CTHEORY: THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 39, NO 1-2
*** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***
Announcement 1/12/2017 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
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CTHEORY: CONSEQUENCE 2
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Dear CTheory Readers,
“Negative Being” as Contemporary Politics
Caught up in a darkly surreal spinning of fact and fiction, the world
of politics is increasingly as delirious as it is sinister. Here,
Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” finds a home in the White House, the
instantly reversible world predicted by Orwell’s dystopian vision of
1984 links up in real-time with the atavistic mood of Game of
Thrones, the minute-by-minute speed of (media) events outruns time
for reflection, and everywhere the sheer communicative intensity of
social media overpowers the static interpretative framework of mass
media. In this culture of nihilism, Hanna Arendt’s concept of
“negative being” finally makes its appearance in the form of a
political leader who might wear the mask of the thin-skinned
demagogue but whose very real craftsmanship lies in staking the game
of political power–the war of perception–on the psycho-ontology of
‘hatred of existence,’ that always percolating stream of vengeful and
humiliated consciousness that is the very soul of the right-wing in
global politics today.
It is in this context that we publish Consequence 2: a series of
critical reflections on the radically new political situation
demonstrated by the election of Donald Trump and the intensification
of right-wing movements in Europe and elsewhere.
The seven contributions to Consequence 2 are available at:
www.ctheory.net
Leigh Patel, “Trump and Settler Colonialism”
Jared Del Rosso, “‘The Darkness Comes’: Torture in Trump’s America”
Joseph Nechvatal, “Portrait of the 45th President of the United
States”
Mark Driscoll, “The Kids Aren’t Alt-Right (but the Alt-Right
grown-ups are White supremacists)”
Deborah T. Levenson, “There is already a wall”
Charles Derber, “Weimar America? Lessons Of The Elections”
Mark Featherstone, “‘Brexit means Brexit’: On the Horror of the
Other in (Neo)Liberal Britain”
The series is co-edited by Arthur Kroker, Marilouise Kroker and
Stephen Pfohl (Professor of Sociology, Boston College).
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker and Stephen Pfohl,
Series Editors, Consequence
CTheory
VIRALITY 