Jim Vernon

Vivek Chibber

Juan González

Elinor Taylor

Mike Beggs

MAtteo Tiratelli

This issue of Catalyst opens with an important essay by Mike Beggs on market socialism. Over the past few years, Catalyst has published essays by Sam Gindin and by John Roemer on the subject, with each offering his own arguments for a viable socialism, albeit one in which markets play an important role. In his contribution, Beggs places the democratic firm at the core and shows that if it is to be the microeconomic foundation of market socialism, it calls for a specific constellation of institutional supports to generate the desired macroeconomic outcomes. Beggs brilliantly lays out the overall structure of such a system with a level of detail rarely encountered in the literature.

Vol.6, No.3

Catalyst

Drawing on the culture’s history before and after the birth of rap music, this book argues that the values attributed to Hip Hop by ‘postmodern’ scholars stand in stark contrast with those that not only implicitly guided its aesthetic elements, but are explicitly voiced by Hip Hop’s pioneers and rap music’s most consequential artists. It argues that the structural evacuation of the voices of its founders and organic intellectuals in the postmodern theorization of Hip Hop has foreclosed the culture’s ethical values and political goals from scholarly view, undermining its unity and progress. Through a historically informed critique of the hegemonic theoretical framework in Hip Hop Studies, and a re-centering of the culture’s fundamental proscription against ‘biting,' this book articulates and defends the aesthetic and ethical values of Hip Hop against their concealment and subversion by an academic discourse that merely ‘samples’ the culture for its own reactionary ends.

Sampling, Biting, and the Postmodern Subversion of Hip Hop

Comfort. It's a word that's used regularly in society today - particularly American society. At every turn, the word comfort is used as a goal to be attained: a comfortable lifestyle, comfortable house, and a comfortable retirement. But sometimes, comfort is a crutch, keeping us safe and oblivious, immune from taking risks, and from diving deeper into situations, relationships, and faith. Jim Vernon spent most of his life enjoying a comfortable life - until life became very uncomfortable. This is the story of a middle-aged father, husband, and self-described "lukewarm" Christian. He spent most of his life on the comfortable "front porch" of his spiritual walk, looking inside at what a meaningful relationship with God would be like...but not going inside. The comfort of the porch had become normal, ritualized, and all too routine. There was too much walk and not enough spirit. But after a crisis pushed him inside, he found a more significant sense of being, and worked to find the relate in relationship when it comes to Omni-everything. This is a story for believers, non-believers, and anyone who has had the feeling in their gut that there was supposed to be something more than the comfort of their own spiritual porch.

From Comfort to Connection with God

Life on the Porch

This book argues that Hip Hop’s early history in the South Bronx charts a course remarkably similar to the conceptual history of artistic creation presented in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. It contends that the resonances between Hegel’s account of the trajectory of art in general, and the historical shifts in the particular culture of Hip Hop, are both numerous and substantial enough to make us re-think not only the nature and import of Hegel’s philosophy of art, but the origin, essence and lesson of Hip Hop. As a result, the book articulates and defends a unique reading of Hegel’s Aesthetics, as well as providing a philosophical explanation of the Hip Hop community’s transition from total social abandonment to some limited form of social inclusion, via the specific mediation of an artistic culture grounded in novel forms of sensible expression. Thus, the fundamental thesis of this book is that Hegel and Hip Hop are mutually illuminating, and when considered in tandem each helps to clarify and reinforce the validity and power of the other.

Let's Get Free

Hip Hop, Hegel, and the Art of Emancipation

Explores the development of Hegel's linguistics across the full range of his key writings.

Hegel's Philosophy of Language

Antonio Calcagno

Steve G. Lofts

A rich collection of critical essays, authored by philosophers and practicing artists, examining Deleuze and Guattari's engagement with a broad range of art forms.

Deleuze/Guattari and the Arts

Intensities and Lines of Flight

This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.

Infinity, Dialectics, Subjectivity

Badiou and Hegel

Karen Houle

Hegel and Deleuze cannily examines the various resonances and dissonances between these two major philosophers. The collection represents the best in contemporary international scholarship on G. W. F. Hegel and Gilles Deleuze, and the contributing authors inhabit the as-yet uncharted space between the two thinkers, collectively addressing most of the major tensions and resonances between their ideas and laying a solid ground for future scholarship. The essays are organized thematically into two groups: those that maintain a firm but nuanced disjunction or opposition between Hegel and Deleuze, and those that chart possible connections, syntheses, or both. As is clear from this range of texts, the challenges involved in grasping, appraising, appropriating, and developing the systems of Deleuze and Hegel are varied and immense. While neither Hegel nor Deleuze gets the last word, the contributors ably demonstrate that partisans of either can no longer ignore the voice of the other.

Jim Vernon

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