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Full-Text Articles in Political Theory

Jochen Schmon, Absolute Ethical Life. Michael Lazarus On The Normativity Of Marx’S Critique Of Capitalism (An Interview By Jochen Schmon), Jochen Schmon, Michael Lazarus Sep 2026

Jochen Schmon, Absolute Ethical Life. Michael Lazarus On The Normativity Of Marx’S Critique Of Capitalism (An Interview By Jochen Schmon), Jochen Schmon, Michael Lazarus

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Eviscerating The State: An Update, Jean L. Cohen Sep 2026

Eviscerating The State: An Update, Jean L. Cohen

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

A year after the publication of her article “Eviscerating the State: The New Oligarchic and Authoritarian Project to Undermine American Constitutional Democracy (Emancipations, Vol.4: Iss.2, July 2025) Jean Cohen looks again at the threats to American constitutional democracy posed by new oligarchic and authoritarian actors in the economy, the state, and society.


From Monopoly To Orchestration: The Hilltop And Farm Youth And The Changing Organization Of State Coercion - The Israeli Case, Idan Yaron Sep 2026

From Monopoly To Orchestration: The Hilltop And Farm Youth And The Changing Organization Of State Coercion - The Israeli Case, Idan Yaron

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork – as a social anthropologist, studying the Far Right in Israel, on the ground, and through intimate and prolonged relationships with opinion leaders and rank-and-file activists – this essay examines the Hilltop and Farm Youth in the West Bank to reconsider Charles Tilly's influential account of state formation and the organization of coercion. It asks a simple but troubling question: why would a powerful modern state, fully capable of suppressing autonomous violent actors, sometimes allow them to persist? I argue that Tilly's theory should be confirmed, adapted, and amended. His fundamental …


Uneven And Combined Fascism: A Postapocalyptic Perspective, Daniel Loick Sep 2026

Uneven And Combined Fascism: A Postapocalyptic Perspective, Daniel Loick

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This essay develops the concept of “uneven and combined fascism” as an alternative to dominant liberal approaches that understand fascism primarily as a future rupture or return of the European past. Analogizing the crisis of democracy with environmental crisis, it argues that fascism, like ecological catastrophe, should be understood as an ongoing and differentially distributed condition: already present for some while remaining latent or emergent for others. The essay develops this claim by consulting approaches of "postapocalyptic environmentalism" as well as thinkers and activists from the Black Radical Tradition, particularly the analyses of Aimé Césaire and the Civil Rights Congress’s …


Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova Sep 2026

Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The massive destruction and social dislocation wrought by capitalist crisis has culminated, historically, in the brutal cataclysms of fascism and other forms of authoritarian rule. Today, across the globe, we are confronted with the aggressive advance and entrenchment of a variety of such authoritarian political projects. Anxious discourses about ascendant fascism have become perfectly mainstream. These developments command our acute attention and critical analysis. This essay addresses these dire questions and the conceptual vexations surrounding the concept of fascism, particularly as it has been elaborated in various Marxist analyses.  Specifically, much of the debate around fascism as an analytical category …


Planification Against Extractivism: Towards A Democratic Agroecological Planification Against Agrarian Capitalism In A Estrada (Galicia, Spain), Jacobo Rivas Sanmartín, Rubén Camilo Lois González, Paula Noya Vázquez Jul 2026

Planification Against Extractivism: Towards A Democratic Agroecological Planification Against Agrarian Capitalism In A Estrada (Galicia, Spain), Jacobo Rivas Sanmartín, Rubén Camilo Lois González, Paula Noya Vázquez

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article analyses the expansion of vineyards in the parish of San Xiao de Vea, in the municipality of A Estrada (Galicia, Spain), as a concrete manifestation of extractive agrarian restructuring under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on land-use data, socio-metabolic indicators, and qualitative testimonies, it shows how financialization, speculative land practices, and state selectivity reorganize rural space, degrade mixed farming systems, and intensify contradictions between capital accumulation and the ecological and social conditions of reproduction. The article argues that existing green planning frameworks, shaped by market logics and technocratic indicators, are structurally incapable of confronting these dynamics. As an alternative, it …


