the ideal

In search of lost thinking with Evald Ilyenkov

Sunday/Sontag 12 December 18:00 €5

ExHuman: The Post-Apocalyptic Late Night Show invites you to join the conversation once a month. Each month’s theme asks about the exception that proves the rule, about accelerated repetition, about dead dogs and prevented, forgotten, embodied thinking. It is borrowed from philosophy, history, socio-culture, art and literature and opens the discussion using an example (person, novel, film, album, event, etc.). Angie Volk and Sascha Freyberg will be moderating, with Stefan Paul Trzeciok standing by in the background.

ExHuman: Die postapokalyptische Late Night Show lädt einmal im Monat zum Gespräch. Das jeweilige Monatsthema fragt nach der Ausnahme, die die Regel bestätigt, nach der beschleunigten Wiederholung, nach toten Hunden und dem verhinderten, vergessenen, verkörperten Denken. Es wird der Philosophie, Geschichte, Soziokultur, Kunst und Literatur entlehnt und eröffnet anhand eines Beispiels (Person, Roman, Film, Album, Event etc.) die Diskussion. Die Moderation übernehmen Angie Volk und Sascha Freyberg, Stefan Paul Trzeciok steht im Hintergrund zur Seite.

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How Evald Ilyenkov was ‘found’

Finding Evald IlyenkovHow a philosopher considered the most significant theorist of the Soviet era came to influence Nordic, British, American and German thinkers, as well as revolutionary activists, is revealed in Finding Evald Ilyenkov.

Ilyenkov and his co-thinkers were driven by a desire to rescue Marxism from the dead hand of Stalinist orthodoxy. As cultural theorist and philosopher Vadim Mezhuev remarked, paradoxically, “it was harder to be a Marxist in the Soviet Union than in any other country”.

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What’s the Ideal got to do with Brexit?

Presentation by Paul Feldman

The 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union sent shockwaves around the UK and beyond. Over 17.4 million people voted to Leave. Despite warnings from all the major political parties, voters narrowly rejected the proposal to remain in the EU.

Understanding what lay behind the result leads to a dialectical analysis of the contradictions within the vote, the process which led up to the referendum and the current political impasse at Westminster. Evald Ilyenkov’s concept of the Ideal – which concretely in this case is about the state and democracy – provides us with a tool to explain these contradictions.

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Brexit and the ideal

Brexit-kiss

A contribution from

Penny Cole

The worker voting to leave the EU is rebelling against certain aspects, the ruling aspects you could say, of social and political culture as transmitted to her through an extensive, lifelong, experience of it, starting with the earliest socialisation and on through life and life roles as child, adult, worker, mother, political animal (voter), etc.

She expresses this rebellion through ideas offered to her by those who present themselves as the alternative – leaders with a voice, to put forward a nationalist, racist and historical explanation of her predicament, and an idealised future outside the EU. She takes this on as a single piece of cloth, momentarily, for the duration of this political episode.

There is a material basis for her decision. Her life as a citizen of the EU is hard; she is poor and sees inequality all around her plus terrible dissonance between what the popular culture tells her life should be and what her income will achieve. Continue reading →