A teach-in by Chris Cutrone

Tuesday, April 12, 2011
4:30 - 6:00 PM
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan Ave. room 601

Alain Badiou’s recent book (2010) is titled with the phrase promoted by his and Slavoj Zizek’s work for the last few years, “the communist hypothesis.” Zizek has spoken of “the Badiou event” as opening new horizons for both philosophy and communism. Badiou and Zizek share a background in Lacanian and Althusserian “post-structuralist” French thought, in common with other prominent post-New Left thinkers — and former students of Louis Althusser — such as Etienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière. Althusser found, in the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, a salutary challenge to the notion of the Hegelian “logic of history,” that revolutionary change could and indeed did happen as a matter of contingency. For Badiou, this means that emancipation must be conceived of as an “event,” which involves a fundamental reconsideration of ontology.

Write-up of first part of the presentation, "Badiou's 'communism' -- a gerontic disorder"

Suggested background readings:

Cutrone, “The Marxist Hypothesis: A Response to Badiou's 'Communist Hypothesis'” (2010)
Badiou, “The Communist Hypothesis” (2008)
Cutrone, “Chinoiserie: A Critique of the RCP, USA on Badiou” (2010)
Badiou, “Tunisia, Egypt: The Universal Reach of Popular Uprisings” (2011)
Wal Suchting, "Althusser's Late Thinking about Materialism" (2004)

A public interview with author David Wilson, led by Platypus member Jeremy Cohan on April 19 at NYU.

Transcript in Platypus Review #39 (Click below):

Mass marches on May Day 2006 in the US, banning of minarets in Switzerland, pogroms in Libya against blacks from Central Africa feared to be mercenaries: Immigration is a central issue faced by the contemporary Left. But as mobilization has waxed and waned, the question of what constitutes an emancipatory response to the problems of immigration in modern society, too often remains unaddressed. This event will consider the limits and potentials of current immigration politics on the Left today, in America and globally. What is the future of internationalism?

A teach-in by Platypus member Chris Cutrone held on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Alain Badiou’s recent book (2010) is titled with the phrase promoted by his and Slavoj Zizek’s work for the last few years, “the communist hypothesis.” Zizek has spoken of “the Badiou event” as opening new horizons for both philosophy and communism. Badiou and Zizek share a background in Lacanian and Althusserian “post-structuralist” French thought, in common with other prominent post-New Left thinkers — and former students of Louis Althusser — such as Etienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière. Althusser found, in the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, a salutary challenge to the notion of the Hegelian “logic of history,” that revolutionary change could and indeed did happen as a matter of contingency. For Badiou, this means that emancipation must be conceived of as an “event,” which involves a fundamental reconsideration of ontology.

Reading List:

Cutrone, “The Marxist Hypothesis: A Response to Badiou’s ‘Communist Hypothesis’” (2010)

Badiou, “The Communist Hypothesis” (2008)

Cutrone, “Chinoiserie: A Critique of the RCP, USA on Badiou” (2010)

Badiou, “Tunisia, Egypt: The Universal Reach of Popular Uprisings” (2011)

Wal Suchting, “Althusser’s Late Thinking about Materialism” (2004)

Panel organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society given at the 2011 annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association in Chicago, IL on Thursday, March 24th, 2011, at Columbia College, Chicago.

Panelists:
Benjamin Shepard - Independent Scholar (Los Angeles), Platypus Affiliated Society
Jacob Cayia - University of Illinois - Chicago
Omair Hussain - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Lucy Parker - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Greg Gabrellas (chair) - University of Chicago, Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society, held on March 20, 2011 at Left Forum, Pace University.

Panel Abstract:

Marx and Engels were not the preeminent socialists but rather socialism's greatest critics, distinguishing their "communism" from "reactionary," "bourgeois" and "democratic" socialism. Lately, Marx is taken for his theoretical analysis of capitalism more than his and Engels's revolutionary politics, discredited after the 20th century's spectacular failures of "Marxism." So what is Marx and Engels's political legacy? What Marx wrote after the failed "social-democratic" revolutions of 1848 still resonates: "Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most insipid democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an 'attempt on society' and stigmatized as 'socialism'." How does Marx and Engels's politics of "communism," that is, socialism aware of its historical vocation, task us today?

Benjamin Blumberg - University of Chicago
Nathan Smith - The Platypus Affiated Society
Pam Nogales - New York University
Richard Rubin - Platypus
Tana Forrester - The Platypus Affiliated Society