The Platypus Review

[ Die deutschsprachige Platypus Review ]

Latest Issue: #166

Why not Trump, again?

I IDENTIFY STRONGLY WITH the wrongly accused. So does America more broadly. And Trump has been wrongly accused. If you are in the right, then there is no need to lie. And they have lied about Trump.

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Beyond Bonapartism: Breaking statephobic thought taboos

Benjamin Studebaker

AT THE PLATYPUS European Conference, I suggested that there is a modern theory of crisis that is no longer fit for purpose. It belongs to modern political theory in general. It is not exclusively Marxist. You’ll find it in Lenin and Adorno, but also in Jürgen Habermas and Reinhart Koselleck. Indeed, you’ll even find it in Robert Dahl, if you know where to look.

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Identity politics in America: A review-essay

Ridhiman Balaji

THE EXPRESSION “IDENTITY POLITICS” refers to a tendency among individuals who belong to a particular social group (religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) to build exclusive political alliances with members of the same social group, especially as a way of rectifying historical injustices. While identity-based movements do have the potential to raise awareness and rectify historical injustices, they can also be co-opted to reinforce systems of hierarchy.

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Freedom beyond democracy: Lenin’s legacy and Adorno’s anguish

M. Sanchez

LENIN’S LEGACY TODAY is an accursed share. Lenin is a specter haunting us after a century which has failed to fundamentally transcend the terms he set for revolutionary politics. The philosopher Theodor Adorno described this historical situation as one wherein “Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed.” The work of Adorno can be understood as reflecting on that missed moment for the realization of philosophy, which had been heralded by Karl Marx in 1844 as the proletarian revolution, and which the communist militant Karl Korsch had announced Lenin as symbolizing in 1923.

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Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Louis Sterrett

COPY EDITORS

Gabriel Almeida
Mike Bartlett
Austin Carder
Rory Hannigan
Thom Hutchinson
Stanley Sharpey
Patrick Unwin

DESIGNERS

Mike Atkinson
Chris Mansour

WEB EDITOR

Evan Odell

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

Gabe Gottfried

DISTRIBUTION

Erica Gamble

Editorial Statement

Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains of what was once possible.
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Submission Guidelines

Articles will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about this project to editor.platypusreview@gmail.com. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.

The Platypus Review is funded by:

The University of Chicago Student Government
Dalhousie Student Union
Loyola University of Chicago
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Student Government
The New School
New York University
The University of Illinois at Chicago
The Platypus Affiliated Society