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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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This book explores the future of critique in view of our planetary condition. How are we to intervene in contemporary constellations of finance capitalism; climate change and neoliberalism? Think we must! To get to the symptoms; the book’s 38 terms ranging from affect and affirmation to world and work provide the reader with a critical toolbox to be continued. Negativity; judgment and opposition as modes of critique have run out of steam. Critique as an attitude and a manner of enquiry has not.

Critical Theory --- Humanities --- Critique --- Politics --- Technology --- Globalization --- Literature

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This book traces a scientific biography and thus reflects the development of gender-sensitive political science: its origins in Critical Theory with its visible connection to its paradigms, political science's preoccupation with work as the central 'crux' of gender-specific theory and politics, the discussion of political socialization as an obstacle and simultaneous starting point for women-specific emancipation, and finally globalization in its significance as an opportunity and danger for a gender-equitable democracy.This is why, for Christine Kulke, this commemorative volume also presents central themes of gender-specific political science: a commemorative volume and a kaleidoscope worth reading.

Critical Theory --- Democracy --- Work --- Kritische Theorie --- Demokratie --- Arbeit

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What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing Europeancrisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises.The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are.
The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were
severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked.

social theory --- reinhartkoselleck --- critical theory --- legal theory --- weimar --- european union --- euro --- political theory --- crisis --- europe