction to philosophic notes -- The emergence of a new movement from practice that is itself a form of theory -- New stage of production, new stage of cognition, new kind of organization -- The dialectic of absolute idea as new beginning -- Section B: Black liberation and internationalism -- Abolitionism and the American roots of marxism -- Marx and the two-way road between the U.S. and Africa -- Black intellectuals in dilemma -- Women's liberation and the dialectics of revolution -- Marx's "new humanism" and the dialectics of women's liberation in "primitive" and modern societies -- Marx's and Engels' studies contrasted : relationship of philosophy and revolution to women's liberation -- Letter to adrienne rich on women's liberation, gay liberation, and the dialectic -- Dialectics of organization and philosophy -- Spontaneity, organization, philosophy (dialectics) -- Philosopher of permanent revolution and organization man -- A post-World War II view of Marx's humanism, 1843-1883 : marxist humanism, 1950s-1980s -- Appendices -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

Robin George Colling Wood was a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1912 to 1935. During this period he published or prepared his most important philosophical and historical works.

Let us recapitulate here. A unified learning process is presented here, the principles of which are consistently applied through three distinct periods; the acquisition of knowledge, the analytical examination of it and a third stage where knowledge might be called wisdom. The last stage has been referred to as a synthetic function of memory, the stage where the significance of knowledge is revealed; an understanding of the whole, the capacity for understanding details within the whole, a generative stage of knowledge (...) similar to language, a revelatory knowledge, metaphysical, samadhi, heightened perception, vision.Throughout these stages the passive aspect of mind is emphasized as a practical learning technique in acquisition, analysis and understanding. That is exploited at a physical level in asanas, in the three thinking processes and in metaphysical realization. Quotes illustrate this aspect as a basic principle of the mind, of metaphysics and of the acquisition of knowledge at different levels. This principle is used to explain aesthetic experience and ultimate realization. The reason for its predominance and the metaphysical presuppositions that perhaps cleared the way for systematic training in this technique have been given. It is of interest to note that systematic training in this technique still occurs in India today.This process is a peculiar union of memory and perceptive capacities. Essentially, the haphazard memory fund is eliminated for a form of creative and exact thinking or knowledge. This unification of memory and perception has given this paper its name. This learning process has as its aim not the accumulation of knowledge but guidance in correct thinking. It stems from the realization that our perception is conditioned by our memory, that is, the limitations of our knowledge. That conditioning, like ajñāna, prevents us from knowing what we do not know. The transformation involved requires an instantaneous understanding which, while remaining aware of the objects of perception and the process of perception, really centres in the perceiver himself.An old Lapp song brings out the paradox in memory: And its we too, Our memory, memory of ourselves... Disappears, disappears... We remember and we've forgotten. We are both old.The Chandogya states: smaramupāssva Ch. U 7.13.1, devoted yourself to memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space by Juan HerreraAída R. GuhlincozziCartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Spaceby juan herrera Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2022Juan Herrera’s historical recounting of Latino activism in Fruitvale, California, in Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space is stellar. In fact, the case focused on by Herrera as an example of activism producing (...) space and creating change in the name of social justice is not the only top-quality contribution to Latinx geographies to be found in this book. Herrera’s conceptualization of “cartographic memory” builds on the intertwining of Latinx writers and historians with traditional spatial thought from the history of geography. His definition of “cartographic memory” as a “political remaking of urban geography and therefore a selective mapping” adds to the broader oeuvre of activism and space coming out in recent years (14).The geographic location for Cartographic Memory comes from the author’s long history of working in and around Fruitvale as both a volunteer and community member. As a new resident of the Oakland area, Herrera mistakenly navigated himself to Fruitvale, where he found the elements of the place clearly speaking to a cultural aesthetic of Latin-idad. Intrigued, Herrera began volunteering in the area, and learned more of the long activist history of the space. That activist history, Herrera argues, has long been under-studied, or even forgotten, in Chicano activist history, and merits recognition. Herrera’s efforts with [End Page 139] this book go a long way to gathering together that spatial history and reconstructing it for the reader through interviews and oral histories with numerous activists, extensive archival research, and ethnography focusing on the 1960s and 1970s Mexican-American activist mobilization in support of the Chicano movement.The power of the focus on Fruitvale must be recognized, as Herrera also makes space for intently peeling apart the layers of nonprofit funding, social movements, and community-building and support. The chapter, “Revolution Interrupted,” is about the funding situation of the Unity Council in Fruitvale and how the funding structure was constructed over time in the context of the political and economic opportunities of the 1960s. It speaks to how this had a profound effect on the organizers and community given the shift from grassroots to institutional funding. This chapter opens the book with a focus on the national scope of funding opportunities for organizations in the 1960s that focused on race and ethnicity. Through this lens are explored the effects of local political actions—such as the 1969 speech by San Antonio-based Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) leader Jose Angel Gutierrez—on funding at the federal level. Because of the perceived militancy of these remarks, the U.S. Congress became concerned, and eventually passed the 1969 Tax Reform bill, limiting the types of projects that could be funded philanthropically. This type of multi-scale understanding of Fruitvale activism is threaded throughout the entire book, from chapter 1, “Making Place,” in which Herrera summarizes activist perspectives on Fruitvale as emphasizing “not only how the neighborhood itself [produced] a geography of activism but also how it was interconnected to other places of struggle throughout the United States” (emphasis in original; 33).Herrera also navigates the interactions of race, ethnicity, and space, tracing how coalitions, influences on political efforts, and collaboration took place throughout Fruitvale and Oakland during this period. His second chapter, “The Other Minority,” identifies where Black Panther Party-related work occurred; the marketization that began to occur of a non-threatening, non-Black “Latino” identity; the effect that this had on activist efforts; and more. Importantly, in this chapter Herrera’s interviews reveal that part of the interest in these coalitions came from the clear organizational success Black activists had achieved in their [End Page 140] work, leading Mexican American activists in Oakland to pursue similar efforts. One interviewee, Herman Gallegos, a prominent activist at the time, spoke of recalling an event where Black men would gather monthly to focus on leadership. Thinking highly of them, he says that he recognized them as future “mayors, judges... [but] kept thinking... (shrink)

