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In the public debate, on the one hand, the so-called cancel culture (CC) is stigmatised as an attack against the Western tradition and the rationality of dialogue, on the other, it is associated with the oblivion of material issues, substituted by identity claims. These two readings can be opposed by a third that frames the events subsumed under CC in a positive way as 'intersectionality', and a fourth that, while appreciating its purpose, challenges its liberal grammar of rights. CC, identity politics and intersectionality - although they identify both broader and more specific sets of problems - can thus be read as the names that different scholars give to the same dynamics. After briefly reviewing some of the literature on the topic, the paper will focus on the conflict between economic instances and identity, first by recalling some reflections from the Marxist tradition on the subject of 'race' and gender, and then by looking at two contemporary Marxist texts, by Asad Haider and Ashley Bohrer. With a different stance on intersectionality, but criticising economicist determinism, the two authors reason about ways of composing social heterogeneity in a political project. This allows for an original reading of some of the issues involved in the discussion about CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a review of Cesarale’s book. The aim of this paper is to discuss the possibility of a political and theoretical radical space outside the framework of the capitalist mode of production. The work of the author depicts a useful political map of the positions of “radical thought”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Althusser worked out two distinct and subsequent interpretation of the political philosophy of Hobbes. In this paper I focus on the older one. According to this interpretation, the philosophy of Hobbes is framed within individualistic humanism. Individualist humanism is one of the conceptual frameworks Marx broke away from when he founded the science of socio-historical reality, that is, historical materialism. This science has made possible to recognize individualistic humanism not just as a false theory, but as a socially active ideology. I thus offer a wide reconstruction of the place of this interpretation in Althusser's philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the notion of law was considered as a Marxian ideology that preached the end of the property of bourgeoisie and reflected on other political and social issues. The encyclical’s purpose was to object to the growing ideology of socialism which sought to abolish ownership. Pope Leon XIII gave voice to social tensions that were enhancing public dismay. Not only did he deny the Marxian demands, but he also proposed a set of new solutions. A standard of the Catholic Church is not to interrupt earthly life; however, when it comes to gross injustice or dynamic transitions, it is possible to give the clergy a voice. Pope has stated that social order is based on truth and justice. Law – understood as a natural component of human life – should be an expression of service of the government that leads society to wealth. The paper is divided into the following sections: a short presentation of how Marx was describing ownership, a demonstration of the Catholic Church’s responsibility for social teachings, and how Leon XIII described ownership in the light of natural law and why denying it is highly unjust, and teaching positive law should be understood properly. The paper concludes with a set of reflections on how the encyclical is still relevant today.

Literature is an open concept and a creative art which expresses human history, experiences, imagination, observations, predictions and suggestions at a particular time in a given society. Either as fiction or non-fiction, literature can be rendered in both spoken and written words. It is often argued whether literature is for itself or the development of the society that produces it. This study, therefore, interrogates how the selected Francophone African novels, namely Sembène Ousmane’s Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, Ferdinand Oyono’s Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Aminata Sow Fall’s La grève des bàttu, Patrick Ilboudo’s Les vertiges du trône and Fatou Keïta’s Rebelle, depict the function of literature. The novelists are selected because of their inclination towards the social transformation paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to raise people’s awareness and mobilize them towards positive change. Based on close reading, the paper is built around Marxist theory which is interested in the class struggle as demonstrated in a literary text, with a view to deconstructing the existing capitalist tendencies in a given society. The findings reveal that the selected novels are focused on the poor conditions socio-politically, economically, culturally and psychologically that exist both during and after the colonial era. The paper concludes that literature helps readers to cope with the socio-cultural, political, economic, religious and other challenges of their immediate as well as remote environments through the process of self-discovery. As such, positive social change is possible through literature.

The paper studies and analyzes the reception of the French Catholic philosopher and the initiator of personalism Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia from the mid-sixties to the end of the 20th century. The paper examines articles on Mounier and his personalism, his works and the influence of some of his ideas. Since the mid-sixties, the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier, as well as personalism as a philosophical direction in general, has largely been perceived as an attempt to synthesize Marxism and existentialism, or as an addition to Marxism. Such an approach was particularly highlighted in the works of Franjo Zenko and Zagorka Pešić-Golubović. This gave personalism, particularly Mounier’s, certain legitimacy and a positive reflection within the then dominant, 'official' Marxist circle, but at the same time it became marginal and questionable to Christian thinkers. It is evident that Mounier's personalism was perceived apart from the rest of personalist 'milieu' (Jacques Maritain, Nikolai Berdyaev, Gabriel Marcel, Denis de Rougemont, and others), which was strongly opposed to Marxism and existentialism. This is also the case with personalist activism, regarding which there is mention only of the left-wing group around Mounier and the Esprit magazine, while the right-wing and national-oriented personalist groups were not mentioned at all. Catholic thinkers and those from emigration built a reserved stance, and from them there are no comprehensive or opinion articles on the subject. The author also attributes the questionable understanding of personalism, as well as the lesser acceptance of Mounier's work, to the fact that there is not a single translation of a Mounier’s work into Croatian language.

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Copyright of Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad is the property of Revista de Relaciones Internacionales, Estrategia y Seguridad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Two years after Erik Olin Wright's death, this article rereads one of his most famous works, Class Counts. This book, published in 1997, can be considered at the same time a contemporary classic of scientific Marxism and the manifest of neo-Marxist class analysis. The objectives of the article are manifold. Firstly, it contextualizes the author's theoretical contribution in his biography, emphasizing his complicated relationship with sociology as a Marxist. Then, it focuses on the book's specific contribution in terms of conceptual work, also looking at the theoretical implications of the empirical results. Finally, it reflects on the resilience of the heuristic capacity of Wright's categories to understand social inequalities in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze two distinct contemporary perspectives on the Foucauldian concept of power and resistance, namely the perspectives enlightened by Judith Butler’s La vie psychique du pouvoir and by Stéphane Legrand’s Le marxisme oublié de Foucault. Although these two approaches are interesting ways of discussing the Foucauldian concept of resistance and power, they fail to take into account the role that intellectuals play in practices of social emancipation. Instead I develop the concept of “specific intellectual” in order to explore in more depth the Foucauldian concept of resistance and social innovation.

Museo de la revolución, the novel by Martín Kohan, develops a fictional counterpoint between two different stories: the disappearance of an activist in Argentina during the seventies and the recovery of his papers by a writer during the nineties. The aim of this work is to analyse the way in which the voices and discourses are linked throughout the text in order to consider some relevant issues of Argentina´s contemporary history. Besides, the novel allows to think about the complex relation between theory and practice throughout the criticism of some aspects of traditional Marxism.