•  8
    The Right Extremist Identitarian Movement in Europe: A Critical Theory Analysis
    Azimuth: An International Journal of Philosophy 16 (8): 71-88. 2020.
    In this article, I expose the psychologically oriented techniques a core leader of the right extremist Identitarian Movement in the German-speaking context, Martin Sellner, uses to capture new followers. I show that such techniques offer the prospective followers irrational gratifications and release their feelings of failure and frustration of not living up to capitalist and patriarchal values, thereby distracting them from the Identitarian Movement's destructive aims. I also engage with Theodo…Read more
  •  18
    In this chapter, I analyze Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to outline the interaction of socio-economic and psychological factors in today's rise of the global far and extremist right. The ego-ideal refers to the ideal view of ourselves and what we aspire to achieve and is generated through societal standards. The main character, Mr. Stevens, who works as a butler for Lord Darlington in England during World War II, replaces his ego-ideal with his employer to view himself as a "great prof…Read more
  •  5
    In this interview with the Austrian journalist Alexia Weiss, I outline how Austrians missed several chances to confront their political guilt. I then clarify how individual and collective guilt are interconnected, and I explain how the argument that our grandfathers and mothers only "did their duty" echoes the defense mechanisms Austrian perpetrators used in the postwar trials. I also show that attempts in Austria to derail the staging of Thomas Bernhard's Heldenplatz play in the eighties paral…Read more
  •  123
    In this paper, I discuss three personal examples of contemporary Austrians' defensive reactions when confronted with the book The Political of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (Leeb, 2018). The defensive reactions underline that Austrians evaded confronting themselves with their repressed guilt about their violent National Socialist past and failed at working through their past. It also explains the centrality of "embodied reflective spaces" and the idea of the "subject-in-outlin…Read more
  •  501
    Laughing at the Other: Toward an Understanding of the Alt-Right with Adorno
    In Amirhosein Khandizaji (ed.), Reading Adorno: The Endless Road, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 75-100. 2019.
    What is the growing appeal of the “Alt-Right” (Alternative Right), a white-supremacist and anti-feminist movement, for young, primarily male, Millennials in the United States? In this chapter, I outline how the Alt-Right uses laughter in its culture industry on the internet to recruit new members to its right extremist ideas. I also explain how laughter connects Alt-Right extremism with Trumpism. Throughout the chapter, I draw on Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theorizing of laughter fabricated by …Read more
  •  25
    Castration Anxiety, COVID-19 and the Extremist Right
    Global Discourse 3 (11): 387-403. 2021.
    In this article, I draw on Theodor W. Adorno’s works on (neo-)fascism and psychoanalytic theory to outline the threat of castration in contemporary capitalist societies on economic, interpersonal, and bodily levels. I then explain how the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened people’s castration anxieties on all three levels in a class- and gender-specific way. Finally, I expose how the right extremist president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the right extremist leader of the Austrian Freedo…Read more
  •  24
    In this article, I respond to David McIvor’s and Lars Rensmann’s discussion of my recent book, The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (2018, Edinburgh University Press). Both invited me to clarify my use of Arendt in my conception of embodied reflective judgment. I argue for a stronger connection between judgment and emotions than Arendt because one can effectively shut down critical thinking if one uses defense mechanisms to repress feelings of guilt. In response to M…Read more
  •  548
    In this article, I bring Lacan and Foucault into a conversation to show that both theorized the hysteric subject as the moment of the limit in power, where power fails to subordinate us. Moreover, both thinkers theorized the hysteric as the paradigmatic example of a political subject that not only rebels but radically transforms power structures. Next, I show that Freud's Dora case refers to a psychoanalytic discourse on hysteria, which turned into the master's discourse. Such master's discourse…Read more
  •  325
    In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in …Read more
  •  32
    This chapter combines the insights of Sigmund Freud and Theodor W. Adorno to explain some of the psychoanalytic mechanisms that contributed to a scenario where people voted for a leader who undermines their very existence. Trump successfully exploited the feelings of failure of the millions of Americans who have not lived up to the liberal capitalist ideology of success. By replacing their ego ideal with their leader, Trump voters could get rid of the frustration generated by such an ideology. T…Read more
  •  14
    Mourning Denied: The Tabooed Subject
    In Alexander Keller Hirsch & David W. McIvor (eds.), The Democratic Arts of Mourning: Political Theory and Loss, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 65-82. 2019.
