The Ohiomachine

FORTHCOMING Fall 2025

Ohio is the geographical no-place that you fly over to get from one coast to the other. Wedged into a vast geographical space known simply as “the American Midwest,” Ohio is a flat, dull, boring space in which someone — no one knows who — grows corn. It is just a dull place where nothing[…]

Critique of Fantasy, Vol. 3: The Block of Fame

Imprint:

Published: 01/14/2021

In The Block of Fame, Edmund Bergler, like the thirteenth fairy in the “Sleeping Beauty,“ uninvited because there wasn’t an extra place setting, crashes the psychoanalytic poetics of daydreaming with a curse. He charges that the overview, according to which art making rarefies daydreaming and delivers omnipotence, overlooks the underlying defense contract. We are hooked[…]

The Hegemony of Psychopathy

Imprint:

Published: 09/19/2017

Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status[…]