The neoliberal project in the West has created an increasingly polarized and impoverished world, ... more The neoliberal project in the West has created an increasingly polarized and impoverished world, to the point that the vast majority of its citizens require liberation from their present socioeconomic circumstances. The Marxist theorist Kenneth Surin contends that innovation and change at the level of the political must occur in order to achieve this liberation, and for this endeavor Marxist theory and philosophy are indispensable. In Freedom Not Yet, Surin analyzes the nature of our current global economic system, particularly with regard to the plight of less-developed countries, and he discusses the possibilities of creating new political subjects necessary to establish and sustain a liberated world.
Surin begins by examining the current regime of accumulation--the global domination of financial markets over traditional industrial economies--which is used as an instrument for the subordination and dependency of poorer nations. He then moves to the constitution of subjectivity, or the way humans are produced as social beings, which he casts as the key arena in which struggles against dispossession occur. Surin critically engages with the major philosophical positions that have been suggested as models of liberation, including Derrida's notion of reciprocity between a subject and its other, a reinvigorated militancy in political reorientation based on Badiou and Zizek, the nomad politics of Deleuze and Guttari, and the politics of the multitude suggested by Hardt and Negri. Finally, Surin specifies the material conditions needed for liberation from the economic, political, and social failures of our current system. Seeking to illuminate a route to a better life for the world's poorer populations, Surin investigates the philosophical possibilities for a Marxist or neo-Marxist concept of liberation.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that ... more The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that had prevailed in the Depression-permeated 1930s by laying down the framework for a more adequately regulated international economic order. The agreement originally stipulated that oversight of the world economic system was to be in the hands of three institutions: the International Monetary Fund (which was charged with overseeing exchange rates and the balance of payments), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank (which was to be responsible for economic development), and the International Trade Organization (whose brief was the supervision of the world trading system, with a particular responsibility for mediating trade disputes, promoting tariff reduction, and eliminating trade wars). However, when the US Congress objected to the formation of the International Trade Organization, the agreement was modified to exclude the ITO provision, and a looser organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) took its place. GATT was basically a forum constituted by agreement among signatory nations, and with a limited administrative machinery to undertake oversight of the world trading system and the trade liberalization arrangements it sponsored, GATT's effectiveness was always going to be circumscribed, and it was superseded in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). GATT's regulatory framework was based on four primary principles (Held et al., 164): non-discrimination: i.e. acceptance of the most favored nation principle, (so that the trade preferences, such as a tariff reduction, granted by one country to its most favored trading partner will be extended to all its other trading partners); reciprocity: a country's tariff reductions should be matched by its trading partners; transparency: trade standards and measures should be clear; fairness: unfair trade practices (dumping of goods at below market prices, etc.) were to be discouraged, and countries were allowed to protect themselves against them.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that ... more The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that had prevailed in the Depression-permeated 1930s by laying down the framework for a more adequately regulated international economic order. The agreement originally stipulated that oversight of the world economic system was to be in the hands of three institutions: the International Monetary Fund (which was charged with overseeing exchange rates and the balance of payments), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank (which was to be responsible for economic development), and the International Trade Organization (whose brief was the supervision of the world trading system, with a particular responsibility for mediating trade disputes, promoting tariff reduction, and eliminating trade wars). However, when the US Congress objected to the formation of the International Trade Organization, the agreement was modified to exclude the ITO provision, ...
Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961) is still germane and significant nearly five decades after ... more Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961) is still germane and significant nearly five decades after its publication. The crux of his argument is that a third revolution (with culture as its focus) is going to be needed after the democratic revolution and the industrial revolution which have already taken place. The argument for this long revolution is conducted through a historical study of such institutions as education and the press, the development of a “common language”, and the links between ideas, literary forms, and social history. A misconception immediately to be cleared comes from the meaning of the term “long revolution” itself -- Williams did not mean by this that the revolution has been taking a long time to complete itself. Rather, his concern is with cultural transformation on an epochal scale. The hallmarks of this epochal transformation are its difficulty of analysis and assessment, due mainly to its character as a complex unity, and to the fact that its core reside...
Mao Tse-Tung\u27s famous 1937 essay On Contradiction is regarded as a significant attempt to rede... more Mao Tse-Tung\u27s famous 1937 essay On Contradiction is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx\u27s notion of a dialectical contradiction to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao\u27s time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao\u27s essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of antagonism is needed, and revise Mao\u27s position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari
A journal issue titled ‘‘Vicissitudes of Theory’’ derives its saliency from the course taken by t... more A journal issue titled ‘‘Vicissitudes of Theory’’ derives its saliency from the course taken by theory in recent years. The institutionalization of literary and cultural theory in the last three decades or so can be viewed as a movement through a series of phases and developments. Speaking very generally, the initial crystallization of critical and cultural theory in the area of literary studies took the form of a s and s reception of several movements, the most prominent being structuralism and poststructuralism (whose provenance was mainly French), hermeneutics (German in inspiration), psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, Marxist theory, black studies, cultural studies (primarily British in origin), and certain strands of continental European philosophy (the work of the Frankfurt school and phenomenology being perhaps the most prominent). In the s a second phase of this institutionalization saw five significant developments. First, there were transformations with...
... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City,... more ... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where she directs both undergraduate ... Pavel Zemliansky is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at James Madi-son University, where he teaches courses in composition and ...
... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City,... more ... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where she directs both undergraduate ... Pavel Zemliansky is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at James Madi-son University, where he teaches courses in composition and ...
Deleuze and Guattari, as strict immanentists and consistent proponents of an “in-the-middle” or “... more Deleuze and Guattari, as strict immanentists and consistent proponents of an “in-the-middle” or “in-between,” had little philosophical time for notions of “the outside” or “the beyond” construed in terms invoking traditional ideas of transcendence (even though they created their own absolutely original notion of an “immanent transcendence.” Any such “in-the-middle,” however, must presuppose a milieu that is outside that “in-the-middle,” albeit one constituting a surround or ‘interzone’ (a term borrowed from William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch) for the “in-the-middle” in question, even if this surrounding milieu or interzone will, like its contiguous “in-the-middle,” also be unequivocally immanent. The essay discusses the kind of conceptual assemblage pertaining to interality/interology that can be constructed with regard to Deleuzo-Guattarian “surroundings.”Deleuze et Guattari, comme immanentistes strictes et promoteurs loyaux d’un « au-milieu » ou « entre-deux », avait peu de pati...
It's to do with abolishing ways of existing or, as Nietzsche put it, inventing new possibili... more It's to do with abolishing ways of existing or, as Nietzsche put it, inventing new possibilities of life. Existing not as a subject but as a work of art–and this last phase presents thought as artistry.(Deleuze 1995a: 95) Deleuze endorsed repeatedly the well-known conviction of Michel Foucault and of Nietzsche that life had to be lived as a work of art. This raises the question whether the terms under which a life is led properly belong to ethics (this of course being the traditional or consensual position taken when it comes to answering the ...
A brief overview of Marx's account of religion is followed by a consideration of a conception... more A brief overview of Marx's account of religion is followed by a consideration of a conception of liberation—a notion shared by marxists and adherents of religious traditions alike—that is substantive enough to overcome the marginalization and exploitation of countless numbers of human beings. The final section deals with the possibility of a rapprochement between the marxist and the adherent of a religious tradition.
Chapter 3 1000 Political Subjects... Kenneth Surin Is it possible for a compatibility to exist be... more Chapter 3 1000 Political Subjects... Kenneth Surin Is it possible for a compatibility to exist between Althusser's well-known doctrine of the interpellation of the subject by the ideological apparatuses of the state and the theses regarding the assemblages of the state pro-pounded by ...
The neoliberal project in the West has created an increasingly polarized and impoverished world, ... more The neoliberal project in the West has created an increasingly polarized and impoverished world, to the point that the vast majority of its citizens require liberation from their present socioeconomic circumstances. The Marxist theorist Kenneth Surin contends that innovation and change at the level of the political must occur in order to achieve this liberation, and for this endeavor Marxist theory and philosophy are indispensable. In Freedom Not Yet, Surin analyzes the nature of our current global economic system, particularly with regard to the plight of less-developed countries, and he discusses the possibilities of creating new political subjects necessary to establish and sustain a liberated world.
