Analysing Zionism: interview with Jacqueline Rose from 2005
Back in 2005 I interviewed Jacqueline Rose about her book The Question of Zion, a fascinating and provocative analysis of the ideology of Jewish nationalism that underpins the Israeli state. It was published in Socialist Worker in January 2006. Given recent events in Palestine I thought I’d dig it out and republish it here.
Ideology, the unconscious and dialectics
A conversation/interview (with lots of links and pics) with Jennifer Izaakson, covering inter alia Althusser, Badiou, Heidegger, Deleuze, Butler, Hallward, Fichte, Lacan, Žižek.
The illusion of Britishness (18 November 2006)
New Labour tells us that ethnic minorities need to adopt British values. Anindya Bhattacharyya examines their vision of “Britishness” and finds it wanting
7 points about a practical political science
The following is an experiment in “subbing Spinoza”, ie editing an English translation and rendering it into modern language. Of course ideally one would work with the original text but my O-level Latin is not up to that.
Sets, Categories and Topoi: approaches to ontology in Badiou’s later work
This paper outlines the rise of category theory as an alternative foundation for mathematics, offering a sketch of some of the ways in which topos theory generalises traditional set theory.
Introducing the New Cartesian Synthesis
The first of a planned triology of posts outlining developments in contemporary mathematics that involve a New Cartesian Synthesis locking together the algebra of the symbolic register with the geometry of the imaginary.
Duncan Hallas on permanent factions
There is controversy about permanent factions inside the SWP. I turned to Duncan Hallas, one of our tradition’s founders, to dig out the original political rationale for banning such formations. This cuts through some sophistry on this question flying about of late.
Idealism and infinity in Fichte’s Jena system
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the key German Idealist philosophers and an important intermediary between Kant and Hegel. Yet his philosophical system has always been at the centre of fierce debate.
Marx, Hegel and the dialectic
The configuration of dialectics and materialism in Marx is intimately connected with his revolutionary practice. If you want to do justice to that tradition, you have to grapple with that intellectual history and those ideas. That’s one reason why the dialectic is still a live issue today.
Breivik: What is fascism?
My contribution to the ebook On Utøya edited Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze. “Breivik was typically presented as lone madman whose inner working could not be rationally fathomed. To ascribe political motives to his acts disrespected the dead.”
Praxis makes perfect
March 2006 issue of Socialist Review review of Alex Callinicos’s The Resources Of Critique, Slavoj Zizek’s The Parallax View, and Alain Badiou’s two major works, Being and Event and Logics of Worlds.
Review of Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy
A review of Alain Badiou’s book The Meaning of Sarkozy, first published in the March 2009 issue of Socialist Review. “Badiou is insightful and funny, especially when he gleefully castigates France’s corrupt political elites and idiotic business classes.”
Banning the EDL is ineffective, counter-productive and demobilising
Our urgent task is to create an anti-fascist, anti-racist mass movement that can head off the EDL/BNP while feeding into and strengthening wider working class struggles. We must defeat dismal calls for demobilisation.
The one and the multiple in Badiou’s ontology
Badiou is one of the few contemporary philosophers to declare that systematic ontology is both possible and necessary, and his major work Being & Event is devoted to laying out just such a systematic ontology.
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