really cool article - "Free as A Bird: Nature as Freedom and Interval in Karl Marx’s Capital" by Christina Chalmers muse.jhu.edu/article/908409

teaser for the upcoming CTWG collection of translations of Horkheimer’s fragments “towards a dialectical logic,” which is the second half of an insane 1934 letter to Fromm that I doubt very much anyone would consider a sketch for a “dialectical logic” lol open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

ok probably a long shot but does any1 have access to: Zur Kritik der politischen Moral. Kritik des politischen Verhaltens. Ein Beitrag zur Konzeption einer neuen sozialistischen Bewegung, Offenbach 1947 by Sebastian Franck (alias of Heinz/Henry Jacoby)? any help appreciated!

*new translation* THE BOOK OF ABOLITIONS by Karl Korsch www.endnotes.org.uk/palabre/the-...

I can’t help but think about Asad Haider editing and publishing Christopher Chitty’s brilliant translation and commentary for Foucault’s “The Mesh of Power” in Viewpoint shortly after we lost him, too. So many epochal thinkers and comrades of our generation lost. I am shook.

Rest in Power Asad Haider

extremely sad news that Asad Haider has passed away. i didn't know him personally but it'd be impossible to overstate how important his writing and editing in Viewpoint was to my trajectory. as I said last night, we are losing too many comrades.

Our band released an EP btw burialmask13.bandcamp.com/album/burial...

Günther Anders’ 1936 review of Bloch’s now famous analysis of fascism and non-contemporaneity: “For those interested in a concrete philosophy of history […] reading the chapter on Ungleichzeitigkeit, which is unfortunately buried underneath the others, will be indispensable.”

for any freaks who’ve been thinking gee I wish there were more H&A sketches on how like the historical devo of the concept of reason creates & destroys the Great Chain of Being—good news! Found/translated 20+ pages of unique text from the drafts for R&SP, just added to the post

translation—forgotten piece of early Critical Theory: in ‘33, Löwenthal, resident ISR lit sociologist, wrote a sketch for a Marx-inspired critical history of technology using Lefebvre des Noëttes’ work relating the devo of the draft-animal apparatus to slavery open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

Next in our Institute's Colloquium series 2025/26 "Rethinking #Time in the History of Science": @profemmakowal.bsky.social on "Freezing Time: A Decade of #Cryopolitics" ❄️🕰️ 🗓️ Jan 27, 2025 (14:00 CET) 📍 Harnack Haus, Berlin 🔗 bit.ly/48w3WAR #HistSci #Anthropology @deakinuniversity.bsky.social

From Horkheimer’s unpublished Notes for Reason & Self-Preservation (1941/42): “For modern reason, what demands further justification is not the atrocities of the plantation owners—which might then be found in the works of missionaries. Rather, the plantation provides the excuse for the missionary.”

Made my younger brother start Kanafani’s Men in the Sun despite him not being much of a traditional reader. He is loving it! Proud big brother moment ngl

Forgot to plug this one since I was sick

this post also has a translation of one of my favorite letters that Horkheimer ever wrote Adorno after *another* one of Adorno’s grant apps was rejected by Rockefeller—it’s where the “Nil admirari” I’ve used as a sign-off for CTWG emails for years cones from!

Top team of authors @rafeefz.bsky.social @pashukanist.bsky.social Adam Hanieh, brilliant short book!

Adorno-Horkheimer didn’t get a copy of Benjamin’s “Theses” until mid-1941. Reading it they discovered not only remarkable coincidences with their most recent work but differences they couldn’t help but want to fight him over, hours without end, at a Parisian café open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

short & sweet: ISR’s group entry on the sociology of art for a 1940s American encyclopedia (which turns out to be a barely veiled allusion to Engels on Balzac + an interesting attempt to mediate b/w Adorno & Löwenthal’s divergent approaches to sociology of art!) open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

you might wonder: what were Horkheimer-Adorno’s politics in 1941? well: the universal self-enlightening of runaway enlightenment, aka communism

📢📢 New Article 📢📢 "Hegel's Theory of Rational Proof" Published in Hegel Bulletin Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Big thanks to @schuringa.bsky.social and @ivanboldyrev.bsky.social for all the help along the way - and for putting up with all of my pesky emails!

now up: full re-translation of Horkheimer’s 1942 essay—co-authored by Adorno!—“Reason & Self-Preservation,” first published in English in ‘42 (w/ ‘tactical’ modifications) as “The End of Reason.” If there’s a Prelude to Dialectic of Enlightenment, this is it. open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

academics at a demo va academics at the faculty meeting

Hello all, this is a new blog post at the CTWG. It is a written adaptation of my Hessen presentation from Spring. There, I give a condensed summary of the Hessen-Grossmann thesis while situating it within a broader genealogy of Marxist science historiography. Hope y’all find this fruitful.

