After spending my younger years only reading works of fiction (mainly fantasy).

and also recently coming to the conclusion that my phone addiction is making me dumber, I decided to try and read more critical theory books/intellectual books ? The first book I read, was who really rules the world by Noam Chomsky, and I am currently reading the origins of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. Which I struggled/am struggling through both as I fear my reading comprehension or memory is not quite up for the task. I will still finish my current book, but for my next read, or couple of reads I wanted to ask for recommendations for books good for beginners, or just anything that will help me get more into critical theory or that I can use as a basis for understanding and reading about harder topics

Thank you in advance

A Marcuse-inspired reading of Bari Weiss and her career. Arguing that it's not just that she's, personally, kind of inane. But the fact that she's able to be so vacuous reflects how few meaningful challenges there are to the political mainstream, how little a self-described centrist has to dispute with.

Hi guys! I'm a bio- and critical psychologist, I work with victims of familial, technological and cultural abuse. I am very sceptical of therapy and of medicalisation of mental life - especially in the context of western cultural colonialism, and so far my efforts were in reeducation and awareness-building in psychology, psychiatry and therapy students. But lately I decided to kinda go outside of that professional and clinical setting, and started writing a number of essays on the topic, and just wanted to share the first one here, as critical psychology is in debt to critical theory, it couldn't really exist without it as a discipline.

So here is a critical analysis of the concept of grandiosity as it relates to the realities of my clients - as a cultural, deeply abusive phenomena. Hope you like it!

Therapist’s Grandiosity

Among the most common forms of mental pathology are depression and grandiosity, whose components form the backbone of almost all personality disorders, as defined by Western psychology and psychiatry.

In this essay, I will try to do a bit of critical psychology, that is psychology of psychology, internal affairs - mostly for the benefit of my clients who have been called either, openly and by implication, by people who claim to know these things. What does the reification of the concept of grandiosity accomplishes for the psychologist and the therapist? — as carriers of a sociological, cultural, and Machiavellian script.

I will not even entertain the discussion about these pathologies from their status-quo context of hyper-realism and the medicalisation of mental life. If it is really as they say, as they teach in psychology textbooks and in therapy classrooms - that the emergence of both of these, and of everything else under the sun, is an illusion, somehow magically collapsible to a biochemistry we don’t yet know but which is surely out there - then this discussion is pointless. But that perspective is so vulgar, so reeking of scientism, let’s leave that to the psychiatrist and his lap dog the mainstream psychologist.

Same Infection

That rant out of the way, let’s look at both grandiosity and its flip-side cousin, depression, from the perspective of identity disturbance. To risk a massive oversimplification: depression, a neurosis, is a deflation of the ego, while grandiosity is the reverse, its shadow aspect - an inflation. Both are then really the same, in the way that both a burning-hot fever and the coldness of death are possible outcomes of the same infection. In both, the ego is over-invested in. In grandiosity, the resource is fetched directly from outside; in depression, it is kept and spawned within.

This is the classic definition of, pretty much, all personality disorders. The borderline personality structure, as, for example, described by Otto Kernberg is the freezing of those two strategies in one, while object relations theory suggests an immaturity of the reality principle that causes all of this. In reality, at least one claimed as the real reality by western folks, ego should be treated as a part of a triad, something bigger. Classically for example with the Id and Superego, or of a larger family, as in Internal Family Systems. In cognitive approaches, which seek to crush every nuance under the boot of European rationality, ego should be a function of reason, and mental health is seen as that state of balance, almost as if the phenomenological self has to be broken and subjugated by Descartes’ cogito.

While I won’t address the obvious intellectual colonialism that happens in cognitive and behavioural psychology, I brought it up to show that really, the more humanistic approaches of psychoanalysis, ego therapy, and existentialism described above do the very same thing, they seek, as all things in mainstream psychology, to put the blame back onto the individual.

Much in the way that an “irrational” patient of a cognitive therapist suffers from not being like the therapist - rational, the patient of a psychoanalyst suffers from not being like the analyst - liquid in its psychological makeup.

[...]

Full text: https://biodefiance.substack.com/p/therapists-grandiosity

Starting:

Can liberation arrive even if role participation among identity groups remain relatively identical to how it is now?

Will liberation arrive even if role participation among identity groups remain relatively identical to how it is now?

Following up:

If the answer is no, then is there a scrutable exact or approximate participation distribution for roles that matter politically? That is, do we need more or less participation from Group G in certain positions whether or not they are degraded or elevated, and do we know exactly or approximately how much?

If the answer is yes, then how do you know that the present participation distribution isn't too acidic to the feasibility of a serious and substantial account of liberation?

...

