Massumi, Brian. Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book, ix + 320 pages. A veritable articulation of power after (and operating alongside) Foucault’s biopower, Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception offers a framework and conceptual tools for navigating the post-9/11 reality of the “war […]
Month: November 2017
Review – Indebted to Asceticism (Hollis Phelps)
Stimilli, Elettra. The Debt of the Living: Ascesis and Capitalism. Translated by Arianna Bove. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017. ISBN 9781438464152. Hardcover, xvi + 199 pages. Max Weber, as is well known, traced the origins of capitalism to an inner drive to renunciation and sacrifice. In The Debt of the Living, Stimilli, in contrast, traces capitalism’s […]
The Mythology of Afterlife Beliefs and Their Impact on Religious Conflict, Part 2 (Brigid Burke)
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is believed to be an outgrowth of an Indo-Iranian religious tradition that dates to the 2nd millennium BCE. However, we do not see it mentioned in Greek writings until about the middle of the 5th century […]
Review – Reframing Schelling (Rolando Rodriguez)
Daniel Whistler, Schelling’s Theory of Symbolic Language: Forming the System of Identity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 261 ppgs + xi Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was a German philosopher who is situated between the two predominant thinkers of his time: his mentor, Johann Gottlieb Fichte; and his contemporary and in many ways, rival, […]
The Mythology of Afterlife Beliefs and Their Impact on Religious Conflict, Part 1 (Brigid Burke)
The following is the first installment of a two-part series. I. Introduction The question of whether there is life after death, and what that life might be like, is probably one of religion’s oldest questions. Indeed, some conception or another has been in play since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before. Our modern […]