More recent advancements in digital technologies have significantly alleviated the dissemination of new scientific ideas as well as the storing, searching and retrieval of large amounts of published research findings. While not denying the benefits of this novel ‘economy of memory,’ this paper endeavors to shed light on the ways in which the use of digital technologies may be linked to a distortion of the system of formal publications that facilitates the effective dissemination and collaborative building of scientific knowledge. Through (...) combining three different strands of discussion that are often left separate – those pertaining to the cognitive effects of new technological memory systems, those pertaining to citation and publishing practices, and those regarding the effects of formalizing modes of research governance – it is also shown that this distortion is not merely a consequence of technological developments alone. Rather, such a distortion is inseparable from and potentially aggravated by the spreading of increasingly dysfunctional, formalizing research governance mechanisms. It is argued that these mechanisms run the risk of fostering the proliferation of knowledge practices that are characterized by an increasing degree of superficiality as well as the strategic publication of research that is of a decreasing degree of originality. If left unaddressed, this may pose a serious threat to the efficiency and effectiveness of the formal record of scientific knowledge as a tool for the dissemination of original research. By extension, this may in the long run seriously undermine the capacity of the publicly funded research system more generally. (shrink)

This article addresses debates around the fate of antiquated symbols of colonial domination in postcolonial societies. The handling of apartheid material culture still generates controversy more than 15 years after the country’s first democratic elections. Built in 1949 to commemorate the Great Trek into the interior of the country, the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria has stood as the embodiment of Afrikaner nationalism and mythology. A number of factors prevented the demolition of the site, including the spirit of national reconciliation. In (...) order to remain relevant and to secure state funding, staff members at the Voortrekker Monument have attempted to map onto the original exclusionary imagery a more inclusive narrative that hinges on the protection of ‘minority rights’ to cultural preservation. This case study sheds light on the way political transitions create openings for the interrogation of colonial monuments – whether they should be destroyed, revised or left untouched – and the development of a postcolonial memorial landscape. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A National Shrine to Scapegoating? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Washington, D.C. Jon Pahl Valparaiso University In a recent survey I conducted of visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C, 92 percent agreed that "the memorial is a sacred place, and should be treated as such."1 Clearly, this place, by some reports the most visited site in the U.S. capital, draws devotion. But how does (...) a pilgrimage to this memorial function?2 Does pilgrimage to "the wall" serve to "heal a nation," as its builders intended, or does pilgrimage to the memorial ironically legitimize structures of violence like those which led the United States into the Vietnamese conflict in the first place?3 My argument builds upon the work of René Girard to suggest that pilgrimage to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial can legitimize the violence of American culture by 'The survey was of 185 pilgrims attending ceremonies during Veterans Day, November 11, 1993 and 1994. Several recent works explore the interface between civil religion and violence, notably John E. Bodnar, Karal Ann Marling, and Edward T. Linenthal. On sacred places, the pioneering work of Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, remains important but must be supplemented by Jonathan Z. Smith's Imagining Religion. 1 Victor and Edith Turner argue cogently that "if a tourist is half pilgrim, a pilgrim is half tourist" (20). Many visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial understand themselves only as tourists, but their behavior appears to me to warrant treatment under the category of "pilgrimage." 