This book examines the utopian dimension of contemporary social and political thought. Arguing for a utopian optic for the human sciences, el-Ojeili claims that major transformations of the utopian constellation have occurred since the end of the twentieth century. Following a survey of major utopian shifts in the modern period, el-Ojeili focuses on three spaces within today’s utopian constellation. At the liberal centre, we see a splintering effect, particularly after the global financial crisis of 2008: a contingent neo-liberalism, a neo-Keynesian (...) turn, and a liberalism of fear. At the far-Right margin, we see the consolidation of post-fascism, a combination of “the future in the past”, elements of the post-modern present, and appeals to a novel future. Finally, at the far-Left, a new communism has emerged, with novel positions on resistance, maps of power, and a contemporary variant of the Left’s artistic critique. The Utopian Constellation will be of interest to scholars and students across the human sciences with an interest in utopian studies, ideological and discourse analysis, the sociology of knowledge, and the study of political culture. (shrink)

Review Essay: `No, We Have Not Finished Reflecting On Communism':1 Beyond Post-Socialism: Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis and Slavoj Zižek , Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth ; Cornelius Castoriadis, The Rising Tide of Insignificancy ; Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable ; Filip Kovacevic, Liberating Oedipus? Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory ; Claude Lefort, Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy.

Expressions of a current “Marx renaissance”, the three books under review in this article raise crucial questions about memory, knowledge, and power for a new global Left. Traverso’s reflections on Left future-oriented memory, Favilli’s history of Italian Marxism, and Bourrinet’s work on the Dutch and German communist Left explore a variety of “forms of Marxism”. Most centrally, the three works raise still vital questions around Marxism and religion, science and utopia, knowledge and power, nation and globality.

In this review essay, I consider a number of possible versions of a contemporary socialist balance-sheet, by way of the three very different recent accounts provided by Alain Badiou, Peter Beilharz, and Goran Therborn. Exploring these broad, colliding understandings of the socialist past, present, and future, I seek to evaluate the responses to some of those large and pressing socialist questions: Who owned the 20th century? What was 1968? What is the meaning of the period since? What remains of Marxism (...) and of socialism? What are the situation and tasks of social theory today? (shrink)

Reviews: William S. Lewis, Louis Althusser and the Traditions of French Marxism ; Louis Althusser, Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings, 1978—1987 ; Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy ; Alain Badiou, Metapolitics ; Slavoj Žižek, Lacan: The Silent Partners.

Review: Couze Venn, The Postcolonial Challenge: Towards Alternative Worlds ; Samir Kassir, Being Arab.

Circling Marx is both a window on to the forces and concerns that have shaped Thesis Eleven over four decades and an intellectual portrait of the singular post-Marxism of one of its leading thinkers. Beilharz emphasises the existence of multiple Marxes but leans towards a Marx who suggests an expanded materialism, a non-Bolshevik Marx, and a Marx of motion, rather than laws. Addressing Marxism and socialism more widely, Beilharz again underscores multiplicity, favouring those thinkers and currents that acknowledged complexity and (...) limits, that staged something of a conversation between Marx and Weber, and that took distance from the teleology, vanguardism, and hubris that has marked parts of the Marxist tradition. Moving into more clearly post-Marxist territory, through important encounters with Heller and Feher, Bauman, Smith, and Castoriadis, Beilharz’s optic prioritises place, cultural traffic, and ambivalence, combining categories of ambitious scope with epistemological and normative circumspection, criticism with world affirmation. (shrink)