    This chapter shows that taboos erected around crimes inhibit individuals and nations' work of mourning for the victims of crimes. The work of mourning is the precondition that individuals and nations take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims and their descendants, and make sure that such crimes are not repeated. I bring Theodor W. Adorno and Sigmund Freud in conversation to explain the connection between taboos and the failure to mourn. I further detail this connectio…Read more
  •  13
    In this article I respond to James Martel’s generous review of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In particular, I respond to his suggestion that I may be too quick to suggest that Bulter wants to give up on the subject entirely. I reiterate that for Butler (which I discuss in Chapter six of my book), we must be recognized by an alienating Other to secure our existence. As a result, the moment of becoming a subject is always bound up with subordination that we can only escap…Read more
  •  7
    Critical Dialogue: The Misinterpellated Subject by James Martel
    Perspectives on Politics 16 (1): 170-172. 2018.
    In this review, I outline the significant contributions James Martel's book The Misinterpellated Subject (2017) makes: First, it shows us that processes of liberal interpellation are linked to the violence inherent in the project of (neo)liberal capitalism. Second, it theorizes an alternative subject that emerges out of subjects' own particular communities and struggles. Third, it draws on historical examples and a variety of literature. Fourth, it shows us how non-elites often spark revolutions…Read more
  •  205
    Theorizing Feminist Political Subjectivity: A Reply to Caputi and Naranch
    Journal of International Political Theory 2018 (published online first, May 2018): 1-22. 2018.
    In this article, I respond to Laury Naranch’s and Mary Caputi’s discussion of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In response to Naranch, I clarify how the political subject-in-outline translates into collective political action through the figure of the Chicana working-class woman. I also explain why the proletariat, more so than the precariat, implies a radical political imaginary if we rethink this concept in the context of my idea of the political subject-in-outline. I al…Read more
  •  291
    Mass Hypnoses: The Rise of the Far Right from an Adornian and Freudian Perspective
    Berlin Journal of Critical Theory 2 (3): 59-82. 2018.
    Why did millions of people respond to the failures of neoliberal capitalism by voting in leaders that further undermine their existence? In this article, I combine the insights of the early Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Theodor W. Adorno) with the insights of psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud) to show how economic factors interact with psychological factors in the rise of the far-right today. The propaganda techniques used by far-right leaders create conditions in masses that are akin to …Read more
  •  308
    Why did the white working classes in the United States and elsewhere turn to the far right instead of uniting with the raced and gendered working class to overthrow capitalism? In this paper, I bring core concepts coined by Karl Marx in conversation with Jacques Lacan to show how the far-right exploited desires and fears around subjects' fundamental non-wholeness, which the insecurities of neo-liberal capitalism have heightened, for its political gain. I explain how the far-right offered its fol…Read more
  •  300
    The Contemporary Frankfurt School's Eurocentrism Unveiled: The Contribution of Amy Allen
    with Robert Nichols, Yves Winter, and Amy Allen
    Political Theory 46 (5): 772-800. 2018.
    In her latest book, The End of Progress, Amy Allen embarks on an ambitious and much-needed project: to decolonize contemporary Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As with all of her books, this is an exceptionally well-written and well-argued book. Allen strives to avoid making assertions without backing them up via close and careful textual reading of the thinkers she engages in her book. In this article, I will state why this book makes a central contribution to contemporary critical theory (in …Read more
  •  32
    In this article, I respond to Laury Naranch’s and Mary Caputi’s discussion of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In response to Naranch, I clarify how the political subject-in-outline translates into collective political action through the figure of the Chicana working-class woman. I also explain why the proletariat, more so than the precariat, implies a radical political imaginary if we rethink this concept in the context of my idea of the political subject-in-outline. I al…Read more
  •  22
    Rethinking embodied reflective judgment with Adorno and Arendt
    Constellations 25 (3): 446-458. 2018.
