International HErbert Marcuse Society

Andrew Feenberg: Philosophy of Technology

Bonn University 2023

Professor Andrew Feenberg introduces the field of philosophy of technology as a necessary and valuable discourse for current times. The lecture centers around critical theory of technology and will be inspired by Prof. Dr. Feenberg’s latest book The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis (Verso, 2023).

Dr. Feenberg is a prominent figure of what is called the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. His approach, Critical Constructivism, provides a theoretical toolkit for assessing technology design in light of political choice. His approach combines critical theory as championed by Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School with a sociological constructivist lens on technology associated with Science and Technology Studies.

No registration required and open to all! / Associated workshop with Prof. Feenberg on June 16, 2023.

Funded by Bonner Graduiertenzentrum. Event website link.

"Digital Publics: Images, Discourse & Screens" SUMMER SCHOOL 2023

The inaugural Theory, Culture & Society Summer School 2023 will take place from 11-16 September 2023, at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.

The Summer School seeks to provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for research, aimed at established and early career researchers, and also providing opportunities for postgraduate students.

The University of Klagenfurt, situated in the Austrian Alps, provides an inspiring location, where participants will have the opportunity to explore contemporary critical debates, enhance skills and literacies for research and publishing, and share in a cultural program. A key theme for this year's gathering is "Digital Publics: Images, Discourse & Screens", building on the recent Special Issue of Theory, Culture & Society, ‘A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?’ (edited by Martin Seeliger Sebastian Sevignani; and including a new contemporary reflection by Jürgen Habermas).

Places are limited. Participants can apply via an online platform by providing a CV. As part of a "work-in-progress" strand, participants also can apply to discuss their research projects with the wider group (more details are available online).

The course fee is 400 Euro if you apply by 1 June 2023, after which the fee is 500 Euro. The fee covers all seminars, workshops, and cultural programs, as well as lunch and refreshments over 5 days. 4 travel bursaries (500 Euro) will be provided based on the quality of individual applications and with attention given to supporting diversity. To be eligible for consideration for the travel bursary, applications must be submitted by 19 June 2023.

—Mike Featherstone, Sunil Manghani, Tomoko Tamari, and Rainer Winter


Mark Your Calendars for this Year's 

10th Biennial Conference

International Herbert Marcuse Society

October 5-8, 2023

Frankfurt, Germany

For conference information, contact:  hmll.ffm@gmail.com

Just Published 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). 

“A student and friend of Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s, Andrew Fenberg gives in this new book an outstanding contribution not only to the knowledge of his philosophy, but also to the ‘ruthless criticism’ of advanced capitalism. Feenberg shows, with great insight, how Marcuse’s Marxism, rooted in Phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, and Freudian Eros, was able to combine rationality and imagination, producing a radical version of Critical Theory which won the hearts and souls of the rebellious youth of the 1960’s. And which is still very much relevant in our times, because, as Feenberg concludes, climate change validates his revolutionary call for a new society, based on life-affirmative values.”

—Michael Löwy






“For a half century, Andrew Feenberg has tirelessly explicated, interrogated and applied the lessons of his controversial mentor, Herbert Marcuse. The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing is the culmination of these efforts, building on the strengths of Marcuse’s thought, while candidly confronting its weaknesses, in the hope of convincing a new generation of readers of its abiding relevance.”

—Martin Jay

“Andrew Feenberg’s new book is a tour de force. With detailed yet crystal-clear analyses of Marcuse’s major writings in their historical context, it reconstructs the implicit ontology of meaning that sustains Marcuse’s unique version of critical theory. Arguing that Marcuse’s embrace of phenomenology far outlived his break with Heidegger, Feenberg demonstrates its importance in chapters devoted to Marcuse’s reading of Marx, Hegel, and Freud, engaging unflinchingly, yet constructively, with the more controversial aspects of those readings and the famous debates they provoked. Two final chapters—on techno-science and on the environmental crisis—concretize the potential contained in Marcuse’s idea of ‘libidinous reason’ for tackling the ideological and structural impasses of our own desperate times.”

