Hi all,

This is more of a search for personal advice than a theoretical question.

I work at a university in Australia and, like many universities around the world, our institution is rapidly descending into a neoliberal cesspit. Everyday at work I am forced into contact with ideas of 'best practice.' 'excellence (in some vague abstract sense),' 'impact,' the push for every academic to have a LinkedIn presence, to compete for industry grants (in Australia that usually means the mining industry), and build a brand around oneself. I'm finding it so overbearing and it causes me a lot of grief given, like many of you, I'm sure, I consider myself a critical thinker, wanting to challenge the assumptions underlying a lot of this language and institutional structure.

I guess my question is, how do you all stay sane in such an environment, and how do you actually practice criticality when many just uncritically adopt the language and behaviour of these institutional trends?

Thanks in advance and I hope everyone else is keeping well in these times.

Hi! I finished my master's degree, i looked into nostalgia and melancholia in an internet subculture on social media (I'm keeping it vague on purpose).

I feel the need to change since a phd is longer and requires more work than a masters. And i need to work with new concepts and theories.

Is there something to do with hauntology?
And the feeling of doom?
In media studies?

I think, of course there is, but what could actually be interesting?

I'm currently reading mark fisher and I'm somewhat inspired. I like anything related to negociations between (possible) past, present, and futures, and internet culture. I know it is not specific, but if someone wants to help me brainstorm, i'd be really happy about it :)

Pls be kind I'm young and I know nearly nothing, I'm trying my best

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A Phrase That Travels on Its Own

Hi everyone,
I am trying to track down the exact bibliographic source or published volume for a famous quote by D.W. Winnicott from January 1967.
In it, he openly discusses how he got "stuck" with the concept of delusional transference until Margaret Little clarified it for him. The quote goes:

"Now there was something I needed and could not manage by myself, and that was a full use of the concept of delusional transference. This is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with in analysis, and from my point of view this bit I really took from someone. If Margaret Little hadn't been able to clarify it I would have been stuck, as I think a lot of psycho-analysts are stuck. That is, then, a little bit of my life where I really got something from someone else, almost as if I had stolen it out of my mother's purse."

I believe (but I’m not sure) he said this in January 1967 at the British Psychoanalytical Society during the responses/Q&A after presenting an early version of his paper "The Use of an Object." However, while the main paper ended up in Playing and Reality (1971), this specific post-presentation commentary doesn't always appear in standard editions of that book.

Does anyone know exactly where this discussion transcript is published? Is it in The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott, a specific biography (like Rodman's), or an archival bulletin of the British Society? Any help or citation pointing to where I can read the full context of this exchange would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, everyone! To take my mind off all the work at the academy, I’ve started putting together a YouTube playlist featuring songs that reference ideas or authors from social and critical theory.

The rule is simple: only songs that directly mention an author’s name or ideas (e.g., “Jacques Derrida'' by Scritti Politti; “Death of Ferdinand de Saussure” by The Magnetic Fields, etc.) or songs that can be interpreted through the ideas of one or more of the authors in question (e.g., “Ping Pong” by Stereolab, which, in my opinion, belongs to this second category) count.

Looking forward to your suggestions! !! Special prize for the most obscure song :)

Baudrillard uses Borges fable as an example of a second order simulacra. The territory(reality) comes before the map(simulation). But today that is no longer the case the map comes before the territory (what we now consider to actually be reality but it came from a simulation)

There are four stages of simulacra and Im going to use Hurricane Helene as an example. At the very beginning we had reality. The physical devastation, us completely cut off from the outside world. Then we had the death toll, pictures of everything that happened and raw footage. This is stage 1.

For stage 2 we have the simulation that adheres but denatures reality. Just footage and news reports of the devastation. It doesnt cover the full reality that we went through.

For stage 3 we have the political narratives that came after the news reports. Narratives like Elon Musk saying FEMA was purposely trying to limit planes from coming in in order to hurt us.