    In this article, I develop an account of judgment that I term embodied reflective judgment, which implies that thinking and feeling are connected, entangled, and crucial for critical judgment. How we think about something can prompt an emotional response, and that response can prompt further reflection necessary for critical judgment. I clarify the relationship between thinking and feeling in judgment by foregrounding guilt feelings as a specific issue that individuals and political collectiviti…Read more
  •  38
    Rebelling against suffering in capitalism
    Contemporary Political Theory 17 (3): 263-282. 2018.
    In this article, I bring Marx and Adorno into conversation with affect theory to establish three points: First, an affective reading of the concepts of alienation and exploitation via Marx’s metaphor of the “vampire capital” explains how capitalism depletes raced, gendered, and sexed working class of their bodily and mental powers. Second, discussing these thinkers’ ideas in the context of the larger mind and body opposition revives attention to the body in contemporary political theory and expo…Read more
  •  496
    Marx and the gendered structure of capitalism
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (7): 833-859. 2007.
    In this paper, I argue that Marx's central concern, consistent throughout his works, is to challenge and overcome hierarchical oppositions, which he considers as the core of modern, capitalist societies and the cause of alienation. The young Marx critiques the hierarchical idealism/materialism opposition. In this opposition, idealism abstracts from and reduces all material elements to the mind (or spirit), and materialism abstracts from and reduces all mental abstractions to the body (or matter)…Read more
  •  24
    Female Resistance or the Politics of Death? Rethinking Antigone
    In Gabriel Ricci (ed.), Critical Theory Today, Transaction. pp. 223-240. 2017.
    Most literature in contemporary critical, feminist, and psychoanalytic thought reads Antigone as a figure of resistance and revolutionary change. In this chapter, I challenge such a reading. I discuss Sophocles’ Antigone as a paradigmatic example of what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben identified as homo sacer, who is banned from society and deprived of rights and, thus, may subsequently be killed with impunity. Antigone dwells at the zone of indistinction between the public an…Read more
  •  146
    In this article, I draw on Adorno's concept of the non-identical in conjunction with Lacan's concept of the Real to propose a "theoretical outline of the subject" as central for feminist political theorizing. A theoretical outline of the subject recognizes the limits of theorizing, the moment where meaning fails, and we are confronted with the impossibility of grasping the subject entirely. At the same time, it insists on the importance of a coherent subject to effect transformations in the soci…Read more
  •  19
    The Politics of Misrecognition: A Feminist Critique
    The Good Society 18 (1). 2009.
    For the past decade and a half, social and political thinkers have appropriated the Hegelian trope of a "struggle for recognition" to generate theories that lead to a democratic politics of inclusion. The different strands within the "politics of recognition" debate share the conviction that "recognition" is a central human good and the precondition for justice in pluralist societies. However, in this article, I show that recognition theorists, instead of creating a democratic politics of inclus…Read more
  •  6
    In this chapter, I draw on Michel Foucault to explain the mechanisms of marginalization of women from working-class origins in academic institutions in the context of the U.S.A. Next, I explain how the discursive construction of the working classes as “the Other” in academic knowledge production is part of a disciplinary power that functions to keep women from working-class origins either out or at the margins of academic institutions. In academic institutions, disciplinary power aims to discipl…Read more
  •  5
    The color of the book’s cover alludes to the time and context in which this critical volume originated: the 3rd Interdisciplinary Conference Celebrating International Women’s Day at the New School for Social Research in New York City. At that time, ‘orange alerts’ were issued by the United States to create a climate of fear and thereby stifle any critical debate of its foreign and domestic policy. The feminist thinkers presented in this volume are alert that such a critique is needed. They draw …Read more