This volume reassesses the nature of the current global economic crisis and its implication for the 21st century, through the unique lens of Marx's theory of the value-form as the unconscious matrix of modern society.
Going beyond orthodox Marxist and postmodernist accounts, the author offers fresh new readings of Marx, Benjamin, Foucault, and Žižek. Here he argues that capitalism has not only entered its greatest crisis since WWII, but has in fact reached its historical limit and is in terminal decline. In this light, the book seeks to answer how a rerun of Keynesian regulations could possibly resolve the crisis. It also inquires as to whether a Green New Deal might succeed when the gap between work to be had and work to be done widens, and what alternatives neo-Marxian approaches offer considering the failure of Marxism in the 20th century.
This far-reaching, critical examination of the crisis not only builds on critical theory, but also offers new readings of key theorists that will appeal to anyone interested in political theory, critical theory, and political economy.
This volume reassesses the nature of the current global economic crisis and its implication for the 21st century, through the unique lens of Marx's theory of the value-form as the unconscious matrix of modern society.
Going beyond orthodox Marxist and postmodernist accounts, the author offers fresh new readings of Marx, Benjamin, Foucault, and Žižek. Here he argues that capitalism has not only entered its greatest crisis since WWII, but has in fact reached its historical limit and is in terminal decline. In this light, the book seeks to answer how a rerun of Keynesian regulations could possibly resolve the crisis. It also inquires as to whether a Green New Deal might succeed when the gap between work to be had and work to be done widens, and what alternatives neo-Marxian approaches offer considering the failure of Marxism in the 20th century.
This far-reaching, critical examination of the crisis not only builds on critical theory, but also offers new readings of key theorists that will appeal to anyone interested in political theory, critical theory, and political economy.
Introduction
Chapter 1
Collapse without salvation?
Chapter 2
Homo economicus: Greenspan’s misanthropy in context
Chapter 3
Ontology of crisis
Chapter 4
The capitalist discourse: digging its own grave
Chapter 5
Agamben’s messianism, or: trouble with the dialectic
Epilogue: nothing to be liberated
References
Index
This Critical Theory and Contemporary Society volume reassesses the economic crisis through Marx's theory of the value-form as the unconscious matrix of modern society.
Heiko Feldner is co-director of the Centre for Ideology
Critique and Žižek Studies at Cardiff University, UK. He is also
the General Editor of Bloomsbury's Writing History series on
historiography and historical theory, and a Fellow of the Royal
Historical Society, London. He is the author of Žižek: Beyond
Foucault (with F. Vighi, 2007).
Fabio Vighi is Senior Lecturer and co-director of the Žižek
Centre for Ideology Critique at Cardiff University, UK. He is the
author of Žižek: Beyond Foucault (2007, with Heiko Feldner), Sexual
Difference in European Cinema (2008), and On Žižek's Dialectics:
Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation (2010).
Feldner's and Vighi's new book is what we have all been waiting for
— in its diagnosis of the ongoing economic and financial crisis it
combines in a masterful way concrete economic analysis with a
philosophical and cultural interpretation of today's world. Only
such an approach which deals with Alan Greenspan AND Giorgio
Agamben will do the work. This is why Critical Theory and the
Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism is a book for everyone who wants
to understand the predicament we are all in — in short, for
everyone who still cultivates a desire to think.
*Slavoj Žižek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for
the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London, UK*
Heiko Feldner and Fabio Vighi use and link two different approaches
— Marxian and Lacanian — to analyze the present global crisis. The
theoretical connection between a Marxist and a Lacanian approach to
the crisis of contemporary capitalism is Žižek, who becomes the
methodological and theoretical reference point of the two authors.
They compare the most recent studies and discuss the theses of
Agamben in order to criticize the theological-political dispositif.
The analytical part of the book is very interesting and useful
because it allows us to understand the mechanisms of power and
control in both the political and economic field and in psychology
with the reduction of experience in language and with the control
mechanisms of language. They mean that social antagonism and
alienation are irreducible aspects of our social being therefore it
is nothing to be liberated. The authors know very well as the
writings of Marx and those of Lacan and debate with the criticism
of recent years as well with philosophical positions of recent
past. Simply put, the analysis of the economic, social and
psychological crisis contained in this book serves then to clarify
what is happening in today society and economy and even in
psychology of ego, to understand the mechanisms of politic power
and social domination as well of language domination.
*Mauro Ponzi, Professor of German Literature, Sapienza University
of Rome, Italy*
Anyone interested in the ongoing global economic crisis will read
this volume with great benefit and fascination. Drawing on highly
original readings of a range of left-wing political thinkers from
Karl Marx to Slavoj Žižek, Heiko Feldner and Fabio Vighi argue that
an intelligently re-thought neo-Marxism might have a lot to offer
in the current predicament. Not everyone will agree, but no one can
fail to be intrigued by their theoretical take on the crisis.
*Stefan Berger, Director of the Institute of Social Movements, Ruhr
University of Bochum, Germany*
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