Surin begins by examining the current regime of accumulation--the global domination of financial markets over traditional industrial economies--which is used as an instrument for the subordination and dependency of poorer nations. He then moves to the constitution of subjectivity, or the way humans are produced as social beings, which he casts as the key arena in which struggles against dispossession occur. Surin critically engages with the major philosophical positions that have been suggested as models of liberation, including Derrida's notion of reciprocity between a subject and its other, a reinvigorated militancy in political reorientation based on Badiou and Zizek, the nomad politics of Deleuze and Guttari, and the politics of the multitude suggested by Hardt and Negri. Finally, Surin specifies the material conditions needed for liberation from the economic, political, and social failures of our current system. Seeking to illuminate a route to a better life for the world's poorer populations, Surin investigates the philosophical possibilities for a Marxist or neo-Marxist concept of liberation.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that ... more The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that had prevailed in the Depression-permeated 1930s by laying down the framework for a more adequately regulated international economic order. The agreement originally stipulated that oversight of the world economic system was to be in the hands of three institutions: the International Monetary Fund (which was charged with overseeing exchange rates and the balance of payments), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank (which was to be responsible for economic development), and the International Trade Organization (whose brief was the supervision of the world trading system, with a particular responsibility for mediating trade disputes, promoting tariff reduction, and eliminating trade wars). However, when the US Congress objected to the formation of the International Trade Organization, the agreement was modified to exclude the ITO provision, and a looser organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) took its place. GATT was basically a forum constituted by agreement among signatory nations, and with a limited administrative machinery to undertake oversight of the world trading system and the trade liberalization arrangements it sponsored, GATT's effectiveness was always going to be circumscribed, and it was superseded in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). GATT's regulatory framework was based on four primary principles (Held et al., 164): non-discrimination: i.e. acceptance of the most favored nation principle, (so that the trade preferences, such as a tariff reduction, granted by one country to its most favored trading partner will be extended to all its other trading partners); reciprocity: a country's tariff reductions should be matched by its trading partners; transparency: trade standards and measures should be clear; fairness: unfair trade practices (dumping of goods at below market prices, etc.) were to be discouraged, and countries were allowed to protect themselves against them.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that ... more The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement sought to prevent the recurrence of the economic situation that had prevailed in the Depression-permeated 1930s by laying down the framework for a more adequately regulated international economic order. The agreement originally stipulated that oversight of the world economic system was to be in the hands of three institutions: the International Monetary Fund (which was charged with overseeing exchange rates and the balance of payments), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank (which was to be responsible for economic development), and the International Trade Organization (whose brief was the supervision of the world trading system, with a particular responsibility for mediating trade disputes, promoting tariff reduction, and eliminating trade wars). However, when the US Congress objected to the formation of the International Trade Organization, the agreement was modified to exclude the ITO provision, ...
Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961) is still germane and significant nearly five decades after ... more Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961) is still germane and significant nearly five decades after its publication. The crux of his argument is that a third revolution (with culture as its focus) is going to be needed after the democratic revolution and the industrial revolution which have already taken place. The argument for this long revolution is conducted through a historical study of such institutions as education and the press, the development of a “common language”, and the links between ideas, literary forms, and social history. A misconception immediately to be cleared comes from the meaning of the term “long revolution” itself -- Williams did not mean by this that the revolution has been taking a long time to complete itself. Rather, his concern is with cultural transformation on an epochal scale. The hallmarks of this epochal transformation are its difficulty of analysis and assessment, due mainly to its character as a complex unity, and to the fact that its core reside...
Mao Tse-Tung\u27s famous 1937 essay On Contradiction is regarded as a significant attempt to rede... more Mao Tse-Tung\u27s famous 1937 essay On Contradiction is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx\u27s notion of a dialectical contradiction to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao\u27s time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao\u27s essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of antagonism is needed, and revise Mao\u27s position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari
A journal issue titled ‘‘Vicissitudes of Theory’’ derives its saliency from the course taken by t... more A journal issue titled ‘‘Vicissitudes of Theory’’ derives its saliency from the course taken by theory in recent years. The institutionalization of literary and cultural theory in the last three decades or so can be viewed as a movement through a series of phases and developments. Speaking very generally, the initial crystallization of critical and cultural theory in the area of literary studies took the form of a s and s reception of several movements, the most prominent being structuralism and poststructuralism (whose provenance was mainly French), hermeneutics (German in inspiration), psychoanalytic criticism, feminist theory, Marxist theory, black studies, cultural studies (primarily British in origin), and certain strands of continental European philosophy (the work of the Frankfurt school and phenomenology being perhaps the most prominent). In the s a second phase of this institutionalization saw five significant developments. First, there were transformations with...
... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City,... more ... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where she directs both undergraduate ... Pavel Zemliansky is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at James Madi-son University, where he teaches courses in composition and ...
... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City,... more ... Bonnie Sunstein is professor of English and education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where she directs both undergraduate ... Pavel Zemliansky is assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at James Madi-son University, where he teaches courses in composition and ...
Deleuze and Guattari, as strict immanentists and consistent proponents of an “in-the-middle” or “... more Deleuze and Guattari, as strict immanentists and consistent proponents of an “in-the-middle” or “in-between,” had little philosophical time for notions of “the outside” or “the beyond” construed in terms invoking traditional ideas of transcendence (even though they created their own absolutely original notion of an “immanent transcendence.” Any such “in-the-middle,” however, must presuppose a milieu that is outside that “in-the-middle,” albeit one constituting a surround or ‘interzone’ (a term borrowed from William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch) for the “in-the-middle” in question, even if this surrounding milieu or interzone will, like its contiguous “in-the-middle,” also be unequivocally immanent. The essay discusses the kind of conceptual assemblage pertaining to interality/interology that can be constructed with regard to Deleuzo-Guattarian “surroundings.”Deleuze et Guattari, comme immanentistes strictes et promoteurs loyaux d’un « au-milieu » ou « entre-deux », avait peu de pati...