From Models To Modules: Towards A Change Of Approach In Postcapitalist Political Economy, Simon Tremblay-Pepin Jul 2026

From Models To Modules: Towards A Change Of Approach In Postcapitalist Political Economy, Simon Tremblay-Pepin

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

In this article, I take for granted the existence of a field of social sciences called postcapitalist political economy. This field of research emanates from the critique of capitalism and seeks to establish, in theory and practice, alternative political and economic systems to capitalism. I argue that in its late and post-Soviet period (1988 – 2012), this field has mostly, but not solely, been based on debates between all-encompassing models. Analyzing its contemporary period (2013 to now), I will sustain that we are partly witnessing a transfer from a model-based approach to a modular one. I present six arguments to …


Toward A Corporeal Materialism. Response To Reviewers, Banu Bargu May 2026

Toward A Corporeal Materialism. Response To Reviewers, Banu Bargu

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Embodying The Masses. Review Of Banu Bargu's Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), James Martel May 2026

Embodying The Masses. Review Of Banu Bargu's Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), James Martel

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Worldmaking Against Disposability: Review Of Banu Bargu’S Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Daniel Loick May 2026

Worldmaking Against Disposability: Review Of Banu Bargu’S Disembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Daniel Loick

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Toward A Non- Or Post-Historical Materialism. Review Of Banu Bargu'sdisembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Amy Allen May 2026

Toward A Non- Or Post-Historical Materialism. Review Of Banu Bargu'sdisembodiment: Corporeal Politics Of Radical Refusal (Oxford University Press, 2024), Amy Allen

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Jason Read's The Double Shift: A Double Reading, Tedd Siegel May 2026

Jason Read's The Double Shift: A Double Reading, Tedd Siegel

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


(En)Gendering Capacity: Neoliberalism, Empowerment, And Responsibility For Women In The Un’S Capacity Building Agenda, Sabrina K. Harris Dec 2025

(En)Gendering Capacity: Neoliberalism, Empowerment, And Responsibility For Women In The Un’S Capacity Building Agenda, Sabrina K. Harris

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article analyzes how the UN constructs capacity building as an element of its development agenda. It theorizes that the UN operates as a governmental actor, adopting and pursuing a political rationality of good governance, while also navigating structural limitations to its organizational authority in implementing this agenda imposed by the liberal international order. As such, this article argues capacity building emerges as a valuable technology of development for several reasons: firstly, it operates as an individual-level intervention, circumventing UN limitations on authority in mandating state action, and secondly, it is framed as demand-driven and empowering while delivering on the …


Late-Stage Capitalism And Consumerism In Higher Education: A Morphogenetic Analysis, Kallen Zhou Dec 2025

Late-Stage Capitalism And Consumerism In Higher Education: A Morphogenetic Analysis, Kallen Zhou

Publications

Facing widespread student disengagement and dissatisfaction, U.S. higher education is undergoing a paradigm shift, detaching from its civic and pedagogical origins. A key force driving this transformation is the rise of student consumerism. While existing literature documents market-driven actions adopted by higher education institutions (HEIs) and the consumer roles students play, it overlooks structural market forces. Specifically, little theorization exists on the relationship between late-stage capitalism and student consumerism. This paper addresses that gap through two steps: first, offering a historical analysis of the traditional university model, late-stage capitalism, academic capitalism, and the decline of the liberal arts; second, developing …


Are We Witness To The Disintegration Of Capital’S Laws Of Motion? A Review Of Jodi Dean’S Capital’S Grave: Neofeudalism And The New Class Struggle (Verso Books, 2025), Kai Heron Jul 2025

Are We Witness To The Disintegration Of Capital’S Laws Of Motion? A Review Of Jodi Dean’S Capital’S Grave: Neofeudalism And The New Class Struggle (Verso Books, 2025), Kai Heron

