John Foster / 09 Dec 2022
Return to Politics
Power and Resistance, by Yoshiyuki Sato
No stranger to hyperbole, Slavoj Žižek once described an event as a reframing of the present, “a radical change in this reality itself”.(...)
Philosophy
John Foster / 04 Nov 2022
Alienated by Technology
Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, by Byung Chul-Han
When talk of the “information age” first began in the 1960s, it implied optimism. Information is knowledge, of which more is better than less, generally speaking.(...)
John Foster / 10 Oct 2022
Surviving Fascism
Philosophy and Sociology, by Theodor Adorno
Looking back from a distance of more than half a century, 1960 appears almost as a period of calm.(...)
John Foster / 12 Aug 2022
Marx on Neoliberalism
Hyperculture, by Byung Chul-Han
Korean-German philosopher Byung Chul-Han is the quintessential postmodern figure. Having to come to Germany to study metallurgy, he switched fields and mastered the argot of German philosophy.(...)
John Foster / 22 Jul 2022
Virtual Colonialism
Geographies of Digital Exclusion, by Mark Graham and Martin Dittus
In all but the most prosaic discussions of cartography today, it’s obligatory to mention “On Exactitude in Science.”(...)
John Foster / 25 Mar 2022
Diversity Without Nationalism
Heaven in Disorder, by Slavoj Žižek
One is always a bit apprehensive when cracking the latest publication by the eminent Slovenian curmudgeon Slavoj Žižek.(...)
John Foster / 11 Feb 2022
Dreaming of Another Politics
Capitalism and the Death Drive, by Byung-Chul Han
Philosopher Byung-Chul Han is as emblematic of German cultural life as it’s possible to be. (...)
The Battleground / 08 Dec 2020
The Case for Jacques Derrida
Peter Salmon, in Conversation With John Foster
The spectre of Jacques Derrida haunts the world. Sixteen years after his death, he remains one of the most polarising figures in Western intellectual life, lauded and reviled in equal measure.(...)
John Foster / 20 Nov 2020
Truth in Politics
Peter Salmon’s An Event, Perhaps
We are living in a post-truth society, so we are told, in which everything is permitted, and the power of assertion is now equal to or greater than that of ascertainable facts.(...)
John Foster / 16 Oct 2020
Democracy in Crisis
Habermas Against the Fascists
As far as philosophers go, few qualify for the household name category in Germany more than 91-year-old Jürgen Habermas.(...)