‘Your Karl Marx still believes in letting natural forces take their course. No politics, no conspiracies, am I right? Everything out in the open, and nothing to fight for but wage rises ... To hell with you and your gradual evolution! Set fire to every town and city, cut the populace to shreds, raze everything … Continue reading Zola As Horror Writer
The apparent delight with which we dwell upon objects of pure terror, where our moral feelings are not in the least concerned and no passion seems to be excited but the depressing one of fear, is a paradox of the heart… difficult of solution. John and Anna Laetitia Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects … Continue reading Hungry For Something
I’ve been doing a series of events for A Primer on Utopian Philosophy (available now, order it here etc etc). What has been perhaps somewhat surprising is the extent to which Bloch’s philosophical project seems to resonate with people. In the midst of the bleak nightmare of modernity, Bloch’s unabashed philosophy of hope could easily … Continue reading Blessed Are They That Mourn, For They Shall Be Haunted
“Denken heißt überschreiten” -- to think is to transgress,-- Ernst Bloch Prompted by this post about the intersections of Goethe and Marx, I can think of no better thinker than Ernst Bloch who fits the bill. Like many German intellectuals of his day, Bloch was enormously influenced by Goethe, particularly Faust but was also a … Continue reading Provisional & Early Thoughts On Go(e)thic Marxism
It’s easy enough to talk about the political nature of horror. At this point, the challenge is ignoring the political semiotics of horror, especially in film, thanks to a whole host of work that has emerged in the past decade or so. A more complicated problem, and maybe a more interesting one, is working out the direct … Continue reading Towards A Gothic Marxism III: First Sketches
As Sylvia Federici points out in her landmark work. Caliban And The Witch one of the features of the emergence of capitalism was the production of a new kind of subject. The growing mercantile bourgeoisie required labour power to work for them and thus, society and the idea of the subject had to be reshaped. … Continue reading Towards A Gothic Marxism Part II: Monsters For Socialism
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