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Review Of Jodi Dean, Capital’S Grave: Neofeudalism And The New Class Struggle (Verso Books, 2025), James R. Martel Jul 2025

Review Of Jodi Dean, Capital’S Grave: Neofeudalism And The New Class Struggle (Verso Books, 2025), James R. Martel

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Will There Be A Pill For That? ‘Money Dysmorphia’ And The Medicalization Of Struggles For Subsistence, Bojan Savic Jul 2025

Will There Be A Pill For That? ‘Money Dysmorphia’ And The Medicalization Of Struggles For Subsistence, Bojan Savic

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article questions the rationality, operation, and effects of money dysmorphia as an emerging mental health diagnosis. It critiques the medicalization of financial angst amid the capitalist “polycrisis”, showing how the individuation and somatic pathologization of class subordination, socioeconomic precarity, and struggles for subsistence obscure capitalist inequalities, depoliticize them, and shield them from critique. I identify five concurrent strategies through which struggles for subsistence are medicalized: trivialization, reversal of social import, repetition, direct depoliticization, and the substitution of inequality with poverty. Furthermore, I show how the medicalizing discourse reifies money dysmorphia by constructing its social costs. The article concludes by …


Eviscerating The State: The New Oligarchic And Authoritarian Project To Undermine American Constitutional Democracy, Jean L. Cohen Jul 2025

Eviscerating The State: The New Oligarchic And Authoritarian Project To Undermine American Constitutional Democracy, Jean L. Cohen

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


The Bus Stop At The Heart Of Capitalism, Jamie Van Der Klaauw, Ryan Kopaitich Dec 2024

The Bus Stop At The Heart Of Capitalism, Jamie Van Der Klaauw, Ryan Kopaitich

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Where is the heart of capitalism today? To fight it, we must construct it. But in doing so, we can also construct a public capable of overthrowing it.


Crisis, Class, Hegemony: Three Remarks On The Contemporary Critique Of Capitalism, Brian Milstein Dec 2024

Crisis, Class, Hegemony: Three Remarks On The Contemporary Critique Of Capitalism, Brian Milstein

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Azmanova rightly notes that the present conjuncture has been marked by a vexing exhaustion of utopian energies—which she sees underwritten by a condition of “meta-crisis” and a “paradox of emancipation.” I am sympathetic to her insights, but I wonder how these figure into a broader critique of the politics of present-day capitalism. In a brief addendum to this symposium, I remark on three theoretical problem areas pertinent to the contemporary critique of capitalism: (a) the theory of crisis as it pertains to emancipatory politics, (b) the idea of an emancipatory class, and (c) the concept of hegemony in the context …


Neoliberalism, Neofeudalism, And Precarity: A Response To Albena Azmanova And Jodi Dean, Panos Tsoukalis Dec 2024

Neoliberalism, Neofeudalism, And Precarity: A Response To Albena Azmanova And Jodi Dean, Panos Tsoukalis

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This is a response to the articles of Albena Azmanova and Jodi Dean included in this issue, exploring the intersections and divergences in their analyses of contemporary capitalism. I argue that the lens of neofeudalism that Jodi Dean invites us to entertain can offer a different explanation of Albena Azmanova’s diagnosis of contemporary capitalism. Notably, I propose that capitalism’s neofeudalising tendencies contribute to the rise of inequality, the decline of class politics, and the increase of monopoly power. Contrary to Jodi Dean though, I will claim that there were two crucial transformations of contemporary capitalism that spearheaded the emergence of …


A Comment On Immanent Critique, Ideology, And Power, Enzo Rossi Dec 2024

A Comment On Immanent Critique, Ideology, And Power, Enzo Rossi

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

All contributors to the Radical Critical Theory Circle's symposium ‘Thinking Capitalism in the 21st Century" highlight deficiencies in mainstream critical theory’s analysis of capitalism, but also point to some possible avenues of renewal. This this brief commentary focuses on how one should understand immanent critique—and in particular empirically-grounded versions of immanent critique. The piece's main contentions are that critique should rediscover its high modernist vocation as a Wissenschaft, and that a radical realist approach can uncover new ways for political theory to expose the most important power structures in society.


