György Lukács Library project

György Lukács Library project: assistance sought György Lukács was a fundamental figure in the development of twentieth- century Marxist philosophy, theory of culture, and literary criticism.  His works have inspired radical Marxist thinkers from Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin to Agnes Heller and Fredric Jameson.

Moreover, his critical and historical writings on the literary realism played a crucial role in European literary politics from the 1930s to the 1960s.  He was already a key
figure in Central European and German cultural life prior to his turn to Marxism in 1919, a leader in the 1919 Hungarian Commune, a communist organizer, cultural politician, ideologist, and scholar of renown. Subject to a persecutory “Lukács debate” during the Stalinist dictatorship in Hungary in the early 1950s, he participated in the 1956 uprising and, following his arrest and eventual return from Romania, was restricted in Hungary for the remaining decade of his life to conducting his scholarship
with a limited circle of students and collaborators, despite his continuing international influence and prestige.
Throughout his extraordinary six decades of intellectual, political, and cultural life, Lukács wrote constantly, both in German and Hungarian, in forms ranging from reviews, lectures, and polemics to major essays to full-scale studies, including his monumental late aesthetics and ontology.

Although some of Lukács’s major works–such as History and Class Consciousness and Theory of the Novel–have been long translated and widely read, other of the major works have never seen translation into English.  This is true of a large number
of major essays in German as well, and of the Hungarian essays, few have even
appeared in German, much less English.
There are well over 10,000 pages of Lukács’s work that have never
appeared in English translation; the already- translated portion is thus only a
fraction, which represents at best a partial view of his thought and life work.
Lukács’s constant correspondence, speaking, and writing as he moved between
Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow over the course of his adventurous life
also means that a substantial amount of his work was disseminated in
difficult-to-find periodicals, pamphlets, or books.  Nor are even existing English translations easy to access.  Many of the earlier translations of Lukács into English from the 1940s to the 1970s remain out of print or mostly out of reach in limited distribution journals.

 

A project is underway to collect and bring out in English a large amount of previously untranslated writing by Lukács, a “Lukács library,” in the Historical Materialism book series at Brill Publishers.  The first volume, The Culture of People’s Democracy:  Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and Democratic Transition will appear in 2012, and the translation of the first volume of The Particularity of the Aesthetic has been initiated.  Although we are exploring grant and other funding, we presently have no financial backing.  Therefore we are seeking two kinds of assistance:

 

• Suggestions about how we might obtain funds for the project : Are there cultural
institutions, university translation offices, government funded academic
research programs or philanphropic institutions which we could tap into, either
on our own as project editors or through your assistance and collaboration in
the project?

• We would also like to solicit qualified translators who are prepared to donate their
efforts to the project. The translations will be from German (the majority),
Hungarian (a sizeable minority), and Russian (a limited number) into English.
The contribution of translations of individual, shorter works as well as longer
texts would be appreciated.  All translators will be acknowledged for their contributions.

We would particularly like to hear from individual translators or a small group of collaborators who would commit to realizing one of the project volumes of the Lukács Library.
I will be serving as series editor and in many case also editing the individual volumes, providing historical and critical introductions, annotations, and other apparatus.
However, if anyone would like to participate in an editorial or co-editorial role as well, I am open to discussing the possibility of editorial collaboration on particular volumes.  We are interested in getting several volumes into print at the earliest date possible, to help gain institutional support for the project and to make an impact on current discussions with an influx of previously unavailable Lukács writings.

If you are interested in assisting with this project, please get in touch with me.

In solidarity,

Tyrus Miller

tyrus@ucsc.edu

P.S.: If you are attending the Historical Materialism conference in London, following the “For Lukács” session at 12-13:45 on Sunday, November 13, 2011, please join me for lunch afterwards to discuss collaborations and translations for the Lukács Library.

Tyrus Miller

Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies University of
California at Santa Cruz

(831) 459-5079

Conference: Communism, a New Beginning? NYC, 14-16 Oct.

COMMUNISM, A NEW BEGINNING?

Major NYC Conference organised by ALAIN BADIOU and SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Cooper Union, New York, October 14th-16th 2011

Livestream at: www.versobooks.com

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A new conference with leading thinkers to discuss the continued relevance of
the communist idea.

