Thacker, Eugene. Cosmic Pessimism. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2015. ISBN-10: 193756147X. E-book, paperback. 55 pages. It might be worth quoting from the beginning of this pocket-sized, 69-page book to give a sense of its style and subject: We’re doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the […]
Month: October 2016
Shamanism and Entheogens – Toward A Psychoanalysis Of The New “Dream Time” (Roger Green)
There is no reason why therapy rooms for psychedelic sessions must be adorned with the default Buddha icons, fractal posters, and Indian drapes. Who says these are the hallmarks of psychedelia? Why not have pictures of Lamborghinis, pop stars, and football teams – or any other power objects our patients choose to bring? -Ben Sessa[1] […]
Collective Desire and the Pathology of the Individual, Part 2 (Jodi Dean)
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment was published on October 10 and can be accessed here. If we do not give normative priority to the individual, that is, to the individual as the proper or exclusive form of subjectivity, then we could read the evidence Turkle offers differently. […]
Review – Caputo, The Unconditional, The Folly of God (Richard M. Allen)
Caputo, John D. The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2016. ISBN-10: 1598151711. Paperback, e-book. 148 pages. What is the interest of theology? Traditionalists will answer that it is interested solely in God, and more specifically, to define and defend the reality of God as supreme being. Much of […]
Collective Desire and the Pathology of the Individual, Part 1 (Jodi Dean)
The following is the first installment of a two-part series. An interesting strand of contemporary theory designates the specificity of capitalism with the qualifier “cognitive.”[1] I do not write under this term, although I am influenced by theorists who do insofar as they also highlight communication. Franco Berardi, for example, observes that “cognitive labor is […]
Review – Whence and Whither Posthumanism? (Bo Eberle)
White, Ryan. The Hidden God: Pragmatism and Posthumanism in American Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. ISBN-10: 0231171005. Hardcover, e-book. 248 pages. Ryan White’s The Hidden God: Pragmatism and Posthumanism in American Thought (Columbia University Press, 2015) sets for itself a rather Herculean task of coherently discussing perhaps the sole concept that is unavailable for conceptual analysis: […]
From Heathen to Sub-Human: A Genealogy of the Influence of the Decline of Religion on the Rise of Modern Racism, Part 3 (Oludamini Ogunnaike)
The following is the third part of an article in three installments that initially appeared in July 2016 in Open Theology 2:2016 785-203. It is republished here with the permission of the author. The first installment can be accessed here, the second installment here. The Rise of Modern Racism in the Enlightenment The Enlightenment […]