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Higher education is increasingly unable to engage usefully with global emergencies, as its functions are repurposed for value. Discourses of entrepreneurship, impact and excellence, realised through competition and the market, mean that academics and students are increasingly alienated from themselves and their work. This book applies Marx’s concept of alienation to the realities of academic life in the Global North, in order to explore how the idea of public education is subsumed under the law of value. In a landscape of increased commodification of higher education, the book explores the relationship between alienation and crisis, before analysing how academic knowledge, work, identity and life are themselves alienated. Finally, it argues that through indignant struggle, another world is possible, grounded in alternative forms of organising life and producing socially-useful knowledge, ultimately requiring the abolition of academic labour. This pioneering work will be of interest and value to all those working in the higher education sector, as well as those concerned with the rise of neoliberalism and marketization within universities.
At a time when the U.S.-Mexican border was still not clearly defined and when the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and land hunger impelled the Anglo presence ever deeper and more intrusively into South Texas, Juan Nepomucino Cortina cut a violent swath across the region in a conflict that came to be known as The Cortina War. Did this border caudillo fight to defend the rights, honor, and legal claims of the Mexicans of South Texas, as he claimed? Or was his a quest for personal vengeance against the newcomers who had married into his family, threatened his mother’s land holdings, and insulted his honor? Historian Jerry Thompson mines the archival record and considers it in light of recent rev...
Autonomy: Capital, Class and Politics explores and critiques one of the most dynamic terrains of political theory, sometimes referred to as 'Autonomist Marxism' or post-Operaismo. This theory shot to prominence with the publication of Empire by Hardt and Negri and has been associated with cutting edge developments in political and cultural practice; yet there exists no work that critically examines it in its contemporary breadth. Taking three divergent manifestations of Autonomist Marxism found in the works of Antonio Negri and Paulo Virno, the Midnight Notes Collective and John Holloway, David Eden examines how each approach questions the nature of class and contemporary capitalism and how they extrapolate politics. Not only is such juxtaposition both fruitful and unprecedented but Eden then constructs critiques of each approach and draws out deeper common concerns. Suggesting a novel rethinking of emancipatory praxis, this book provides a much needed insight into the current tensions and clashes within society and politics.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity is an authoritative reference guide that enables students, their teachers, Christian clergy, and general readers alike to reflect critically upon all aspects of Christianity from its origins to the present day. Written by a team of 828 scholars and practitioners from around the world, the volume reflects the plurality of Christianity throughout its history. Key features of The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity: •Provides a survey of the history of Christianity in the world, on each continent, and in each nation •Offers a presentation of the Christian beliefs and practices of all major Christian traditions •Highlights the different understandi...
In Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below, Dario Azzellini offers an account of the Bolivarian Revolution from below. While authors on Venezuela commonly concentrate on former president Hugo Chávez and government politics, this book shows how workers, peasants and the poor in urban communities engage in building 21st century socialism through popular movements, communal councils, communes and fighting for workers' control. In a relationship of cooperation and conflict with the state, social transformation is approached on 'two tracks', from below and from above. Azzellini’s fascinating account stands out because of the extensive empirical examples and original voices from movements, communal councils, communes and workers.
This book presents for the first time the correspondence during the years 1954 to 1978 between the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-87) and two other noted thinkers, the Hegelian Marxist philosopher and social theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) and the psychologist and social critic Erich Fromm (1900-80), both of the latter members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. In their introduction, editors Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell focus on the theoretical and political dialogues in these letters, which cover topics such as dialectical social theory, Marxist economics, socialist humanism, the structure and contradictions of modern capitalism, th...
This book aims to extract a kind of Critical Humanism from the works of prominent members of the Frankfurt School. Oliver Kozlarek argues that what is compelling about this kind of restitution of humanism is the fact that it sought to be understood not as a conceptual-theoretical construction, but as a practice of critical social and cultural research. This means that it does not orient itself to an ideal image of the human being, but to making inhuman conditions of our current societies visible. It is above all in this sense that humanism is no longer understood in a Humboldtian, educational sense. Rather, it is about using critical social research as a political practice.
This is a true story of discovery and discoverers in what was the northern frontier region of Mexico in the years before the Mexican War. In 1826, when the story begins, the region was claimed by both Mexico and the United States. Neither country knew much about the lands crossed by such rivers as the Guadalupe, Brazos, Nueces, Trinity, and Rio Grande. Jean Louis Berlandier, a French naturalist, was part of a team sent out by the Mexican Boundary Commission to explore the area. His role was to collect specimens of flora and fauna and to record detailed observations of the landscapes and peoples through which the exploring party traveled. His observations, including sketches and paintings of ...
In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism is based on three recent lectures delivered by John Holloway at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. The lectures focus on what anticapitalist revolution can mean today—after the historic failure of the idea that the conquest of state power was the key to radical change—and offer a brilliant and engaging introduction to the central themes of Holloway’s work. The lectures take as their central challenge the idea that “We Are the Crisis of Capital and Proud of It.” This runs counter to many leftist assumptions that the capitalists are to blame for the crisis, or that crisis is simply the expression of the bankruptcy of the ...
Outstanding contributors include Pierre Macherey, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos and Judith Revel