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3 books match the query 'Fernbach, David'

cover of Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth, sic vii

Lenin Reloaded

Toward a Politics of Truth, sic vii

Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Slavoj Žižek, eds.

Duke University Press, 2007

Lenin Reloaded is a rallying call by some of the world’s leading Marxist intellectuals for renewed attention to the significance of Vladimir Lenin. The volume’s editors explain that it was Lenin who made Karl Marx’s thought explicitly political, who extended it beyond the confines of Europe, who put it into practice. They contend that a focus on Lenin is urgently needed now, when global capitalism appears to be the only game in town, the liberal-democratic system seems to have been settled on as the optimal political organization of society, and it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than a modest change in the mode of production. Lenin retooled Marx’s thought for specific historical conditions in 1914, and Lenin Reloaded urges a reinvention of the revolutionary project for the present. Such a project would be Leninist in its commitment to action based on truth and its acceptance of the consequences that follow from action.

These essays, some of which are appearing in English for the first time, bring Lenin face-to-face with the problems of today, including war, imperialism, the imperative to build an intelligentsia of wage earners, the need to embrace the achievements of bourgeois society and modernity, and the widespread failure of social democracy. Lenin Reloaded demonstrates that truth and partisanship are not mutually exclusive as is often suggested. Quite the opposite—in the present, truth can be articulated only from a thoroughly partisan position.

Contributors. Kevin B. Anderson, Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Daniel Bensaïd, Sebastian Budgen, Alex Callinicos, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Stathis Kouvelakis, Georges Labica, Sylvain Lazarus, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Lars T. Lih, Domenico Losurdo, Savas Michael-Matsas, Antonio Negri, Alan Shandro, Slavoj Žižek

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cover of The End of Jewish Modernity

The End of Jewish Modernity

Enzo Traverso

Pluto Press, 2016

Has Jewish modernity exhausted itself? Flourishing between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, the intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy of Jewish modernity continues to dazzle us, however, in this provocative new book, esteemed historian Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that this cultural epoch has come to an end. 

Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This is a compelling narrative, hinged upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics. 

With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present.
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cover of Towards a Gay Communism: Elements of a Homosexual Critique

Towards a Gay Communism

Elements of a Homosexual Critique

Mario Mieli

Pluto Press, 2018

First published in Italian in 1977, Mario Mieli's groundbreaking book is an early landmark of revolutionary queer theory - now available for the first time in a complete and unabridged English translation.

Among the most important works ever to address the relationship between homosexuality, homophobia and capitalism, Mieli's essay continues to pose a radical challenge to today's dominant queer theory and politics.

With extraordinary prescience, Mieli exposes the efficiency with which capitalism co-opts 'perversions' which are then 'sold both wholesale and retail'. In his view the liberation of homosexual desire requires the emancipation of sexuality from both patriarchal sex roles and capital.

Drawing heavily upon Marx and psychoanalysis to arrive at a dazzlingly original vision, Towards a Gay Communism is a hitherto neglected classic that will be essential reading for all who seek to understand the true meaning of sexual liberation under capitalism today.

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