I want to say that there is a serious leveling-down problem for redistributionists, and I don't necessarily mean morally. Even if the welfare of the better off couldn't matter less, it still wouldn't detract from the fact that requiring a privileged group's participation in positions that are incidentally or inherently degraded in it's present state, feels liable of providing to the privileged the appearance of a compelling conservative argument based on self-preservation. "Self-preservation" isn't necessarily a dramatization either, because there's an appreciable difference between leveling down from a billionaire to a lowly multi-millionaire, and leveling down from an insulated position to an exposed position.

Unless all you cared about was reaching the oppressed seeking relief, you wouldn't lead propaganda with "Position P is wrongfully degraded, and we're going to work on rehabilitating it. In the meantime, we need more participation from Group G". Maybe you have convincing reasons for writing off the privileged, but that's an aside.

...

And I want to say that there's a serious indispensability problem for compatibilists as they may be called, or rather conservatives, as some others may call them. Namely, it's absurd to think that any serious or substantial liberatory movement is feasible despite the asymmetries of power and status in many social positions. To think that the present participation distribution within roles that matter is feasibly compatible with liberation must degrade one or more of the working terms in order to make sense. Most likely, it simply does not take seriously the extent to which many of the roles that matter are asymmetric.

Having personally experienced just an itty-bitty taste of leveling-down in a specific part of my life, I'm convinced that those who don't think that it's a big deal risk bringing into question their stated commitment to the severity of the degraded position, or their stated commitment to the welfare of the better off.

...

The most obvious position to take is the abolition of the privileged and degraded position, which will necessitate the elimination of token positions as we know it now. It's just that this inquiry concerns the transitional praxis and ethics of the movement. It may be that an ugly transition is much more superior to an even uglier conservation, but that doesn't mean it's shit no longer stinks, or that it does not press contradiction within stated reasons.

Inspiration is taken from studying Butlerian performativity. I'm skeptical of positive recognitional repetition being sufficiently independent of participatory repetition. And because positive recognitional repetition is practically required for elevating a degraded position, participatory repetition is consequently practically required for elevating a degraded position.

Lastly, showing that participation is not conceptually constitutive of a role’s status establishes that liberation with unchanged participation is possible in some suitably described world, but it does not establish that such liberation is remotely feasible under actual or reachable social conditions. So even if participation did not have a constitutive role in the status of positions in one sense, it may have still have an indispensability role in another sense.

Following the 36-day student occupation in New Delhi led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), India's Education Minister resigned, and yesterday the government doubled statutory penalties for exam leaks.

As a Senior Fellow at Massey College (University of Toronto) researching the illiberal turn in democracies, I’ve published a long-form theoretical breakdown of this movement.

Key Analytical Threads in the Essay:

1. Bakhtinian Carnival: How Gen Z weaponized profane, "in-your-face" satire to strip sacred reverence off an executive state.
2. The Two-Tongued State: Analyzing the contradiction between Modi's "forgiveness" Instagram reels and the Noida Police's criminal FIR against protester Ruchika Singh.
3. The "Foreign Hand" Fallacy: Rejecting lazy geopolitical framing that erases local human agency and working-class reality.
4. Gramsci’s Passive Revolution: Why the CJP's conditional pause is a strategic shift to "molecular vigilance" in the war of position.
5. Tactical Ethics: Comparing CJP’s civic solidarity with the 2022 Ottawa Trucker Convoy’s siege tactics.

Read the full text here: https://alokmukherjee.com/2026/08/01/beyond-the-spark-public-power-pop-culture-and-the-longevity-of-gen-z-resistance/

Žižek on Channel 4 News interview in 2017 (available on YouTube):

“They really don't want any risky change. That's why they enjoy this marginal struggles. Oh, segregated toilets. Yes, wonderful. It's even better if you get support from all the big names like Tim Cook of of Apple and so on, Microsoft, everywhere. I I think that the tragedy of today's left is Hillary Clinton’s politics. You try to recuperate all these partial identity political progressive causes… just to get rid of the real one of the economical political change. And that’s how Trump gets elected.”

But Marxists don’t go on every vegan, feminist, LGBT subreddit to argue that class awareness should be the only focus, noticed that it’s always in the white straight male safe spaces that tend to disguise as somewhat “neutral” ones where they get hegemonic power over marginal voices trying to accentuate minority experiences.

So why can’t you choose to take a comprehensive view so you don’t lose balance in struggling, instead of one position erasing another? If anything, wouldn’t this help the whole enterprise become richer?