—Steven Crowell


“The title of Feenberg’s book is to be taken literally: the ruthless critique of everything existing is today needed more than ever, and this critique has to denounce ruthlessly also the limitations of today’s forms of Leftist critiques of the establishment which de facto help the establishment to reproduce itself. Is political correctness the right way to undermine sexism and racism? Is the elevation of nature into Mother Earth the right way to prevent the destruction of our environment? In short, what we need is to repeat today what Marcuse, in his critique of traditional Marxism, did in the 1960s, and Feenberg does this at the highest possible level.”

—Slavoj Žižek 

Vincent W. Lloyd is associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. His previous books include Black Natural Law and the coedited Race and Secularism in America. He coedits the journal Political Theology.

Yale University Press Podcast

Episode 93: Vincent W. Lloyd on Black Dignity 

In this episode (November 22, 2022) of the Yale University Press podcast, we talk to author Vincent W. Lloyd about his new book, Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination. In what might be called a work of observational philosophy—an effort to describe the philosophy underlying the Black Lives Matter movement—Lloyd defines dignity as something performative, not an essential quality but an action: struggle against domination.

Verso Blog 2022


HERBERT MARCUSE,

a thinker to wake up the left

"Herbert Marcuse's ideas animated young people's protests in 1968, but today he's rarely discussed. Simon Blin argues that it's time to return to Marcuse's radical ideas in order to think anew about the struggles we face today."

*Read the article here.*

This article was originally published by Libération on July 20, 2022.

Robert T. Tally Jr. 2022

Another timely and very provocative new book from Robert T. Tally Jr. has just been published and is now available.

***

From the Los Angeles Review of Books:

Robert Scott probes the “conditions of imagination under late capitalism” in his review of Robert T. Tally Jr.’s For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism. 

***

"An exuberant and erudite take-down of those who think things are pretty much OK, so critique is superfluous. Tally calls out the logic and timing of the dog-whistle school of anti-critique, who have done their part to encourage the recent frenzy over Critical Race Theory and other bits of populist anti-intellectualism. But rather than calling its opponents names, this books lays before them a formidably nuanced and eloquent example of critique. We nattering nabobs of negativism have found ourselves a joyous and principled defender."

Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

***

Robert T. Tally Jr. teaches American and world literature at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature, and he is active in the emerging fields of geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities. Tally is the editor of "Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies," a Palgrave Macmillan book series, and he has published several books, as well as dozens of essays and reviews, on literature, theory, and criticism. Much of his work draws upon and interprets Critical Theory, including the work of Herbert Marcuse.



Mark Your Calendars for this Year's 

10th Biennial Conference

International Herbert Marcuse Society

October 5-8, 2023

Frankfurt, Germany

For conference information, contact:  hmll.ffm@gmail.com

Charles Reitz 2022

Charles Reitz's important new book—the latest work from his Ecosocialist EarthCommonwealth Project—has just been published and is now available.

"Charles Reitz is a major scholar of the work of Herbert Marcuse and an important commentator on the global crises faced by contemporary society."

—Arnold L. Farr, University of Kentucky

"To the rising fascist threat...Reitz counterposes the themes of ecology and humanism analyzed in a global, multicultural light, from European socialist humanism to African Ubuntu."

Kevin B. Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Charles Reitz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Social Science, Kansas City Kansas Community College. His previous books include Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (2000); Crisis and Commonwealth: Marcuse, Marx, McLaren (2013); Philosophy & Critical Pedagogy: Insurrection & Commonwealth (2016); and, Ecology and Revolution: Herbert Marcuse and the Challenge of a New World System Today (2019).

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS

Previously Unpublished Lectures by Herbert Marcuse

The Marcuse Society is pleased to announce that the following book of five previously unpublished lectures by Herbert Marcuse is now available.

Available now for sale.



Mark Your Calendars for 

the MARCUSE SOCIETY's

10th Biennial Conference

October 5-8, 2023

Frankfurt, Germany

For conference information, contact:  hmll.ffm@gmail.com

The Singularity of Stanley Aronowitz 2023

Friday, March 3rd, 11AM-7PM ET 

CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY


Join Cornel West, Immanuel Ness, Kristin Lawler, Sohnya Sayers, Richard Wolff, and more to discuss the work of Stanley Aronowitz and his impact. 

For more information email: pbratsis@bmcc.cuny.edu