3 I assume a "maximalist" definition of violence, which understands the word to refer not only to physical harm to individuals, but also to systemic, social structures of exclusion (such as racism), and ideological (or symbolic) justifications of violence (see Robert McAfee Brown; for a minimalist approach, see Gerald Runkle). 166Jon Pahi reinforcing scapegoating.4 At the same time, however, the established religious pluralism and voluntarism of American culture—evident in this pilgrimage process—diffuses violence. Furthermore, the democratic character of this pilgrimage empowers pilgrims to critique idolatrous worship of the nation, and to witness to authentic reverence for life. Mimesis on the mall A brief impressionistic portrait ofthe way visitors experience the Vietnam Veterans Memorial will demonstrate how the memorial draws pilgrims into a mimetic process—a key feature of Girard's theory. Many pilgrims stop at the memorial as part of a National Park Service 'Tourmobile' circuit of museums and memorials, or as part of another bus tour (school and senior citizens groups are especially common ). These busses disembark pilgrims at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, directly in front of the reflecting pool on the national mall, in sight of the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Pilgrims may, or may not, first climb the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (a powerful shrine with implications for understanding violence in its own right). Moving north, they eventually proceed along a sidewalk lined with Fig. 1 "Three Men Statue".,. several tents where veterans organizations sell T-shirts, medals, bumper-stickers, books, and other memorabilia. The first stop for many pilgrims is the "Three Men Statue" (Fig. 1) located in a grove just past the tents. 4 I summarize Girard's theory as follows: Beginning with mimetic desire, rivalry for an object escalates and threatens the social order. Religion—and notably sacrifice of the scapegoat—creates sufficient unanimity to restore a sense of social order, but does so through violence itself, masking through myth and ritual a vicious cycle of aggression we know as the history of human culture. A National Shrine to Scapegoating?167 This bronze statue (and the American flag which flies nearby) was not part ofthe original design for the memorial, and was dedicated in 1985, three years after the wall of names. It was the result of a compromise between founders of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund led by veteran Jan Scruggs and a group led by 1992 Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot which was dissatisfied with the wall and felt the need for a more 'heroic' representation of the survivors ofthe war.5 Most pilgrims understand little of the history behind the statue, or its intent to create a more heroic... (shrink)

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

This third volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science contains papers which are based upon Colloquia from 1964 to 1966. In most cases, they have been substantially modified subsequent to presentation and discussion. Once again we publish work which goes beyond technical analysis of scientific theories and explanations in order to include philo sophical reflections upon the history of science and also upon the still problematic interactions between metaphysics and science. The philo sophical history of scientific ideas has (...) increasingly been recognized as part of the philosophy of science, and likewise the cultural context of the genesis of such ideas. There is no school or attitude to be taken as de fining the scope or criteria of our Colloquium, and so we seek to under stand both analytic and historical aspects of science. This volume, as the previous two, constitutes a substantial part of our final report to the U. S. National Science Foundation, which has continued its support of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science by a grant to Boston University. That report will be concluded by a subse quent volume of these Studies. It is a pleasure to record our thanks to the Foundation for its confidence and funds. We dedicate this book to the memory of Norwood Russell Hanson. During this academic year of 1966-67, this beloved and distinguished American philosopher participated in our Colloquium, and he did so before. (shrink)