It's to do with abolishing ways of existing or, as Nietzsche put it, inventing new possibili... more It's to do with abolishing ways of existing or, as Nietzsche put it, inventing new possibilities of life. Existing not as a subject but as a work of art–and this last phase presents thought as artistry.(Deleuze 1995a: 95) Deleuze endorsed repeatedly the well-known conviction of Michel Foucault and of Nietzsche that life had to be lived as a work of art. This raises the question whether the terms under which a life is led properly belong to ethics (this of course being the traditional or consensual position taken when it comes to answering the ...
A brief overview of Marx's account of religion is followed by a consideration of a conception... more A brief overview of Marx's account of religion is followed by a consideration of a conception of liberation—a notion shared by marxists and adherents of religious traditions alike—that is substantive enough to overcome the marginalization and exploitation of countless numbers of human beings. The final section deals with the possibility of a rapprochement between the marxist and the adherent of a religious tradition.
Chapter 3 1000 Political Subjects... Kenneth Surin Is it possible for a compatibility to exist be... more Chapter 3 1000 Political Subjects... Kenneth Surin Is it possible for a compatibility to exist between Althusser's well-known doctrine of the interpellation of the subject by the ideological apparatuses of the state and the theses regarding the assemblages of the state pro-pounded by ...
is of course supremely well known for his contributions to several areas of philosophy, particula... more is of course supremely well known for his contributions to several areas of philosophy, particularly the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of action. Perhaps less renowned are a cluster of articles that deal with topics that do not seem to fall directly within the purview of the analytic philosopher. Here the very unusual (and for the analytic philosopher somewhat unexpected) collaboration with Robert Morris published in Critical Inquiry comes readily to mind. 1 Davidson's essay on Morris presents the outline of a philosophical account of the act of artistic production that deserves closer scrutiny than it has received to date. I shall look at Davidson's account and then present my own version of what is possibly going on in Morris's blind paintings, bearing in mind the context supplied by Davidson's writings, including those that deal with subjects that do not bear directly on these paintings. My primary concern will be with perception and visual fields and, perhaps more centrally for my argument, touch and its connection with bodily awareness and spatiality. Davidson tends in his commentary on The South Atlantic Quarterly :, Winter .
Leo Panitch, in a recent article in New Left Review (2000), praised the late Nicos Poulantzas for... more Leo Panitch, in a recent article in New Left Review (2000), praised the late Nicos Poulantzas for his new and productive conceptualization of the role and character of the state as it was beginning to evolve in response to the pressures of a burgeoning economic internationalization in the capitalist nations from the 1960s onward. In the first phases of this new situation, marked by the postwar economic resurgence of Germany and Japan and the seeming decline of the United States (this was before the 1990s, of course), it was ...
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Books by Kenneth Surin
Surin begins by examining the current regime of accumulation--the global domination of financial markets over traditional industrial economies--which is used as an instrument for the subordination and dependency of poorer nations. He then moves to the constitution of subjectivity, or the way humans are produced as social beings, which he casts as the key arena in which struggles against dispossession occur. Surin critically engages with the major philosophical positions that have been suggested as models of liberation, including Derrida's notion of reciprocity between a subject and its other, a reinvigorated militancy in political reorientation based on Badiou and Zizek, the nomad politics of Deleuze and Guttari, and the politics of the multitude suggested by Hardt and Negri. Finally, Surin specifies the material conditions needed for liberation from the economic, political, and social failures of our current system. Seeking to illuminate a route to a better life for the world's poorer populations, Surin investigates the philosophical possibilities for a Marxist or neo-Marxist concept of liberation.
Papers by Kenneth Surin
Surin begins by examining the current regime of accumulation--the global domination of financial markets over traditional industrial economies--which is used as an instrument for the subordination and dependency of poorer nations. He then moves to the constitution of subjectivity, or the way humans are produced as social beings, which he casts as the key arena in which struggles against dispossession occur. Surin critically engages with the major philosophical positions that have been suggested as models of liberation, including Derrida's notion of reciprocity between a subject and its other, a reinvigorated militancy in political reorientation based on Badiou and Zizek, the nomad politics of Deleuze and Guttari, and the politics of the multitude suggested by Hardt and Negri. Finally, Surin specifies the material conditions needed for liberation from the economic, political, and social failures of our current system. Seeking to illuminate a route to a better life for the world's poorer populations, Surin investigates the philosophical possibilities for a Marxist or neo-Marxist concept of liberation.