Chantal Mouffe, Slavoj Žižek, and Julia Kristeva contribute in a problematic manner to the ontologizing of political antagonisms and hence also to the cementing of unfreedom. While showing how contradictions are not possible to be sublated in societal unities, all three of them disregard the effect on the other end of the question: if antagonisms or revolts are found to be permanent, then problems which antagonisms contain, or which revolts address, become permanent as well. In contrast, Theodor W. Adornos’ understanding of societal antagonisms is that while social contradictions point towards the falsity of the whole and therefore must be acknowledged critically, they should not be considered unhistorical and permanent. This article aims at showing how Mouffe, Žižek and Kristeva end up in essentializing antagonisms and offers Adorno’s notion of antagonism as an alternative. 

In contrast to the constantly increasing surveillance of the streets of cities, Jane Jacobs’ theory of the ‘eyes on the street’ offers a theory of a positive form of surveillance and these eyes can thus perhaps take on the role of a counterforce to problematic forms of surveillance. To examine under what conditions Jacobs could help formulate such a counterforce is the main aim in this article. But for this purpose, certain obstacles need to be addressed, for instance, the usage of Jacobs’ theory in the field of CPTED. What in Jacobs’ theory makes it vulnerable to this kind of usage? In order for Jacobs’ street-eyes to avoid becoming a prolonged arm for state surveillance, this article suggests a critical reading of Jacobs’ thinking in relation to Foucault’s surveillance-critique, ultimately with the aim to strengthen her eyes on the street. 

From its inception, Critical Theory was a project that not only intended to study modern society, but also to change it. Today, with almost a century passed, the term has acquired a life of its own and is used across the intellectual field, institutionally as well geographically.

Thus, to ask about the past, present, and future of Critical Theory means opening it up and exposing it to new influences. This is a consequence of the claim that theory is not outside history, but must always respond to a changing present grasped in its contradictions and opened up towards other possibilities; a process that involves a constant reappraisal of what Critical Theory is today.

Minima city är en uppgörelse med staden i tre kapitel. Utifra n en rad filosofer och författare ställs fra gan om stadens situation och framtid. Trots att mörka utveck­lingslinjer och en urholkning av stadens vitalitet är tydligt erfar­bara söker sig boken fram till en minimal optimism: kanske skul­le det trots allt kunna finnas en öppning för en möjlig levande stad?

Since Georg Lukács and Karl Korsch in the 1920s, Hegelian Marxism has played a prominent role as a radical intellectual tradition in modern political theory. This anthology investigates how these Hegelian Marxists, in different historical, political and intellectual contexts during the last century, have employed Hegel’s philosophy with the aim of developing and renewing Marxist theory.

Besides Lukács and Korsch the volume includes articles dealing with the thoughts of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Evald Ilyenkov, Lucio Colletti and Slavoj Žižek. The overall purpose is to investigate if, and the degree to which, these thinkers could be interpreted as Hegelian Marxists, and how they use the Hegelian philosophy to better understand their own current society as well as situate themselves in relation to orthodox forms of Marxism. Taken together, the articles can hopefully contribute to an intensification of discussions about the critical and self-criticalphilosophy of Marxism today.