The author reviews the planned withdrawal of healthcare from the primary public hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital, of Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, at least half of the patients had no public or private health insurance and their care was financially supported by State and County funding as well as supplementation from Emory University. New administration in the elected positions of the State and County and at the University reached agreement to decrease care. (...) The University President stated that the Hippocratic Oath was no longer valid for salaried physicians who must follow the direction of their business manager. The author, a tenured Professor, was forcibly transferred to the Veterans Hospital, which also was withholding standard medical care, including life-saving medications. Organizing multiple concerned organizations including members of the King Center, the Carter Center, the Open Door Community Center, Gay Rights, etc., (Grady Coalition) multiple public protests were successful in raising the necessary funds to continue adequate care at Grady and begin an investigation of the Veterans Affairs Hospital. (shrink)

This article investigates how national histories marred by racial conflict can be translated into narratives of group identity formation. I study the role of “identity-driven” museums in converting American’s racial past into a metanarrative of black identity from subjugation to citizenship. Drawing on a thick description of exhibitions at 15 museums, interviews with curators and directors, museum documents, and newspaper articles, I use the “political economy of memory” as a framework to explain how ideological and material processes intersect in the (...) production of exhibitions. I show that in addition to struggles over the truth and interpretive styles, more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and institutional capacity-building hve an impact on representational selectivities. I explain how these issues affect black museums operating during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. I consider the motivations and consequences of “remembering” national histories of violence and intolerance through the prism of group identity formation. (shrink)

Graham Solomon, to whom this collection is dedicated, went into hospital for antibiotic treatment of pneumonia in Oc- ber, 2001. Three days later, on Nov. 1, he died of a massive stroke, at the age of 44. Solomon was well liked by those who got the chance to know him—it was a revelation to?nd out, when helping to sort out his a?airs after his death, how many “friends” he had whom he had actually never met, as his email included correspondence (...) with philosophers around the world running sometimes to hundreds of messages. He was well respected in the philosophical community more broadly. He was for several years a member of the editorial board for the Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. While he was employed at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, several of us at the University of Wat- loo always regarded our own department as a sort of second academic home for him. We therefore decided that it would be appropriate to hold a memorial conference in his honour. Thanks to the generous?nancial support of the Humphrey Conference Fund, we were able to do so in May 2003. Many of the papers in this volume were presented at that conf- ence. (shrink)

Raya Dunayevskaya is hailed as the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States. In this new collection of her essays co-editors Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson have crafted a work in which the true power and originality of Dunayevskaya's ideas are displayed. This extensive collection of writings on Hegel, Marx, and dialectics captures Dunayevskaya's central dictum that, contrary to the established views of Hegelians and Marxists, Hegel was of signal importance to the theory and practice (...) of Marxism. The Power of Negativity sheds light not only on Marxist-Humanism and the rooting of Dunayevskaya's Marxist-Humanist theories in Hegel, but also on the life of one of America's most penetrating and provocative critical thinkers. (shrink)

Cognitive Reserve, according to a recent consensus definition of the NIH-funded Reserve and Resilience collaboratory,1 is constituted by any mechanism contributing to cognitive performance beyond, or interacting with, brain structure in the widest sense. To identity multivariate activation patterns fulfilling this postulate, we investigated a verbal Sternberg fMRI task and imaged 181 people with age coverage in the ranges 20–30 and 55–70. Beyond task performance, participants were characterized in terms of demographics, and neuropsychological assessments of vocabulary, episodic memory, perceptual speed, (...) and abstract fluid reasoning. Participants studied an array of either one, three, or six upper-case letters for 3 s, then a blank fixation screen was presented for 7 s, to be probed with a lower-case letter to which they responded with a differential button press whether the letter was part of the studied array or not. We focused on identifying maintenance-related activation patterns showing memory load increases in pattern score on an individual participant level for both age groups. We found such a pattern that increased with memory load for all but one person in the young participants, and such a pattern for all participants in the older group. Both patterns showed broad topographic similarities; however, relationships to task performance and neuropsychological characteristics were markedly different and point to individual differences in Cognitive Reserve. Beyond the derivation of group-level activation patterns, we also investigated the inter-subject spatial similarity of individual working memory rehearsal patterns in the older participants’ group as a function of neuropsychological and task performance, education, and mean cortical thickness. Higher task accuracy and neuropsychological function was reliably associated with higher inter-subject similarity of individual-level activation patterns in older participants. (shrink)

