This Week: Platypus Coffee Break & Reading Group

[Pam Nogales]

Platypus Spring 2017: Weekly Coffee Breaks & Reading Group Coffee breaks at Kopi Kopi Cafe (by NYU) are on Tuesdays at 6pm. All are welcome for an informal discussion on politics and the Left. This week, we will discuss the legacy of Critical Theory. To motivate our discussion, we will read "Art and capital without contradiction? An interview with Jay Bernstein," from the April issue of the Platypus Review. On March 3, 2017, Jensen Suther interviewed Jay Bernstein, who teaches philosophy at the New School. Bernstein is the author of a number of books on art, ethics, and Critical Theory, which include The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (1992), Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (2006), Against Voluptuous Bodies: Adorno’s Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (2007), and most recently, Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury (2016). What follows is an edited version of the interview. To find us at Kopi Kopi, look for the table with a stack of the Platypus Review. Please feel free to e-mail if you cannot see us. contact: pcn...@nyu.edu Articles in the Platypus Review will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will also be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about the project to: review...@platypus1917.org. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style Introduction to Revolutionary Marxism Spring 2017 Reading Group MONDAYS, 8–10pm at New York University ROOM 265, Global Center (Thompson st. & Washington Sq. S.) Reading Series: Introduction to revolutionary Marxism Through reading key texts from the high period of the history of Marxism in the 2nd International and its crisis in the early 20th century, the problem of consciousness of this history and its potential political implications in the present are addressed. Readings include Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, the philosophical reflections on Marxism by Lukacs and Korsch, and their ramifications in the Frankfurt School Critical Theory of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno. contact: taylo...@gmail.com Share Tweet Forward • required/ recommended reading + next week:  May 8  Trotskyism  + Trotsky, "To build communist parties and an international anew" (1933) • Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International(1938) + Trotsky, "Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay" (1940) + Trotsky, Letter to James Cannon (September 12, 1939)    May 15  The authoritarian state  • Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations" (1941) (note 32 on USSR) • Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State" (1942)    May 22  On the concept of history • epigraphs by Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson) and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche) on the modern concept of history + Charles Baudelaire, from Fusées [Rockets] (1867) + Bertolt Brecht, "To posterity" (1939) + Walter Benjamin, "To the planetarium" (from One-Way Street, 1928) + Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1933) + Benjamin, Theologico-political fragment (1921/39?) • Benjamin, "On the Concept of History" (AKA "Theses on the Philosophy of History")(1940) [PDF] •Benjamin, Paralipomena to "On the Concept of History" (1940)  May 29  Reflections on Marxism  • Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory”(1942) • Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47) + Adorno, Dedication, "Bequest", "Warning: Not to be Misused" and "Finale", Minima Moralia (1944–47) + Horkheimer and Adorno, "Discussion about Theory and Praxis" (AKA "Towards a New Manifesto?")[Deutsch] (1956)    June 5   Theory and practice  + Adorno, “On Subject and Object” (1969) • Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969) • Adorno, “Resignation” (1969) + Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”) (1968) + Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999) + Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969) Wednesday, May 17 at 6pm   Location: NYU, King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU, Auditorium (1st floor)  53 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012    Panelists: Michael Kinnucan (hypocritereader.com, Democratic Socialists of America)  Daniel Lazaro (contributor to The Nation, LRB, Jacobin and author of The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Decline of American Democracy) Wayne Price (contributor to The Utopian, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, & www.anarkismo.net, and author ofThe Value of Radical Theory: An Anarchist Introduction to Marx's Critique of Political Economy Robert Cuffy (Socialist Workers Alliance, swaguy.com)  Questions: Why has the Left recently supported attempts to politically manage the economic crisis post-2008, against attempts at political change? How can the Left struggle for political power, with the aim of overcoming capitalism and achieving socialism, when the political expression of the crisis of neoliberalism has largely come from the Right (for instance, Trump)?   FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. What is Platypus? Copyright © 2017 Platypus, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have signed up to receive event announcements to Platypus Affiliated Society.