Michael Löwy Walter Benjamin occupies a unique place in the history of modern revolutionary thought: he is the first Marxist to break radically with the ideology of progress. His thinking has therefore a distinct critical quality, which sets him apart from the dominant and “official” forms of historical materialism, and gives him a formidable methodological [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | ContinuedIssue # 5
The science that wasn’t: The orthodox Marxism of the early Frankfurt School and the turn to Marxist Critical Theory
Marco Torres From their canonization in the 1960s through their appropriation by postmodernism in the 1980s, the writings of the Frankfurt School have had their Marxian dimension minimized, vulgarized and ultimately ignored. Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer, the only names of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Theory’s roster that seem to [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | Continued
Requiem for the ’60s: Response to a boycott of discussion of “40 years of 1968”
The Platypus Historians Group The Platypus Affiliated Society in Chicago, in coordination with several chapters of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Chicago (at the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College, Chicago) organized a public forum on “40 years of 1968: the problematic drama [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 2 comments | Continued
Persepolis and the personal consequences of failure
Jeremy Cohan Persepolis is a film that does not take itself seriously enough. This is not a comment on the unadorned animation style. Nor am I referring to the narrative of the protagonist: a story of a girl raised in a left-wing milieu that succeeds in arousing quite a bit of empathy in the audience. [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | Continued
Catastrophe, historical memory and the Left: 60 years of Israel-Palestine
The Platypus Historians Group The contours of the present day Middle East have been shaped by a mid -20th century triptych of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The first panel in this triptych is the “Holocaust” (“Shoah” in Hebrew, “Khurbn” in Yiddish) the systematic murder of approximately two-thirds of European Jewry by the Nazis in 1941–1945. [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 1 comment | Continued
Capitalism and the environment: Interview with James Speth in NPR Worldview’s series “Critical Thinking on Capitalism,” March 26, 2008
Adony Melathopoulos A paradox confronts American environmentalists, according to James Gustave Speth, the Dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies: “We now have a flourishing environmental movement, a proliferating number of organisations, more and more money going into this, decades now of environmental legislation and programs, at all levels of government, and the [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | Continued
“Race” in social-historical and political context
Chris Cutrone, Aay Preston-Myint Dear Editors, I would like to respond to Chris Cutrone’s article, “Review: Angela Davis ‘How does change happen?’” from the March 2008 issue #3. I agree with Cutrone’s general sentiment that we as a country have failed to productively engage the problem of race, and that an honest critique of capitalism [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 1 comment | Continued
“Let the dead bury the dead!” Response to Principia Dialectica (UK) on May 1968
Chris Cutrone The new Mayday magazine (UK) and Platypus have been in dialogue on the issues of anarchism and Marxism and the state of the “Left” today in light of history. (Please see “Organization, political action, history and consciousness” by Chris Cutrone for Platypus, and “Half-time Team Talk” by Trevor Bark for Mayday, in issues [...]
May 1st, 2008 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | Continued