For stage 4 (hyperreality) we have the complete simulation that came from the simulation in stage 3. We have the idea that FEMA is taking over peoples land (and an armed man showing up to stop them proving that this was more real than reality for him) and the idea of the government manipulating the weather to take over the land for lithium. There are plenty more examples of our hyperreality but thats because its ongoing. The reality of the hurricane has been decaying as we rebuild and there will be no reality to return to.

Hello, I am doing a BSW program and a project I have talks about describing my personal ontology... i have asked my prof for clarification/what the expectations are but the response actually just sent me further into a tailspin, and reading other threads like it has not been helpful.

I have a very hard time with abstract concepts (read: painfully neurodivergent) so please help me out here... I've read the 'dumbed down' versions of it like talking about how a grocery store is laid out and categorized which does make sense over there but doesn't help me figure out how to explain my own way of thinking.

Does anyone have a fool proof, not a wall of academic non-sense, simplified version of even different ontological perspectives maybe, like core ones, that i can pick and choose things that fit with how I view the world?

The argument I develop in the essay I linked is that socialists can subvert the categorically outdated nature of theory, due to communism being only the movement by which we abolish the present state of things, by turning to psychoanalytic views on literature. Art, then, can act as a treasure-trove of truth about ourselves and the world which can help inform the Party during any given crisis. I am but an amateur writer, but I would love to hear feedback! I am also interesting in knowing how other thinkers might have engaged with the subject. Lastly, posting links does not seem to be against the sub's rules, but if needed I can just post the essay in full here on reddit.

Link: https://historical.substack.com/p/what-a-bad-essay-knew-poetry-is-the

C’est là que commencera une nouvelle pratique de la critique situationniste : introduire, dans le monde interprété, des expériences qui résistent à leur interprétation, et dans le système de récupération, des gestes dont la récupération ne constitue plus la victoire.

I don't know where else to post this but I wish everyone in the US could grab a copy of Foucault's Discipline and Punish right now. Because the administration's plan to live stream a firing squad should be seen, and I think would be seen by Foucault, as the act of an authority regime that has lost legitimacy. I think it is an atavistic expression of State violence and an admission that modern social conditioning or "discipline" is failing.

When I was studying critical theory 30 years ago I could not imagine the future that we have found ourselves in. I think this planned spectacle is the clearest sign that real social change is underway. Far from being overdetermined, the authority of the State is crumbling.

Am I overreacting? Is anyone else getting this vibe?

I’ve been thinking about Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of "floating responsibility" and Max Weber’s idea of the "division of responsibility" in bureaucracy.

Because I happened to read Bauman first, reading about Weberian bureaucracy immediately reminded me of him, and I can't help but connect the two. I feel like I sort of understand the distinction, but I don't think I have a completely clear grasp of it yet.

Could someone help clarify the difference between the two?

(Note: English is not my first language, so I used AI to help write this post.)

Wow gang, I can’t believe it’s been four years since Bruno Latour died of sdlgiualsdkfeihgasdfoiwukbjuchiwue (a term I’ve just now coined to refer to Latour’s own conception of his terminal illness, in precise analogy to his coinage of the term “Saodowaoth”)

He's had a great influence on my thinking, as many of you may remember. Thinking of him, and reading some of his greatest hits today. Here's a personal favorite.

I am an undergraduate reading the chapter on "Herrschaft" (Domination) from Max Weber's Economy and Society, specifically the sections on bureaucracy and legal authority.

While Weber's conceptual precision is impressive, I often struggle with how these dense historical typologies speak to our understanding of modern society. Below are four interconnected points where I find myself getting stuck, along with tentative connections to Norbert Elias and Zygmunt Bauman. Any insights, corrections, or pointers to secondary literature would be greatly appreciated.

1. Bureaucracy and Capitalism: The English Paradox

Weber characterizes bureaucracy as technically superior to all other administrative forms and stresses its structural dependence on the modern money economy. However, historical England pioneered modern industrial capitalism and built a global empire while relying on unpaid local notables (gentry and Justices of the Peace) rather than a centralized, specialized state bureaucracy.

Should we understand bureaucracy as an indispensable prerequisite for rational capitalism, or rather as one historically contingent apparatus among others? How does Weber reconcile this tension between the theoretical demand for calculable administration and the English historical reality?

