Tarrying with the negative
Slavoj ŽÃžek’s book about
negativity and post-marxism. Post-marxism is interesting, if only
because it seems like a depressing retreat from everything that made
Marxism worthwhile; on the other hand, Žižek insists that post-marxism
doesn’t mean giving up ideas like class struggle and revolution
(indeed, he insists he’s a post-modern Leninist), so I would think
he’s on my side. Hopefully, this book would be a good starting-place
for my attempt to wrest political consequences from post-structural
theory.
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The Anxiety of Influence
Harold Bloom’s book on the relation between Milton and the romantics. Useful because I want to consider the relationship between Milton’s republicanism, the romantic deification of evil, and ideas of the political importance of negativity.
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Subjects of Desire
I’m starting a category of books I think I should read. A lot of them will be to do with stuff I want to do a PhD on, so will be on poststructuralism, romanticism, or radical political theory. Obviously, I could just keep this list on paper, but I thought some people might be interested in it. Also, if you have any suggestions for related books (or if any of the books on my list are crap), let me know. Anyway, the first book is
Subjects of Desire by Judith Butler, one of the books that started off the poststructuralist controversy over Hegel and negation, which I think is a key issue for interpreting autonomist and anti-power directions in contemporary political philosophy.
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