Toward A Dialectical Theory Of Politico-Economic Regimes, Artemy Magun Dec 2024

Toward A Dialectical Theory Of Politico-Economic Regimes, Artemy Magun

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


From Neoliberalism To Neofeudalism, Jodi Dean Dec 2024

From Neoliberalism To Neofeudalism, Jodi Dean

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Immanent Critique And Dialogical Critical Theory, Paul Apostolidis Dec 2024

Immanent Critique And Dialogical Critical Theory, Paul Apostolidis

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


Universality, Necessity, And Progress: Marx And The Problem Of History, Amy Allen Dec 2024

Universality, Necessity, And Progress: Marx And The Problem Of History, Amy Allen

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

To offer a compelling critique of the present, critical theory needs an account of capitalism that foregrounds its interrelation with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery. To serve as a resource for such an account, Marx’s critique of capitalism and his theory of history need to be disentangled. This analysis revisits the problems of universality, necessity, and progress in Marx’s work in order to show how Marx’s consistently dialectical and critical account of capitalist modernity can be emancipated from the historicist framework that undergirds it.


Review Of Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned The Work Ethic Against Workers And How Workers Can Take It Back, By Elizabeth Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)., Tedd Siegel Aug 2024

Review Of Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned The Work Ethic Against Workers And How Workers Can Take It Back, By Elizabeth Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)., Tedd Siegel

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

No abstract provided.


The (Im)Possibility Of Anti-Systemic Politics: Uprisings, Exilic Spaces, And Alain Badiou, Jason C. Mueller Aug 2024

The (Im)Possibility Of Anti-Systemic Politics: Uprisings, Exilic Spaces, And Alain Badiou, Jason C. Mueller

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The world-system is in crisis, and a flurry of uprisings challenge the mantra that 'there is no alternative' to capitalism. However, some questions remain. What will replace the global capitalist mode of production, and how will those aspiring to transform the system do so? These questions are of relevance to three separate but related domains of research: (1) the study of anti-systemic movements by world-systems analysts; (2) the study of exilic spaces by scholars using an anarchist perspective; and (3) the work of French Philosopher Alain Badiou. This article stages a discussion between these three areas, locating areas in each …


The Contradiction Between Use-Value And Exchange-Value: Ecology, Imperialism, And The Telos Of Production, Larry Alan Busk, Elizabeth Portella Apr 2024

The Contradiction Between Use-Value And Exchange-Value: Ecology, Imperialism, And The Telos Of Production, Larry Alan Busk, Elizabeth Portella

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This article elaborates and defends a critique of capitalism which, despite its appearance in various bodies of work, has not been named or systematically differentiated. The critique locates a contradiction between production for use-value and production for exchange-value, or a contradiction in what we call “the telos of production.” While maintaining that it has some basis in Marx’s work, we defend this model as preferable to the critique of capitalism based strictly on the exploitation of labor (which we call the “exploitation-exclusive critique”). We attempt to show this by applying the two approaches to the empirical realities of the ecological …


The Symbolic Capital Of The Neoliberal University, Chad Lavin Apr 2024

The Symbolic Capital Of The Neoliberal University, Chad Lavin

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The paper examines the concerns about the enduring value of liberal education in the broader context of a shift from a liberal to a neoliberal society. While so much literature on “the neoliberal university” tends to characterize neoliberalism as a hostile force invading the sacred space of the university, the knowledge comprising neoliberalism is in large part the product of research coming out of universities. Using the concept of symbolic capital to explore the role of university researchers in developing and consecrating neoliberal ideas, the paper argues that even in this era of heightened skepticism toward experts and expertise, university …