Eli Zaretsky
New York
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Articles by Eli Zaretsky
Eli Zaretsky, Forms of Attention — Sidecar
In recent years the concept of attention has garnered considerable – well – attention. It has become, we are told, a commodity within the ‘attention economy’, a limited resource over which advertisers, social media companies, streaming services and the like struggle. Though the idea has become increasingly prominent in the age of the internet and smartphones, our interest can be traced back further.
Walter Benjamin’s Would-Be Rescuers
To understand Walter Benjamin’s life, it is best to begin with his death. Attempting to flee Nazi-occupied France, he died by suicide on 26 September 1940, in the village of Portbou, Catalonia. Born into a wealthy Berlin family in 1892, he had been a prodigious intellectual force as a student, anti-war activist and journalist. After Hitler came to power in 1933, however, he became an impoverished and isolated exile in Paris, writing and researching at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
Episode 3: Marxism and the Left
In this special episode we visit the Marxism 2012 Festival in London's Bloomsbury to hear the latest from Marxist thinkers and activists. Professor of European Studies at King's College London, Alex Callinicos, speaks about austerity and how Karl Marx's theories have found increasing relevance in today's recession-weary world. We then take a look at the leftist movements across the Atlantic with Eli Zaretsky, Professor of History at The New School for Social Research in New York.
The Post-Zionist Jew
Many Jews today feel torn. On the one hand, they feel loyalty to Israel, the land of their fellow Jews, many of whom were driven to that country by persecution. On the other hand, they recognise that Israel has been committing crimes against humanity, which are essentially racially driven. They want to oppose Israel’s wars, but they want to do it as Jews. Is there a specifically Jewish way to address this conflict? I believe there is.
What Computers Can’t Do
The question of what computers can’t do was posed in 1972 by the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. Dreyfus’s answer – think creatively – was soon...
What Computers Can’t Do
The question of what computers can’t do was posed in 1972 by the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. Dreyfus’s answer – think creatively – was soon considered an error, but the problem remained. In the New York Times last week, Yuval Harari suggested there is nothing that computers can’t do, as they are learning to mimic humans perfectly. David Brooks was more sanguine in the same paper a few months ago: AI will probably give us fantastic tools that will help us outsource a lot of our current mental work.
Psychoanalysis and politics
Advanced search The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Volume 105, 2024 - Issue 3 Submit an article Journal homepage Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Read this article /doi/full/10.1080/00207578.2024.2350210?needAccess=true ABSTRACT Psychoanalysis and Politics argue that psychoanalysis is at its root a social or group theory, to which a theory of individual psychology is integral.
The Biden Factor
During the US presidential debate last Thursday night something predicted and feared occurred: not that Biden performed poorly but that he was clearly out of his element. From the very first moment he seemed frightened, confused and out of place. He repeatedly garbled answers and slurred words. ‘Senior moments’ are certainly familiar to me, but that does not describe Biden’s trailing sentences, vacant stares and confusion.
Kriza judaizma
Istorija američkih univerziteta puna je primera kako bogati i moćni ljudi – koji se često nazivaju „poverioci“ – maltretiraju nastavno osoblje oko toga šta i kako da predaju, pa nema ničeg novog u nedavnim uspesima savremenih bogataša, Marka Rovana i Villijama Akmana, u poduhvatu svrgavanja čelnica Harvarda i univerziteta u Pensilvaniji. Novost je što je to učinjeno u ime borbe protiv antisemitizma i zaštite prava Jevreja.
Israel and the Crisis in Judaism
The history of the American university is full of examples of wealthy, powerful men – often called ‘trustees’ – bullying the professoriate over what to teach and how to teach it, so there is nothing new in the recent successes of Marc Rowan and William Ackman in toppling the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. What is new is the extent to which this was done in the name of fighting antisemitism or protecting the rights of Jews.
Vek kritičke teorije
„Treba li kritička teorija da se nastavi?“ To iznenađujuće, po mom mišljenju sjajno pitanje, postavio je Aksel Honet u govoru kojim je prošlog meseca otvorio konferenciju na Harvardu povodom stogodišnjice osnivanja Instituta za društvena istraživanja (Institut für Sozialforschung) u Frankfurtu. Ono je dobar primer jedne važne vrednosti kritičke teorije – samorefleksije.
