{"title":"Editors’ Introduction","authors":"Ceren Özselçuk","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2223881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2223881","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue, entitled “Bensaïd, the Untimely,” revisits and remembers the person and work of Daniel Bensaïd, a one-of-a-kind public intellectual and militant of the idea and strategy of revolution. Edited by Josep Maria Antentas and Ceren Özselçuk, the issue brings together from different generations finely attuned essays that—while they mainly explore with fresh theses and connections Bensaïd’s trajectory after his encounter with Walter Benjamin in the 1980s and the resulting implications post-1989—also associate this “turn” with Bensaïd’s reworked reading of Marx. As Antentas puts it in his introduction to the issue, Bensaïd’s “diversion to Benjamin and return to Marx were part of a double simultaneous movement.” A determining, universalizing moment in Bensaïd’s thought can be found in the way that he conceptualizes the present as “bifurcated,” opening to contradictory possibilities for interpreting the past and taking up positions in relation to the future. Bensaïd’s take on temporality intimately informs his other formulations on politics, history, scientificity, and the aesthetics of knowledge. In this sense, the essays also demonstrate Bensaïd’s continuing relevance for analyses of the conjuncture, experienced in related yet differentiated ways around the world, and likewise for reinterpretations of the revolutionary events of ’68, also experienced in related yet differentiated ways around the world. Thus, it is not arbitrary that some of the essays in this issue obliquely refer to ’68 in Turkey as well as to relevant connections to the political-ecological movements of the “dispossessed” that are taking place right now. After Antentas’s concise introduction to Daniel Bensaïd, the issue opens with Michel Surya’s still timely interview with Bensaïd himself, “On Politics and History.” The interview, translated into English by David Broder, was originally published in 1998 as “La politique et l’histoire” in the journal Libre Choix, which is no longer in circulation. Timely, because the interview, which took place after the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, involves questions and assessments that still bear on the debates of the European Union today, with even more urgency than ever, and in a way foresees the predicaments that afflict the extimate borders of the EU in the present. In the interview Bensaïd responded to questions and comments posed by Surya on a number of pressing problematics and paradoxes that revolve around his then recently published book Le pari mélancolique, RETHINKING MARXISM, 2023 Vol. 35, No. 3, 307–312, https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2223881","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"307 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41358253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Forgotten Icon of ‘68 in Turkey: Hüseyin Cevahir","authors":"Bülent Küçük","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215141","url":null,"abstract":"This essay focuses on Hüseyin Cevahir, a revolutionary with roots in the Alevite-Kurdish formation and one of the forgotten student leaders of ’68 in Turkey. The essay underscores Cevahir’s presence within the Turkish Left as not merely a matter of cultural difference. On the contrary, his silent but transformative effects on the Turkish Left stemmed from his subaltern presence, embodied in a double memory. Cevahir incorporated his knowledge of the racialized community of Dersim, in which he was born, into his intellectual awareness, undermining any sovereign subjectivization under the pretext of the universality of the state. Simultaneously, his subaltern experiences helped him to transfigure the racial structures of domination that shaped the political imaginary of middle-class subjectivity among revolutionary Turkish youth under the pretext of class universality. One can thus infer that the main factor behind Cevahir’s oblivion in the counterpublic in Turkey is this double criticism embodied in his persona.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"404 - 414"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43066526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interview with Daniel Bensaïd: On Politics and History","authors":"Michel Surya","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215140","url":null,"abstract":"This timely translation of an interview with Daniel Bensaïd was originally published as “La politique et l’histoire” in the journal Libre Choix in 1998 (no longer in circulation). In the interview Daniel Bensaïd responds to questions and comments posed by Michel Surya on a number of pressing problematics and paradoxes that revolve around his then recently published book Le pari mélancolique, which provokes readers to interrogate the epistemic separations among the social fields of history, politics, and literature. The interview addresses such themes as historicization including the plurality of times and comparisons in history; European identity and nonnational citizenship in the context of neoliberal “economic automatism and ethical consolation,” Eurocentrism, and an always already globalizing world; and the melancholic wager and role of aesthetics in revolutionary politics.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"321 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48602443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Recommence the Defeats: Bensaïd’s Péguy","authors":"Josep Maria Antentas","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215139","url":null,"abstract":"From the late 1980s onward, Daniel Bensaïd developed an extensive theoretical oeuvre marked by the influence of Walter Benjamin intertwined with Bensaïd’s own classical Marxist background. Through Benjamin, Bensaïd came to the work of Charles Péguy, whose role in his thought has yet to be fully analyzed. Bensaïd does not ignore Péguy’s contradictions and limits but reads them selectively to better understand history, politics, and temporality. The starting point of Bensaïd’s analysis of Péguy is the triad formed by the critique of historical reason, modern temporality, and progress. Péguy was also a source of inspiration for his reflection on politics, victory, and defeat and for his framing of political commitment as a melancholic wager.