Philosophy + Critical Theory in the Age of Now, and Those of Before

http:// Remarkable insights from Walter Benjamin’s “Kafka on the Tenth Anniversary of his Death” (1934): “I remember,” [Max] Brod writes, “a conversation with Kafka which began with present-day Europe and the decline of the human race. ‘We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head,’ Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. ‘Oh no,’ said Kafka, ‘our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his.’ ‘Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us.’ These words provide a bridge to those extremely strange figures in Kafka, the only ones who have escaped from the family circle and for whom there may be hope... The ‘assistants’...are outside this circle.  [...] In Indian mythology there are the gandharvas , celestial creatures, beings in an unfinished state. Kafka’s assistants are of th...

Yesterday the podcast Embrace the Void gave a fascinating interview of a fascinating thinker, Lilian Cicerchia. Cicerchia, co-host of the excellent podcast What’s Left of Philosophy , is quickly establishing herself as a formidable Marxist thinker and a remarkably insightful analyst, and her hugely illuminating recent paper “Why Does Class Matter?” Ought to, and I believe will in time, become required reading for any Marxist. One remark in the interview, however, brought back to mind an ongoing reflection on Marxist discourse I’ve been meaning to flesh out. I’m not sure she’d disagree with me on any of this or that my reflection amounts to a critique of her meaning—nonetheless I intuitively bristled against it, and I want to explore here why that is. Cicheria’s comment was one staunchly critical of the notion of “going beyond” class politics (understood here as essentially Marxist critique of political economy). This notion, as Cicheria noted, is indeed one that has enormous purchase ...