Critical Theory at 100
‘Should critical theory continue?’ This was the surprising and, in my view, admirable question that Axel Honneth posed in his opening address at a conference at Harvard last month to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. The question exemplified an important value of critical theory, namely self-reflection.
Política, feminismo y psicoanálisis - El Salto - Edición General
Salto a contenido Salto a navegación Contenidos portada Accesibilidad image/svg+xml We can't find the internet Attempting to reconnect Something went wrong! Hang in there while we get back on track Lo sorprendente de la politización del psicoanálisis contemporáneo es hasta qué punto se ajusta al identitarismo liberal, a veces denominado ‘wokeness’, que prevalece en la cultura en general y que considera que males sistemáticos como el racismo emanan de las psiques individuales, siguiendo el...
Eli Zaretsky, Psycho-Politics - Sidecar
Ideas As if demonstrating that the repressed does return, politics has erupted in the supposedly apolitical world of American psychoanalysis. An advocacy group, Black Psychoanalysts Speak, and a documentary film, Psychoanalysis in El Barrio, seek to redress the racial and class biases of analysis. Unbehagen, a psychoanalytic list-serve, features a roiling debate over whether it is necessary to match the analyst’s gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation with the patient’s.
‘The White Lotus’
Each season of The White Lotus takes place over seven days at a luxury hotel; the first was set in Hawaii, the second in Sicily. I doubt that it is necessary for me to extol the series. Written and directed by Mike White, the first season was the most celebrated TV series of last year and the second, which I will discuss here with spoilers, is likely to outdo it.
Egos dañados - El Salto - Edición General
«Las razones en pro de una asistencia sanitaria concebida a escala nacional nunca han sido más sólidas», escribe Judith Butler en What World is This: A Pandemic Phenomenology. Lo mismo ocurre con los argumentos esgrimidos a favor de una renta universal garantizada. Los ideales socialistas se renuevan y los movimientos para abolir las prisiones y desfinanciar a la policía ya no son «locas» quimeras. ¿Cómo explicar estas nuevas posibilidades para la izquierda?
Eli Zaretsky, Injured Egos — Sidecar
‘The case for national health care has never seemed stronger’, writes Judith Butler in What World is This: A Pandemic Phenomenology. So too the case for a universal guaranteed income. ‘Socialist ideals are renewed. And the movements to abolish prisons and defund the police are no longer “crazy” pipe dreams.’ How to explain these new possibilities for the left? Butler’s book never mentions Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn.
Eli Zaretsky, Injured Egos — Sidecar
‘The case for national health care has never seemed stronger’, writes Judith Butler in What World is This: A Pandemic Phenomenology. So too the case for a universal guaranteed income. ‘Socialist ideals are renewed. And the movements to abolish prisons and defund the police are no longer “crazy” pipe dreams.’ How to explain these new possibilities for the left? Butler’s book never mentions Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn.
Las cuatro causas de Aristóteles
En el caso de la actual guerra entre Ucrania y Rusia, Aristóteles habría descrito la invasión rusa de Ucrania como la causa eficiente -el precipitante inmediato-, pero habría argumentado que una comprensión más completa debe incluir la historia material de Europa; la forma dada a esa historia por la Segunda Guerra Mundial y su larga secuela, que dejó a los Estados Unidos con el control efectivo del continente, y la dirección general o final de la historia que está en juego en el conflicto.
Aristotle’s Four Causes
According to Aristotle, we cannot understand something unless we understand what causes it, but ‘cause’ for Aristotle was a complex, multi-layered concept.
The Big Lie · LRB 15 February 2021
The impeachment hearings that have just finished in the United States will be remembered as a significant moment in our history, despite the preordained acquittal with which they ended. Modern journalism, even before the internet, makes it almost impossible to form a realistic picture of what is going on in the world. It breaks knowledge up into unco-ordinated categories and ignores context and connection, which are the soul of historical understanding. Above all, the news distracts.
