Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle

Published: 08/24/2015

Departing from the conventional readings of Karl Marx’s Capital and other of his works, by way of François Laruelle’s “radicalization of concepts,” Katerina Kolozova identifies a theoretical kernel in Marx’s thought whose critical and interpretative force can be employed without reference to its subsequent interpretations in the philosophical mainstream. The latter entails a process of[…]

Theory is like a Surging Sea

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Published: 08/02/2015

In a 1917 letter to Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin writes, “Theory is like a surging sea.” This small book takes more than its title from that line—it takes that line as a point of departure in Erich Auerbach’s sense, an Ansatzpunkt, as a compositional principle so that what follows can be read in its entirety[…]

In a Trance: On Paleo Art

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Published: 11/13/2014

In a Trance is just the sort of genre-defying work we at Peanut and punctum and, as it happens, Jeffrey Skoblow, revel in. It is a book-length essay by a fiction writer. It is a fictional essay by a literary scholar. It is a gallant assay by a smart man who thinks while he walks,[…]

Weaponising Speculation

Published: 09/22/2014

This book contains the proceedings from Weaponising Speculation, a two-day conference and exhibition that took place in Dublin in March 2013. Weaponising Speculation was organised by D.U.S.T. (Dublin Unit for Speculative Thought) and aimed to be an exploration of the various expressions of DIY theory operative in the elsewheres, the shafts and tunnels of the[…]

Speculations V: Aesthetics in the 21st Century

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Published: 05/15/2014

Ever since the turn of the century aesthetics has steadily gained momentum as a central field of study across the disciplines. No longer sidelined, aesthetics has grown in confidence. While this recent development brings with it a return to the work of the canonical authors (most notably Baumgarten and Kant), some contemporary scholars reject the[…]

A Rushed Quality

Published: 05/25/2015

These fragments collected here (in 2 books, “A Rushed Quality” and “Bodying Forth”) belong neither to philosophy nor to poetry — and yet they are for the most part focused on a substantial area of overlap between these two venerable disciplines, vis-à-vis the question, “What is it like to be X?” Philosophers like to fill[…]

Ontological Anarché: Beyond Materialism and Idealism

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Published: 01/24/2014

Radical theory has always been beset by the question of ontology, albeit to varying degrees and under differing conditions. In recent years, in particular, political metaphysics has returned with force: the rise of Deleuze-influenced “new materialisms,” along with post-/non-Deleuzian Speculative Realism (SR) and Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), all bear testament to this. In this same period,[…]

The Non-Library

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Published: 03/13/2014

The Non-Library is a non-standard expression for life that is lived without mediation from words, images, or even ideas. While a thing called “the Library” continues to terrorize humanity even as it enters its last stages as a consequence of cataclysmic climate change and late capitalism, the Non-Library is a strictly performative, ahistorical immanence that suspends[…]