1. Common Law vs. Roman Law, and Social Carriers (A Parallel to Elias)

Weber notes that English Common law remained an empirical, precedent-bound art characterized by high costs and procedural complexity. In his analysis, it served capitalist interests not through systematic elegance, but because an autonomous guild of legal notables monopolized practice and provided practical predictability for propertied classes—resulting in what he terms a practical "denial of justice" (Justizverweigerung) for the economically vulnerable. In contrast, Germany lacked such a socially powerful stratum of notables, enabling university-trained specialists in Roman law to staff the princely state bureaucracies.

This structural contrast in the social carriers of law reminded me of Norbert Elias's analysis in The Civilizing Process. Elias argues that German bourgeois intellectuals were excluded from political and courtly practice, retreating into university-based, inward "Kultur," whereas in England, upper- and middle-class codes gradually interpenetrated within worldly governance. Is it sound to draw a parallel between Elias's account of elite habitus and Weber's contrast between autonomous legal notables and bureaucratic specialists, or does that overextend Weber's focus on legal technique?

1. Collegiality and the Dissolution of Responsibility (Weber vs. Bauman)

When evaluating collegial bodies, Weber points out that collective decision-making divides responsibility, and in larger bodies, responsibility completely disappears (schwindet diese gänzlich), which is why monocratic administration is technically superior in fixing unambiguous accountability.

This brought to mind Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of "floating responsibility" in Modernity and the Holocaust. However, my impression is that their concerns diverge: Weber is analyzing the structural breakdown of administrative and political liability (who can be held accountable for a policy decision), whereas Bauman investigates the moral neutralization (adiaphorization) of the individual within a divided administrative apparatus. Furthermore, monocratic rule, which Weber sees as fixing liability, served in Bauman's analysis as an excuse for subordinates to surrender their moral autonomy. Is this distinction conceptually sound?

1. The Indestructibility of Bureaucracy and the "Iron Cage"

Weber argues that once established, a bureaucratic apparatus is virtually indestructible because officials monopolize specialized technical knowledge and institutional records (files), making even political revolutions dependent on its machinery.

Does this institutional permanence in Economy and Society represent the concrete organizational reality of the "iron cage" (stahlhartes Gehäuse) described at the end of The Protestant Ethic, where the external compulsions of the economic order persist long after the religious ethos has evaporated?

Secondary literature recommendations (e.g., Bendix, Schluchter) that address these intersections would be very helpful.

(Disclosure: English is not my native language; I used an AI assistant to help draft and refine my thoughts.)

I've been analyzing a recent lecture series on political theology and eschatology, specifically looking at how modern risk-management regimes use 17th century administrative logic to enforce civilizational stagnation under the guise of safety.

While the lectures themselves cam from a right-tech perspective (Peter Thiel in Nashville), the underlying structural mechanics provide a fascinating case study for critical theory specifically around how secularized theological concepts maintain administrative hegemony.

1. The Dialectic of Beconian Pacification: The shift from Francis Bacon's New Atlantic (instrumental reason over nature) to Hobbesian risk-management (instrumental reason over human agency.) When safety and risk-mitigation become the supreme utility function of the state, negative dialectics take over: the system trades genuine transformation for managed, post-historical stagnation.

2. Katechon as Administrative Hegemony: Drawing on Carl Schmitt's analysis of the Katechon/the restraining force holding back chase, the modern administrative state operates as a counterfeit restraint. To justify its own totalizing surveillance and regulatory lockdown, the state requires the constant threat of external catastrophe. The restrainer continuously manufactures the exact crisis it claims to prevent.

3. Immanentizing the Eschaton vs Structural Epimetheans: The structural tension between totalizing administrative peace/a closed borderless system of complete surveillance and dynamic, high-agency disruptions that break the totalizing apparatus.

I wrote a 7-part critical breakdown mapping the latest lecture for anyone interested: https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/the-counterfeit-church-and-the-epimethean

Curious how folks here analyze the persistence of katechontic framing in modern liberal managerialism... Is the totalizing safety state the final form of instrumental reason, or does it inevitably collapse under its own mimetic contradictions?