That said and i say this as someone who really hates the saudi regime + enjoys this bit better than anyone in the world So much of the discourse on saudi is informed by by what alain grosrichard described as a european fantasy of oriental despotism that is at once an object of loathing and desire

I wrote for @lpeblog.bsky.social about @alybatt.bsky.social's new book—which, I argue, shows how the critique of political economy can allow us to clearly name the social cause of climate catastrophe: capital. lpeproject.org/blog/when-na...

Next Monday, we welcome @cshambaugh.bsky.social from the University of Oregon in our ROTO Lecture Series who will talk about dialectical biology. Just register via the link and join the talk and discussion at 4pm (CET): rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture... #HPBio #PhilSci #HistSci

so interesting for an old like me to see the early marx returned to but now in relation to domination in Capital

Alice Wong taught us that disabled people don’t just leave memories behind—they leave infrastructure. Lineages of care. Methods of collectivity, survival. She named the connective tissue that holds our communities together, even across death, even across the losses that come too fast and too often.

Gaza is drowning

🚨new publication🚨 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝗷𝘂𝗿𝘆 in: Understanding Social Struggles: Relating Recognition Theories and Epistemic Injustice (eds. H. Hänel and F. Schuppert), Transcript. pp. 49-64. 2025. Open Access: philpapers.org/archive/BLUC...

I know I’m not the first to make this observation but is psychoanalysis just the physic analogy for thermodynamics? Reading Bion, and concluding he would love state functions, hysteresis, etc.

I’m still getting better at podcasting, so apologies for the awkwardness, but Mac and I made time to blabber about dialectical biology! I definitely think you should read the book, and extend ideology critique to science proper. The book also helps you fight racists, so you should read it for that 2

happy 6am to those who celebrate: a set of short (mostly unpublished) & strange theoretical texts on the affinities of intellect & domination from Pollock’s early 40’s reports to Horkheimer about discussions in Paul Tillich’s NY salon! link: open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

40 years after The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Lewontin’s legacy still challenges how we think about life A new report revisits his intertwining of philosophy, biology, and Marxism—and how organisms are subjects of their own evolution www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

logging on just to share this podcast thing i did about reading (and teaching) marx's capital

You’re telling me SpringerNature doesn’t need to charge $13,000 a paper for Nature Plants? I’m shocked!

I am increasingly distressed by the thought that university level teaching no longer can meaningfully advance the cause of humanistic progress. one shows up far too late on the scene for students who have by and large already been violently deskilled and stripped of any hope. it is heartbreaking.

huge ty to everyone supporting the Substudies project, & in that spirit i finally finished the translation drafts i started a while back of Adorno-Benjamin’s joint critical (incredibly catty lol) “reports” for Horkheimer on 3 Paris conferences in early August ‘37! open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

Podcast (from @palfest.bsky.social) featuring @lalehkhalili.bsky.social interviewing Adam Hanieh, @rafeefz.bsky.social and me ou our @versobooks.bsky.social pamphlet Resisting Erasure. Some fantastic interviewing from Laleh, and I think(/hope?) a good conversation. www.podbean.com/media/share/...

links.org.au/node/7491 Adam Hanieh for Links.

Please take some time to read Morain’s great two-part essay on conservative violence. A entirely too sober recounting on the basic unity of right reaction.

Two new open-access articles from Andrea Gambarotto and collaborators: Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back (w/ Thomas van Es): link.springer.com/article/10.1... Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue (w/ Ezequiel A. Di Paolo): link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Heard Ray Brassier gave his HM panel online stating he will not set foot in Europe again. What a 🐐

good morning check out these letters! open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

Just began working on organizing the blog & converting to shareable PDFs, & it’s going to be a big project! For life reasons, it’s going to be harder for me to keep going now, so any support would be crazy appreciated! & thanks for reading & sharing Substudies! open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...

Now live, the Deutscher Memorial Prize Winner Lecture by Matteo Pasquinelli.

She’s here!

Marx as a philosophical biologist? Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Recently learned that Pewdiepie's new schtick is that he loves Linux and protein folding. I'd to apologise to the world on behalf the Linux+protein lover community, we denounce this cringe Nazi