“The long night of the left is coming to a close” wrote Slavoj Zizek
and Costas Douzinas in their introduction to THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM. The
continuing economic crisis, the shift away from a unipolar world defined by
American hegemony, and the ecological crisis mean that growing numbers of people
are keen to explore an alternative, and to re-discover the idea of communism.
With the advent of the Arab awakening millions have sought new ways to overcome
corruption and dictatorship.

Responding to Alain Badiou’s proposition of the ‘communist hypothesis’, the
leading thinkers of the left convened in London in 2009 to discuss the
perpetual, persistent notion that, in a truly emancipated society, all things
should be owned in common. Two years later, the discussion continues—this time
in New York.

Organised with Verso Books, eight leading thinkers will be discussing
COMMUNISM: A NEW BEGINNING? at Cooper Union on the weekend of October
14th-16th.

Verso is glad to announce that we will live stream the conference on our
website, from Friday, Oct 14th at 6pm. You’ll need to log in to access the
video page, so please register now if you don’t yet have an account.

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CONFERENCE PROGRAMME:

FIRST SESSION: Friday Oct 14, 6-9 PM (moderator: ZIZEK)

Slavoj Zizek: SHORT INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Frank Ruda: REMEMBERING THE IMPOSSIBLE. FOR A META-CRITICAL ANAMNESIS OF
COMMUNISM

Alain Badiou: POLITICS AND STATE, MASS MOVEMENT AND TERROR (read by Bruno
Bosteels)

SECOND SESSION: Saturday Oct 15, 10AM-1PM (moderator: ZIZEK)

Bruno Bosteels: ON THE CHRISTIAN QUESTION

Susan Buck-Morss: COMMUNISM AND ETHICS

THIRD SESSION: Saturday Oct 15, 3-7 PM (moderator: BOSTEELS)

Adrian Johnston: FROM SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM TO SOCIALIST SCIENCE. NATURDIALEKTIK
THEN AND NOW

Jodi Dean: COMMUNIST DESIRE

Etienne Balibar: COMMUNISM AS COMMITMENT, IMAGINATION, AND POLITICS

FOURTH SESSION: Sunday Oct 16, 10AM-1PM (moderator: BOSTEELS)

Emmanuel Terray: COMMUNISM: WAYS AND MEANS OF THE RECONSTRUCTION

Slavoj Zizek: CONCLUSION: FREEDOM IN THE CLOUDS

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UPDATE: Alain Badiou unable to attend

With great regret we have to announce that, due to illness, Alain Badiou will
not be able to attend the conference Communism, A New Beginning? this weekend.
We are all extremely disappointed but we hope you’ll join us in wishing Alain a
swift recovery. He has prepared a text to be read (by Bruno Bosteels) so will
still be able to contribute to the conference, and we still expect the
conference to be an extraordinary event.

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For more information on the Verso livestream from New York:

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/706-communism-a-new-beginning-alain-badiou-and-slavoj-zizek-with-verso-books-at-cooper-union-new-york-october-14th-16th-2011

Honneth on student protests in general and in Chile in particular

“It is a duty of every state to nurture a well-informed public and for this reason all higher education should be free (kostenlos)…. Education (Bildung) should not be mere training (Ausbildung) for the marketplace, education should not be marketised so that only the rich can afford it and all students become burdened with unrepayable debt…. There is no reason not to support the spread of the student struggles we are witnessing in Chile and elsewhere.”

Full speech here (German with Spanish subtitles)

Konferenz: Kraft der Dinge

Kraft der Dinge.

Dinge, Gegenstände, Objekte in der Phänomenologie

Internationale Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Phänomenologische Forschung

28. September bis 1. Oktober 2011

Institut für Kulturwissenschaft, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Programm hier.

XXII Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie

Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, München, 11. – 15. September 2011

Including papers by Habermas, Brandom, Gabriel and Zizek.

An Imagined Conversation between Hölderlin and Hegel

“In January Louis XVI, Citizen Louis Capet, was publicly executed. The event weighed upon the friends in the clandestine Jacobin society [at the Evangelisches Stift]. True, many celebrated this bloody end to the monarchy and the death of tyranny. But the majority feared this death was only the beginning.

A confused Hölderlin, leaving the debating hall, pulled Hegel close.