Algorithmic probability and friends: Proceedings of the Ray Solomonoff 85th memorial conference is a collection of original work and surveys. The Solomonoff 85th memorial conference was held at Monash University's Clayton campus in Melbourne, Australia as a tribute to pioneer, Ray Solomonoff, honouring his various pioneering works - most particularly, his revolutionary insight in the early 1960s that the universality of Universal Turing Machines could be used for universal Bayesian prediction and artificial intelligence. This work continues to increasingly (...) influence and under-pin statistics, econometrics, machine learning, data mining, inductive inference, search algorithms, data compression, theories of intelligence and philosophy of science - and applications of these areas. Ray not only envisioned this as the path to genuine artificial intelligence, but also, still in the 1960s, anticipated stages of progress in machine intelligence which would ultimately lead to machines surpassing human intelligence. Ray warned of the need to anticipate and discuss the potential consequences - and dangers - sooner rather than later. Possibly foremostly, Ray Solomonoff was a fine, happy, frugal and adventurous human being of gentle resolve who managed to fund himself while electing to conduct so much of his paradigm-changing research outside of the university system. The volume contains 35 papers pertaining to the abovementioned topics in tribute to Ray Solomonoff and his legacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Funding Utopia: Utopian Studies and the Discourse of Academic ExcellenceAdam Stock (bio)As an academic field, there is in some important ways nothing special about utopian studies. Granted, our object of inquiry may look beyond the present toward what Ruth Levitas terms the Imaginary Reconstruction of Society, but we are still workers in what Darren Webb calls the “corporate-imperial” university.1 Webb argues that within the university we can at best (...) protect “bolt holes, breathing spaces, and places of refuge” that can function as “fleeting, transitory, small-scale experiences of utopian possibility.” As academics, our greater value to utopian politics therefore involves using our “knowledge and resources... in the service of a collaborative process of memory- and story-making, pulling together disparate inchoate dreams and yearnings in order to generate a utopian vision that can help inform, guide, and mobilize long-term collective action for systemic change.”2 Such work uses resources and the products of labor within the academy in the service of ends beyond and at times against it. In other words, utopianism within the academy is necessarily complicit in the academy’s constitutive material relations, but it can also be oppositional in intellectual and—more importantly—activist senses to the academy’s ideological form. In other words, whether or not a given [End Page 517] project in the field of utopian studies is politically utopian does not depend on its material basis (i.e., how it is funded) so much as its content, in the senses of both the work that it does and the ways in which it captures and mobilizes available resources. Hence it is possible to imagine both regressive and emancipatory research projects in our field that capture or co-opt additional resources, including both internal and external funding. It is, however, a mark of emancipatory projects that they will use these resources to the ends Webb describes.Implicit in Webb’s argument is an acceptance that politically useful utopian work should be socially engaged beyond the confines of the university campus. However, engaging in utopian politics from within inegalitarian university structures (via what is institutionally termed “outreach” and “engagement” work) should be pursued with caution. Even researchers and educators acting in good faith can easily end up exploiting or causing damage to social movements, support groups and activists. Good allyship and effective support cannot be reduced to institutional mechanisms like ethics committee compliance or equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) initiatives, even when these go beyond “lip service” to become meaningful acts.3 For projects involving external collaborators with a connection to the sort of “long-term, collective action” Webb describes, research design must walk a tightrope between being supportive of utopian politics beyond the university and responding to instrumental pressures within it.Here I suggest as an academic field utopian studies is at least a little special as it mediates dialectically between theory and practice at one level while developing a conceptual framework of the dialectic between theory and practice at another. Within what Richter et al term “the paradox of universities as colonizing and liberatory spaces for community engagement and activism” the utopian method is well placed to ask questions about how we engage with the given conditions of the academy, including competitive research funding grants.4 I begin below with a discussion of the relationship of theory and academic work to the social with reference to utopian theory and then apply this to questions about our wider complicity within a discursive regime I term “academic excellence.” I argue this regime is central to the “prestige economy” upon which some of the structural inequalities of our sector are based. I conclude by suggesting that working within the constraints of the given while remaining orientated toward utopian politics in an ethical manner requires close attention to how we navigate the relationship between utopian theory and political practice. [End Page 518]Theory, Praxis, PracticeIn the final chapter of his recent monograph Becoming Utopian, Tom Moylan forms a cogent argument about the praxis of utopian-oriented politics with reference to Saul Alinsky’s community organizing and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed.5 The writings of both figures are grounded in... (shrink)

