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In a 1917 letter to Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin writes, “Theory is like a surging sea.” This small book takes more than its title from that line—it takes that line as a point of departure in Erich Auerbach’s sense, an Ansatzpunkt, as a compositional principle so that what follows can be read in its entirety as a gloss on the remainder of Benjamin’s sentence: “Theory is like a surging sea, but the only thing that matters to the wave […] is to surrender itself to its motion in such a way that it crests and breaks.” That motion, in the pages to follow, takes up in its sweep two threads: it folds an episodic meditation on the negative and the problematic into a series of singular interrogations exemplary of the positive being of the problematic, the objective being of problems and questions, in a movement of implication and explication between poetry and philosophy in the tradition of what’s come to be known as theory. Theory is like a surging sea because it’s as part of a revolutionary tradition that it crests and breaks.

philosophy --- critical theory --- aesthetics --- poetics

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Non-Conceptual Negativity: Damaged Reflections on Turkey critiques those who have accused Deleuze of an unbounded affirmation which, according to them, has played directly into the hands of capitalist modes of production. Yet no one has acknowledged that under the aegis of nano-fascism, late capitalism has grown into Neanderthal capitalism, invented and developed in laboratory countries like Turkey with the aid of an international Neanderthal league. Layer upon layer, Aracagök explains in fragmentary fashion that it is not only a matter of how Turkey has grown into a prime laboratory of nano-fascism with the aid of the US and the European Union, but also how the results obtained from this laboratory are put into practice in different countries under Neanderthal capitalism, enslaving each and every one of us into accepting even the position of suicide bomber. As none of us is exempted from nano-fascism today, perhaps it is timely to reconsider the ways in which Deleuzian thought is appropriated in the form of an unquestioned affirmation of everything and how its critique has ended up in an old-fashioned formulation of the in-dividual according to a party program. If this all goes to show that we are face to face with a route different from the accepted forms of affirmation — that is, if we are all affirmed and seem to be happily affirming life as it is as a result of the Neanderthal manipulation of the negative — then isn’t it timely to rethink the Deleuzian affirmation in its non-originary origin with regard to Adorno’s resistance against affirmation? That is, the double negation never ends up in affirmation, and if it does so, it might mean your negation is not strong enough.

philosophy --- critical theory --- Turkey --- Gilles Deleuze --- fascism

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"There is a name for those under-and precariously employed, but actively working, academics in today’s society: the para-academic. Para-academics mimic academic practices so they are liberated from the confines of the university. Our work, and our lives, reflect how the idea of a university as a place for knowledge production, discussion and learning, has become distorted by neo-liberal market forces. We create alternative, genuinely open access, learning-thinking-making-acting spaces on the internet, in publications, in exhibitions, discussion groups or other mediums that seem appropriate to the situation. We don’t sit back and worry about our career developments paths. We write for the love of it, we think because we have to, we do it because we care."

critical theory --- para-academia --- pedagogy --- precarity

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After President Trump’s election, BREXIT and the widespread rise of far-Right political parties, much public discussion has intensely focused on populism and authoritarianism. In the middle of the twentieth century, members of the early Frankfurt School prolifically studied and theorized fascism and anti-Semitism in Germany and the United States. In this volume, leading European and American scholars apply insights from the early Frankfurt School to present-day authoritarian populism, including the Trump phenomenon and related developments across the globe. Chapters are arranged into three sections exploring different aspects of the topic: theories, historical foundations, and manifestations via social media. Contributions examine the vital political, psychological and anthropological theories of early Frankfurt School thinkers, and how their insights could be applied now amidst the insecurities and confusions of twenty-first century life. The many theorists considered include Adorno, Fromm, Löwenthal and Marcuse, alongside analysis of Austrian Facebook pages and Trump’s tweets and operatic media drama. This book is a major contribution towards deeper understanding of populism’s resurgence in the age of digital capitalism.

Populism --- authoritarianism --- Frankfurt School --- critical theory --- social media --- Trump

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The belief in the transformative potential of education has long underpinned critical educational theory. But its concerns have also been largely political and economic, using education as the means to achieve a better – or ideal – future state: of equality and social justice. Our concern is not whether such a state can be realized. Rather, the belief in the transformative potential of education leads us to start from the assumption of equality and to attend to what is “educational” about education. In Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy we set out five principles that call not for an education as a means to achieve a future state, but rather that make manifest those educational practices that do exist today and that we wish to defend. The Manifesto also acts as a provocation, as the starting point of a conversation about what this means for research, pedagogy, and our relation to our children, each other, and the world. Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy invites a shift from a critical pedagogy premised on revealing what is wrong with the world and using education to solve it, to an affirmative stance that acknowledges what is educational in our existing practices. It is focused on what we do and what we can do, if we approach education with love for the world and acknowledge that education is based on hope in the present, rather than on optimism for an eternally deferred future.

radical pedagogy --- education --- critical theory --- manifesto --- queer optimism