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"328 - 346"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46319102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Daniel Bensaïd’s Moments of History before Althusser’s Crooked Smile","authors":"D. Roso","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215143","url":null,"abstract":"Two distinct traditions of French Marxism have deconstructed a linear representation of history: Louis Althusser and his circle formed around Reading “Capital” and Daniel Bensaïd’s own reading of Marx, inspired by Trotskyist thought. This essay examines the confrontation between Althusser’s and Bensaïd’s theories of plural temporality to demonstrate their points of agreement and disagreement, out of which a concrete theory of history becomes discernible. The essay does not simply reiterate Bensaïd’s critique of Althusser but explores the two theorists in their complexity to show that many unresolved problems of Marxism remain.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"415 - 436"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45235748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Daniel Bensaïd: A Brief Introduction","authors":"Josep Maria Antentas","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2223883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2223883","url":null,"abstract":"Daniel Bensaïd left a prolific intellectual production whose main concern was the discussion of revolutionary strategy and is inseparable from his militant experience. Bensaïd’s work is marked by a peculiar combination of a “classical Marxist” background and a turn towards a secularized messianism under the influence of Walter Benjamin. Bensaïd achieved a certain notoriety in the last decade of his life, although he occupied a marginal position in the French academic world. His voice gained increasing intellectual authority in the ranks of the international anticapitalist left although his works translated into English remain few. Since his death, interest in his legacy, still not yet in full bloom, has been steadily increasing and, slowly, publications on his work have been flourishing. This special issue deals with the Bensaïdian universe in a complementary way to the works already available and hopes to open new discussions about his legacy.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"313 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44557999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’s Debates on Wood Theft and the Right of the Poor","authors":"Igor Shoikhedbrod","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215144","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reviews Daniel Bensaïd’s book The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’s Debates on Wood Theft and the Right of the Poor. The book’s first translation into English features a new English translation of Marx’s early journalistic reflections, written for the Rheinische Zeitung, on peasants’ wood theft and an early law to criminalize what had been customarily accepted activity. Bensaïd’s book draws on this history to make critical sense of contemporary forms of dispossession and the diverse struggles to which they give rise.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"437 - 439"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46992158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moi, la Révolution—Revolutionary Poetics in the Storm of Counterrevolutionary Times","authors":"S. Wahnich","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215145","url":null,"abstract":"Daniel Bensaïd’s Moi, la Révolution revolves around remembrances of the French Revolution, with the word “remembrance” already resisting any commemorative embalming. But the book also queries the return of the feminine, that which is perhaps “without limits,” being a return to permanent Revolution. Exploring such poetics, this essay shows how the choice to make the Revolution speak as a woman ventriloquist then bequeaths a political and philosophical actuality to the revolutionary stake. Bensaïd’s book highlights an ironic, worried historian who gives the critical function a real existence in society without taking himself as a spokesman for the social. Accepting discomfort, uncertainty, and even intellectual torment, such a historian is confronted with their own ethics, without the aid of a preauthorized compass, and must build reference points by use of the “sensitive reason”: a reflexive tie to the sensitive experience of the world and to a position in it.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"363 - 377"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46013919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A (Profane) Judaism against the Grain: Daniel Bensaïd and Messianic Reason","authors":"Fabio Mascaro Querido","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215142","url":null,"abstract":"Known inside and outside the radical Left, Daniel Bensaïd’s political and intellectual trajectory entered a new stage in the second half of the 1980s amid the historical changes of the period. This essay estimates the importance of Judaism as an issue during this new phase of Bensaïd’s reflection, particularly emphasizing how the emergence of the issue in his thought is mediated by a very specific interpretation of Walter Benjamin.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"347 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48171402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“My Breath Becomes a Crimson Horse”: Interviews with Nevhiz Tanyeli","authors":"Bülent Küçük, Ceren Özselçuk","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2023.2215148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2023.2215148","url":null,"abstract":"This extract from two interviews that took place in 2021 and 2023 with Nevhiz Tanyeli at her home in Şişli, İstanbul centers on a dialogue over her paintings, the possible interpretations of which the interviewers had discussed beforehand, informed by Bülent Küçük’s research on remembrances of Turkey during the events of 1968. Tanyeli offered both tea and counterinterpretations in her unique and witty style, with the interviewers both taken aback and learning something new. Her stories’ poetic sensibilities weave the violent historicity of witnessed events with personal memories of the living and the dead. Her paintings constitute a diary that combines the personal with the political, the dreamlike with the factual, and the associative with the nightmarish and repetitive real of the past. Her paintings, while they belong to certain dates, characters, and places, thus remain open for others’ imaginations to interpret. As a living participant and witness of ’68, her creative will yet speaks to us.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":"378 - 403"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42588864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}