From LARB, philosophers have exhaustively theorized an inherent relation between politics and real world occurrences through the concept of the “event”. A pre-history of post-truth, East and West: Postmodernism was conceived largely by the Left as a safeguard against totalizing ideologies — yet today, it has been appropriated on behalf of an encroaching neo-totalitarianism of the Right. Julian Baggini on how Jean-Francois Lyotard’s work was the best of postmodernism: The school’s degeneracy into post-truth was never inevitable. After the afterlife of theory: Lucy Ives on the remains of a discourse, from the liberal academy to the authoritarian Right. Christian Haines (Dartmouth): Eaten Alive, or, Why the Death of Theory is not Antitheory. You can download Theory is like a Surging Sea by Michael Munro (2015).
Gregory Jones-Katz (CUHK): XYZ, or, the ABCs of Deconstruction. From Derrida Today, Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz reviews Theory at Yale: The Strange Case of Deconstruction in America by Marc Redfield. Derrida’s quarrel: Birger Vanwesenbeeck on “La Differance” at 50. Two’s a crowd: Zany and earnest, political yet puckish, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari were philosophy’s most improbable duo. You can download The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze by Gregg Lambert (2002).