Trump’s Illness and Ours
Last Friday Donald Trump appeared on television to announce that he had contracted the coronavirus and was going to hospital. ‘I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support,’ Trump said. ‘I think I’m doing very well, but we’re going to make sure that things work out.’ To my recollection, this is the only time during his four-year presidency that he has spoken to the entire nation, as opposed to his ‘base’. It is also the only time that he has tried to unite the nation instead of dividing it.
Culling the Herd: A Modest Proposal
Anyone who has studied the history of plantation slavery understands that the management of the modern labouring classes was modelled on the management of animals. One obvious example is racial classification. Another is the micro-techniques of the labour process: forms of discipline, cleanliness and deference, which, as Foucault showed, were based on dressage and other forms of animal training. With the legal abolition of slavery, the problems of managing herds shifted.
Spring 2020 | Dissent Magazine
The Kurds [W]hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics. . . right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very important to have a unified focus. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. Actually almost opposite to each other. —Dilar Dirik, “Rojava vs.
The Mass Psychology of Trumpism
Since the Republican primaries of 2015-16, some people have turned to psychiatry in an effort to locate the irrational wellsprings of Trump’s victory, but so far little progress has been made. This is because most of the effort has gone into analysing Trump, who is often described as suffering from ‘narcissistic personality disorder’. Not only are such diagnoses, made from a distance, implausible; they also fail to address a more important question: the nature of Trump’s appeal.
To turn the mass into a class
Liberal commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have been quick to blame the UK’s general election results on Labour going too far left. In the United States, Democratic Party centrists are preoccupied with warding off Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser extent, Elizabeth Warren. That liberals would seize an opportunity to chastise the left is no surprise.
Trump’s Charisma
Several factors point to a Democratic victory in the next US presidential election, including success in the 2018 midterms, a series of state polls, and enormous rank and file enthusiasm, reflected in the large number of candidates who qualified for the debates. Still, the Democrats vastly underestimated Trump in 2016 and may repeat the mistake in 2020. Wishful thinking is not the only pitfall.
The Mass Psychology of Brexit
Madness, Nietzsche wrote, is rare in individuals, but in groups it is the norm. Britain today is like a child that has been not only abandoned but literally dropped by its parents. It has broken into two different social groups, two politics, two worldviews but also, beneath the surface, two divergent ways of reorganising what psychoanalysts call an object world.
John Perry: The Plunder Continues
« Previous | Home | Next » The Plunder Continues Tags: honduras A fraudulent election one year ago gave Juan Orlando Hernández a second term as president of Honduras. The protests that followed were violently repressed. By the year’s end, 126 demonstrations had been held, leaving 30 people dead, 232 injured and more than 1000 in jail.
Ian Patterson: The Masque of Weaponry
‘Private armament firms, no matter how reputable and incorrupt, depend for their prosperity on the perpetual exasperation of international fears and suspicions … they thrive upon war scares, and they must have occasional wars.’ So concluded The Secret International, an influential pamphlet published in the early 1930s by the Union of Democratic Control.
Eli Zaretsky: The Mass Psychology of Trumpism
Since the Republican primaries of 2015-16, some people have turned to psychiatry in an effort to locate the irrational wellsprings of Trump’s victory, but so far little progress has been made. This is because most of the effort has gone into analysing Trump, who is often described as suffering from ‘narcissistic personality disorder’. Not only are such diagnoses, made from a distance, implausible; they also fail to address a more important question: the nature of Trump’s appeal.
Freud’s Influence | by Eli Zaretsky
I suppose that with recent political events in the United States it has become possible to believe that a complete fraud and mountebank could achieve worldwide status by manipulating public opinion. However, this is not the case with Sigmund Freud, Frederick Crews writes in “Freud: What’s Left?” [NYR, February 23]. Anyone who studies twentieth-century history soon realizes that psychoanalysis is one of the few great success stories of the century.
VersoBooks.com
According to Hillary Clinton, her defeat was caused by two interventions by James Comey, Director of the FBI. The first, eleven days before the election, announced the discovery of a new trove of emails. The second, two days before it, stated that they did not change his original view that Clinton should not be indicted.
Political Freud | Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231172455 248 Pages Format: Paperback List Price: $26.00£22.00 Purchasing options are not available in this country. ISBN: 9780231172448 248 Pages Format: Hardcover List Price: $37.00£30.00 Purchasing options are not available in this country.
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