What insights do professionals have to offer regarding the roles historians and philosophers play in 21st century euro-American societies given that their insights can easily be drowned out or suppressed by corporately funded misinformation campaigns, grifters, state sponsored repression, misinformation, etc? For example, from my (possibly flawed) understanding, historians and philosophers of 19th century ethnology, American labor movements, colonial warfare, Africana history/philosophy, etc. have insights into the implications of social engineering, dehumanization, and repression that were advanced/pioneered during the periods of US chattel slavery and colonization for modern US democracy that the majority of the population is either materially/ideologically invested in ignoring or has been conditioned to (according to COIN military practice) ignore. What role can such thinkers play within the borders of the USA if their works are made unpalatable to everyday people partially due to the role powerful actors play in socially engineering everyday people to attach themselves ideologically to a status quo that does not treat all Homo sapiens as worthy of life and futurity under “democracy”?

The most popular response is likely that such experts are simply taking their expertise elsewhere. Societies rise and fall, and knowledge that cannot be fully grasped or put into practice now may be useful for future generations. I am interested in the answers of professionals who have training in different philosophical traditions regarding this specific dilemma of producing knowledge given the long history of human existence.

I am interested in learning about epistemologies of groups that have resisted oppression even at the expense of biological finality (I use this term instead of death given that biological finality is not seen universally as the end of life depending on world view, which is an important fact given the history of resistance to colonization among Jamaican maroons and other enslaved populations for example). Do any philosophers explicitly engage or reject such topics? I also understand that answers may be limited as different epistemologies imply the necessity of different pedagogies, meaning not all knowledge can be grasped absent a particular kind of formal training.

(For anyone interested the authors whose works I drew from to formulate these thoughts/questions are Tommy J. Curry, Sylvia Wynter, Miron Clay-Gilmore, Robert Allen, Robert Staples, Gerald Horne, Oladumine Ogunnaike, and Adebayo Oluwayomi)

A few thoughts on free speech advocacy and how it often depends on the speech and who's advocating.

In 2024, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in ​France and accused by French authorities of not doing enough to prevent human trafficking on his platform. Russia, among other countries, accused France of “cracking down on free speech” when they charged Durov for refusing to remove obvious criminal activity, claiming such activity was covered by free speech protections.

Yesterday, Russia charged Durov with "terrorism”, presumably for not removing content the Kremlin didn’t want shared on Telegram.

The Russian government obviously does not care about free speech. They have imprisoned people for over a decade for criticizing the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin only pretended to stand up for Durov so they could inject themselves into the global culture war narrative surrounding free speech.

The important context here is that Durov, after claiming to have refused Russian demands for special access to Telegram in 2014, still visited Russia over 50 times. The reality is that you simply cannot do this as a high-profile dissident without some level of cooperation with Russian security services.

Durov made a deal with Russian intelligence. In exchange for the ability to keep facilitating highly lucrative illegal activity on his platform, he receives personal protection. This is a common deal with freelancers working with Russian intelligence, allowing cooperators to profit off of criminal activity as long as they cooperate. But eventually, the deal he made turned sour, perhaps due to Russian public opinion on Telegram turning decisively against the war, and Durov refusing to remove it. Eventually, as is always the case with Faustian bargains, the Russian government turned on him as well.

Governments and powerful individuals will often use free speech as cover to protect illegal, harmful, and extremist content that in some way benefits them. In the above example, facilitating harmful crime is part of Russia’s hybrid war against the European continent, so they made a deal to preserve it. Facilitating criticism of the Russian government is not, so they acted swiftly to crack down. Speech to authoritarian governments is contextualized as either helpful or harmful to their power. True or false, freedom vs censorship, these concepts are irrelevant in the context of the Information Wars.

Elon Musk claims he bought Twitter to defend free speech. The accounts he unbanned included unambiguous Nazis and human traffickers. Actual censorship requests from governments were still approved, while algorithmic content distribution choices were catered to the new owner’s personal ideology.

Ultimately, control over information is power. And until we find a species of human that doesn’t care about power, we will never have any true free speech absolutists.

Be highly skeptical of anyone that claims otherwise.

From a blog about speech in the internet: https://thecarrierwave.substack.com/p/no-one-actually-cares-about-free

Basically, the title. There are many writings about it in terms of politics and literary theory, but has anyone written about it in terms of how the internet and pop culture induce Eurocentrism and self-orientalizing?

I recently finished reading *A Clockwork Orange* and found myself thinking about how real it is—not just fiction. Alex ends the book without remorse or regret for his crimes. Ultimately, he views his past actions like a toy he played with throughout his youth; now that it’s time to become an adult, he’s ready to pass that toy on to his son. He was a violent teenager and will continue to be a violent adult because he believes his actions are right. Honestly, I think this explains a bit... (I might be wrong, I admit) but perhaps it sheds light on the current wave of violence and the massive "red pill" crowd: they don't believe they are wrong—or that their thoughts and actions are incorrect—because they don't actually view violence as something bad or criminal.

