A short story about the pitfals of a new law, the General Act for the Dismantling of Normalising Power and Structures of Privilege, and, more philosophically, about the problems of institutionalizing progressive politics through law. Published in The Cabinat of Imaginary Laws, by Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis: Returning to the map of the…[Read more]

The role of the concept of idolatry in Levinas’ thought. Idolatry and Totalitarian thought.

The life of Felix Weil, one of the creators of Frankfurt’s Institut for Social Research, the cradle of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory..

Gay men have been severely affected by the AIDS crisis, and gay subjectivity, sexual ethics, and politics continue to be deeply influenced by HIV to this day. PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a new, drug-based HIV prevention technique, that allows disentangling gay sex from its widespread, 40 yearlong association with illness and death. This…[Read more]

I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to
raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors
of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people
up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious…[Read more]

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and u…[Read more]

What has proportion to do with humor or irony? And what do either of these have to do with being human? Jokes, laughter, and funniness connote excess, exaggeration, incongruity, dissonance, etc., the opposite of proportion–balance, symmetry, Aristotle’s golden mean. Yet, The Philosopher maintains, the wit has found the ideal moderate position b…[Read more]

Was Swift correct that “reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” (Letter to a Young Gentleman)? If so, what recourse is there to change attitudes especially among those who continue to fervently believe unjustified claims and act upon them in a way that affects other people? I will answer the…[Read more]

The discovery of mirror neurons in both primates and humans has led to an enormous amount of research and speculation as to how conscious beings are able to interact so effortlessly among one another. Mirror neurons might provide an embodied basis for passive synthesis and the eventual process of further communalization through empathy, as…[Read more]

I argue that the overt subjugation in the system of American slavery and its subsequent effects offer a case study for an existentialist analysis of freedom, oppression and humor. Concentrating on the writings and experiences of Frederick Douglass and the existentialists Simone De Beauvoir and Lewis Gordon, I investigate how the concepts of…[Read more]

In the first part of this paper, I will briefly introduce the concept of incongruity and its relation to humor and seriousness, connecting the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer and the contemporary work of John Morreall. I will reveal some of the relations between Schopenhauer’s notion of “seriousness” and the existentialists such as Jean Paul Sartr…[Read more]

In this paper I borrow from Maria Lugones’ work on playful ” world-traveling ” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of ” double consciousness ” to make the case that humor can facilitate an openness and cooperative attitude among an otherwise closed, even adversarial audience. I focus on what I call ” subversive ” humor, that which is employed by or on…[Read more]

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven.…[Read more]

This paper investigates the relationships between forms of humor that conjure up possible worlds and real-world social critiques. The first part of the paper will argue that subversive humor, which is from or on behalf of historically and continually marginalized communities, constitutes a kind of aesthetic experience that can elicit enjoyment…[Read more]

Academic freedom is under attack, both in authoritarian democracies, such as Hungary and Turkey, and in liberal Western democracies, such as the United States, the UK, France and Germany. For example, Gender Studies are being targeted by right-wing governments in Eastern Europe, and in France President Emmanuel Macron has attacked post-colonial…[Read more]

The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political…[Read more]