Didn’t you wish for the death of despots, Fritz, didn’t you write poems calling for it? And as soon as it actually happens you are weak and plaintive. Is it valid only as an idea and not in reality?

You are right, Hölderlin replied. I don’t know. When I look at the reality I begin to fear it.

And your unfreedom?

Could it not all be achieved without violence?

And the violence that the King also used?

It was dreadful, Hegel, but he used little violence to subjugate many.

How else could it be overcome [aufzuheben]?

I don’t know.

Hegel saw that his friend’s doubts had almost brought him to tears, and answered for him: the King, when left alive, would have tried to win over the old powers again.

And the power of the Jacobins? asked Hölderlin quietly. Is it that of the people? Who really wields this power? Won’t they now kill Brissot and his friends?

We need time, Hölder. And the people must learn.

In the face of violence? Of streaming blood?”

(Peter Härtling, Hölderlin)

 

London Round-up

Some of the better analysis from last week: David Harvey, Zygmunt Bauman, Al-Jazeera, Owen Jones, Seumus Milne, and Owen Hatherley, philosophy’s own Chris Reid, Nina Power, Evan Calder Williams, Alberto Toscano and Toni Negri and probably the most reliable eye-witness, Paul Lewis.

Zeitschrift: Der Blaue Reiter

Philosophie & Wirtschaft: Krise und Zukunft des Kapitalismus

Angesichts regelmäßig auftretender Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrisen ist eine philosophische Kritik der ökonomischen Vernunft überfällig! Regelt die „unsichtbare Hand des Markts“ die Verteilung der Güter wirklich gerecht? Wie lassen sich Moral und wirtschaftliches Konkurrenzdenken versöhnen? Lässt sich die Marktwirtschaft zivilisieren? Welche Wirtschaftsordnung verhindert den Hunger in der Welt? Brauchen wir ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen? Mit welchem Wirtschaftssystem sollen wir die Güter erwirtschaften, die den Luxus von Philosophie, Kunst und Wissenschaft
ermöglichen?

Mehr Infos hier.

 

CfP: Biopolitics of the Commons

Institute for Humanities and Faculty of Social Science and History Diego Portales University Santiago-Chile Thursday, October 27th 2011, 15.00 – 20.30 hrs.

The commons has emerged as one of the key concepts around which social, political and cultural demands are being articulated and theorized today. Harkening back to the displacement of people from shared communal spaces and their transformation from public into private property – a central act in the development of European capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries—the commons insists on the fundamentally shared character of social life: that everything from language to education, from nature to our genetic inheritance, belongs irreducibly to all of us; to a living which is, in that sense, always ours.

Moreover, in a national and global conjuncture, where the private seems to appropriate everything that is collective, this symposium will explore which are the possible answers given by the contemporary political theory to the so called “accumulation by dispossession”, based on the approaches of Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy and Étienne Balibar, among others.

To this end, we invite scholars who would be interested in participate in this event, to submit an abstract of 300 words (in Spanish or English) by the August 30th, 2011to the professors Ricardo Camargo (ricardo.camargo@udp.cl) and Miguel Vatter (miguel.vatter@udp.cl) There will be a selection of the submitted proposals. The accepted applicants should send the complete paper at least two weeks before of the symposium’s date.

This symposium will count with the presence and participation of Antonio Negri, one of the most prominent political thinkers of our time. Professor Negri has been involved in developing a theoretical approach not only to the notion of the commons, but also to the notions of Empire, Multitude, Intellectual Labor, among others theoretical categories, all of which are embodied in his recent trilogy, co-authored with Michael Hardt: Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth.

The symposium will be closed with an open lecture given by Professor Negri.

CfP: Hegel’s Science of Logic after 200 Years

Call for papers on Hegel’s SCIENCE OF LOGIC, celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Its Publication. The Society for German Idealism will meet on April 4-7, in conjunction with the Pacific APA, at the Westin Seattle in Seattle WA. Papers must not exceed a length of 3000 words.

Papers must be received by SEPTEMBER 1. Papers will be reviewed by a committee.  Three papers will be selected for presentation, and each paper will have a commentator.  Notification of acceptance will be made via email in October. If you would like to serve as a commentator, please email idealism@lclark.edu by 15 September.

More details here