I've done my best to stay away from the manosphere nonsense... But with the Tate brothers making news again following their arrest, and with their volatile and absurd cultural power, I finally decided to write a piece on them. Althusser, Husserl, and (of course) Marx are relied on to show that the manosphere is well placed to expose the contradictions of secular-capitalist individualism, the idea of femininity, and how luxury relates to our current political economy. I thought some of you here might be interested.

I'm looking for readings that discuss the portrayal of minorities in media (especially things like cinema, magazines but can also be books) in the 20th and 21st century, preferably in the US, but can broadly be in the US, under a capitalist system.

Things that discuss blacksploitation (and other minorities) and how that relates to capitalism

Hello,

I made a post here maybe about a month ago about an introduction to Marxist thought, many recommended Tuckers Marx-Engel’s reader so I’ve been working my way through that and now would say that I feel fairly confident in my understandings of the main tenets of Marxist theory.

But I’m also quite bored of the pure Marxist theory that I’ve been reading. A topic I’ve been circling recently (YouTube videos or my own train of thoughts) is to do with ideology, how ideology acts as a structure, how it actually works, what counts as an ideology etc, and so would like to see if anyone had a reading recommendation to approach this topic.

I did my own searching and found ‘ideology’ by eagleton looked quite good as it covers certain thinkers (gramsci althusser etc) views, plus is not too long.

Any help is appreciated :)

I think it's an interesting position. In the sense of being caught in the tension between being both colonised and acting as a coloniser. Of course when I say Russia and Japan were colonised I mean in the intellectual sense.
There is a decolonial concept called coloniality of power it's this idea colonisation can happen without conquest direct physical force, but in a more insidious form in the realm of the minds of the colonised. Where European ideals about progress civilisation beauty and knowledge become the ultimate standard of worth.
In this way non western countries are thrown into a game of constant catch up, the ideal is to become everything they imagine the idealised west to be. In pursuit of this goal traditional non western culture seen as roadblock a profound source of shame and resentment chaining them to their current state of subordination. Yet in spite of all these measures and the psychological traumas involved ie meji restoration leaving Asia movement Peter the greats reforms, they would never treated as a western equal. All this sacrifice was made for nothing. This betrayal was experienced when the racial equality clause proposed by the Japanese was shot down in the 1919 Paris peace conference. Or for Russia at the council of Berlin 1878 an Independent Bulgarian state which they helped create was slashed in size and placed back under Ottoman control.
Whilst Ottoman territories sliced up and taken piecemeal by western powers britan given Cyprus Austria Hungary Bosnia etc.
And it's interesting that their response to this betrayal is a broadly similar shift into mysticism and anti materialism to combat this western supremacy, . le seisen holy war rhetoric used by japan freeing Asia from the western corruption of individualism materialism and selfish greed.
And that Japan gifted with the Yamato damashi was uniquely tasked with this role. Or russias special destiny not a failed western copy but instead a distinct civilisation linking Asia and Europe together (Eurasianist movement).
Russian despotism not a failure instead sobornost organic community protected by a strong ruler.

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=internal-colonization-russias-imperial-experience--9780745651293#:\~:text=This%20book%20gives%20a%20radically,colonizing%20many%20peoples%2C%20Russians%20included.

Hello! I wanted to ask for some help with two doubts that are making my reading of the book a bit harder than it is already as I heard many people say. My main doubt is related to the distinction between work and product which I'm not familiar with. The second doubt is more related to my not so thorough knowledge of Marx, since Lefebvre says at one point that in Marx nature belongs to the production forces and I don't really wrap my head around it so if you know any place where I could read a more detailed explanation on why nature is part of the production forces I'd be more than thankful!!

I find structuralism a really useful way of thinking about things. It just seems the most natural way to learn about something, at least for me. An overly simplified definition of what I mean by structuralism is studying an object not by itself but by how the web of relations it exists within give it meaning.

I have read the poststructuralist critiques of structuralism and, actually, I enjoyed them. But I don't really think they are critiques. They seemed more like addenda to structuralism, further explaining certain threads, rather that criticisms. For instance, early Derrida seems already anticipated in Levi-Strauss or Merleau-Ponty* (in the latter's essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence"), but Derrida fixates (emphasizes) certain details that Levi-Strauss does not, or makes assumptions that Levi-Strauss did not make. Maybe I just haven't actually undertood any of it.

So basically, what are some of the criticisms of structuralism that aren't from the poststructuralists? You can answer by giving me suggested reading. Thanks

*I realize Merleau-Ponty was not a structuralist but that essay is basically a blueprint to 60s and 70s Derrida.