Raya Dunayevskaya, who was Russian Secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1937–1938 during his exile in Mexico, identifies herself as a Marxist humanist, one who accepts Marx’s social and political philosophy, including particularly the ideas he expressed in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.

It is not clear to me that there is any longer the institutional will to train students, as both Henry and I were trained, in the languages, histories and philosophies that enable one to approach the texts of classical, medieval and renaissance intellectual history in particular. Today a student who is drawn to a study of pre-modern ideas and historical settings will be asked why on earth such an irrelevant subject matter should attract any interest or indeed, funding. Even in (...) Politics Departments there has been a tendency to keep alive only small pockets of normative theorists who have neither interest in nor knowledge of the history of their own discipline or of the languages they use with such confidence. For this reason, I want to say something about what I take to be the importance of studying the history of political thought in a modern university, because I think that we are gradually losing sight of a range of ways of thinking and speaking that will have, and is already having, dire consequences for the more everyday world we live in. (shrink)

During the twentieth century a number of competing accounts of Lenin’s theory and practice have sought to reclaim its true meaning from ossification under Stalinism. One account popular today is the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks written in 1914 and 1915. According to thinkers such as Raya Dunayevskaya and Kevin Anderson, Lenin’s notebooks on Hegel’s Science of Logic represent a radical break from classical dialectical materialism. For these Hegelian-Marxists, Lenin’s acerbic remarks on Engels’s and Plekhanov’s dialectics reveal (...) him as the forerunner of Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse and represent a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the dialectics of revolution. In this article I submit these arguments to the test of a fine grained textual analysis. I conclude, opposite to the Hegelian-Marxist narrative, that Lenin neither intended to nor accomplished a refoundation of Marxist dialectics in 1914. The notion of quantity-quality leaps Lenin adds to his works.. (shrink)

Louis Dupré’s death marks the passing of a philosopher who made a profound contribution to the study of Marx, Hegel, and the wider tradition, and who needs to be reread today. This memoriam acknowledges his importance through placing him in conversation with the great Marxist humanist Raya Dunayevskaya.

Marcuse's Reason and Revolution was the first Hegelian Marxist text to appear in English, the first systematic study of Hegel by a Marxist, and the first work in English to discuss the young Marx seriously. It introduced Hegelian and Marxist concepts such as alienation, subjectivity, negativity, and the Frankfurt School's critique of positivism to a wide audience in the United States. When the book first appeared, it was attacked sharply from the standpoint of empiricism and positivism by Sidney Hook, among (...) others. Since 1960, new critiques of Marcuse's book have been developed from varying perspectives, especially by the "scientific" Marxist Lucio Colletti, the critical theorist Douglas Kellner, and the Marxist humanist Raya Dunayevskaya. From the postmodernist camp, Jacques Derrida has discussed some of the same themes as did Marcuse, especially around the issues of negativity and difference. It is argued, however, that Derrida's reading of Hegel is more problematic than Marcuse's, especially with regard to the project of constructing a critical social theory. (shrink)