Remembering Peter D. Thomas (1973-2026) “There are theorists who we remember primarily for their lectures and articles, but Peter D. Thomas is also remembered for the discussion after the presentation, the insights he would share, the email exchanges, the encouragement and the constructive criticism. With his wry sense of humour and genuine attentiveness to what his interlocutors had to say, he made every conversation a truly formative experience.” — Historical Materialism communispress.com/rememberin…

Recordar a Peter D. Thomas “Hay teóricos a quienes recordamos por sus conferencias y artículos, pero a Peter D. Thomas también se lo recuerda por el debate tras la conferencia o la presentación, por las reflexiones que compartía, por los intercambios de correos electrónicos, el aliento y la crítica constructiva. Con su irónico sentido del humor y su genuina atención a lo que sus interlocutores tuviesen que decir, convertía cada conversación en una experiencia verdaderamente formativa.” — Historical Materialism communispress.com/recordar-a…

Love Will Tear Us Apart “When the symbolic bursts in loud bangs and smells of sulphur, when body parts appear in the wreckage of the symbolic, psychoanalysis must interrogate itself about its political investments: How can we not name the perpetrators? How do we work through the witnessing of an assault unleashed with such impunity? And more crucially, as Fanon would most certainly ask, how do we fend off the reproduction of the victimized collective against all our efforts to find the subject?” — Nadia Bou Ali “I have been thinking for a while about the need for a Sadeanism of the Left, but without really knowing what that meant. And I think you’ve hit upon its first thesis: against fraternity. Or maybe it could be: liberté, égalité… sobriété. We know that Marx detested the idea of a brotherhood of man. It was all part of the German ideology he despised.” — Jason Barker communispress.com/love-will-…

Finitude and Freedom “In 1965, Gaston Fessard invited Alexandre Kojève to give a lecture at the Jesuit seminary of Chantilly, where Fessard was residing and teaching. He introduced his old friend to the audience, recounting tales from Kojève’s famed Hegel seminars of the 1930s. The lecture, entitled ‘The Structure and History of Philosophy,’ delivered by an atheist in a religious institution, stands as a final testament to the lifelong bond between the Hegelian and the Jesuit, while bringing their debate to a close.” —Isabel Jacobs and Jacob Saliba @isa_jcbs communispress.com/finitude-a…

Internationalism and emancipation in times of catastrophe “Colonial-imperialist oppression and exploitation does not cause a specific form of resistance; it rather provides a background in relation to which resistance is formed. It is politics that then decides what specific forms of resistance will develop.” — Alp Kayserilioğlu communispress.com/internatio…

Geopolitical Fractures and the Marxist Critique of Imperialism “The immense global solidarity movement that has developed since the 7 of October 2023, isn’t simply motivated by the ferocity and immorality of the Israeli response, but represents an increasingly strong political identification that treats the suffering and struggles of the Palestinians as not a special case, an exception, but as a concentrated expression of the structural injustices that define the present global situation.” — Alex Callinicos communispress.com/geopolitic…

Una violencia silenciosa «La izquierda internacionalista debe mantener y reparar las infraestructuras de resistencia, no sólo contra el asalto frontal de un Trump o un Miller, sino contra ese tipo de asfixia que se vale de la violencia silenciosa del dinero y de la ley para sofocar toda alternativa liberadora al statu quo.» — Alberto Toscano @Alberto63137378 communispress.com/una-violen…

Ecología de la personalidad «Para Ilyenkov, el pensamiento no se reduce a la ciencia; no podemos comprenderlo midiendo las ondas cerebrales. Pensamos a través de numerosos órganos, como nuestros cuerpos, nuestras manos, nuestras herramientas y nuestros amigos. La aguda crítica a que Ilyenkov somete la cibernética y el capitalismo tecnocrático cobra nueva importancia en los debates contemporáneos sobre la inteligencia artificial.» —  Isabel Jacobs @isa_jcbs communispress.com/ecologia-d…

The Rose and the Titmice “Rosa Luxemburg would feed blue-feathered titmice between the bars of her prison window and copy their bird song. In a letter to Mathilde Jacob, she boasted that she could imitate them so well ‘that they all immediately come running’… In another letter to Sophie Liebknecht, she confessed that ‘sometimes, it seems to me that I am not really a human being at all, but rather a bird or a beast in human form.’” — Paul Le Blanc communispress.com/the-rose-a…

Badiou’s Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s Badiou “Like the conclusion to his Saint Paul, Badiou’s Nietzsche involves a precarious balancing act, his relation to Nietzsche’s antiphilosophy being homologous to that of Nietzsche to the French Revolution: one of mimetic rivalry, combining equal portions of formal fascination and substantive rejection. In terms of ontological propositions, Badiou offers the reader two contrasting tables in which he lays out the differences between Nietzsche’s perspective and his own. But in terms of the radical appeal of the act as a purifying cut or anti-dialectical break, the reader will have a hard time deciding whether these statements are to be attributed solely to Nietzsche’s anti-philosophical madness or also to the philosopher in Badiou.” —Bruno Bosteels communispress.com/badious-ni…

Smashing Neoliberal Finance: Stocks and Shareholders “We must not teach shareholders moderation—they are incapable of it—but force them to practice it. By hitting them where it hurts: through the Total Shareholder Return, or TSR. ‘Hitting them’ here means capping it: Shareholder Limited Authorized Margin (SLAM). This consists of establishing a normative baseline for authorized shareholder compensation, measured in terms of TSR, and capping anything that exceeds it. It’s that simple. We haven’t invented anything: the ever-present Georges Marchais had already come up with the formula, albeit in the context of income taxation: ‘Above 400,000 francs, I take it all.’” —Frédéric Lordon communispress.com/smashing-n…

Entre el Estado y la stásis: por una iconografía política «Si bien la guerra civil puede ser un umbral de politización, la improbable extensión que Agamben hace del paradigma occidental de la política ignora de manera sintomática el pensamiento y el movimiento revolucionarios que recorrieron la guerra civil inglesa, y recae, curiosamente, en la aparente equiparación de la guerra civil entre los antiguos con la guerra civil entre los modernos que insinúa la traducción de Tucídides realizada por Hobbes. El frontispicio de Leviatán, como máquina, monstruo, androide, artificio —lo que equivale a decir como representación—, permite a Agamben diseñar su propio tiempo lógico de la política, del que se puede escapar sólo adoptando una forma mesiánica.» — Alberto Toscano communispress.com/entre-el-e…