Marx in an Age of Breakdown: An Interview with Kohei Saito about Capital from Zero

by Howard Prosser

Few thinkers have contributed more to this renewed engagement than Kohei Saito, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tokyo, whose previous book Slow Down sold over half a million copies in Japan and carried ecosocialist ideas well beyond the academy. His Capital from Zero, now available in English, began as the companion text to a television series. It is at once a rigorous return to Marx’s core categories and an original intervention in debates on ecology, the commons, and digital capitalism. In the conversation that follows – conducted in May 2026 – Saito discusses Marx’s contemporary afterlives, the problem of growth, the intensification of reification under digital capitalism, and where critical thought might turn from here.

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articles

Lingering Pains and a Hopeful Present: The Philippines’ Contributions to Navigating a World of Despair and Disappointment

by Gina R. Gatarin

An interview with Kelly Louise Rexzy Agra editor of the Thesis Eleven Special Issue: The Philippine Condition.

articles

On Inheritance

by Andreas Reckwitz

Contemporary inheritance society isn’t exhausted by questions of wealth alone. It speaks much more to the fact that in late modernity, at multiple levels, the general societal appreciation of being confronted by an inheritance from past generations has also sharpened. One views oneself and others from the perspectives of: individuals, as social groups, as a national society, and even as the species Homo sapiens, who inherit in the present from the past or, in the future, will inherit something.

issues

Issue 194, June 2026 – The Philippine Condition: Threads of Critical, Decolonial, and Feminist Contentions

This special issue on ‘The Philippine Condition’ brings together articles by Filipino women critical theorists, that reflect on the social condition of contemporary Philippines through the lenses of critical social theory, that are intersectionally decolonial and feminist in their critical and emancipatory orientations.

Event: Little Public Spheres, Radical Projects: Looking Back, Looking Forward at Alternative Spaces, e.g. Thesis Eleven

Australian National University School of Sociology presents Thesis Eleven founding editor Prof. Peter Beilharz (Sichuan University) as a part of the ongoing ANU Sociology Seminar Series.

Date: Wednesday 19 August, 2026
Time: 12 – 1pm (AEST)

Roots and rugs: a postcard from Mexico

by Alonso Casanueva Baptista

Each rug is crafted by a single artisan who works on the loom for weeks or months, eight hours a day, every day. Dalila seemed particularly happy about this fact, underscoring how her sense of autonomy and creativity in composing the theme, motifs, colour scheme… would make up the final creation, one that cannot be replicated. Whether the design follows traditional rule or adapts to a recent trend, it is the artisan who will pour their personal inspiration onto the loom.

Paths to Nowhere: An Interview with Raymond Geuss about Tracks in Chaos

by Howard Prosser

Raymond Geuss’ latest book, Tracks in Chaos: Philosophical Orientation and Political Reflection, published by Polity in 2026, provides the basis for the present interview. Bringing together a set of essays on philosophy, politics and social theory, the book returns to problems that have long animated Geuss’s work: orientation, critique, authority, morality and political judgement.

Brisbanity: David Malouf’s Topography of the Mind

by Peter Murphy

Malouf grew up in Brisbane and identified deeply with the city. In his collection of essays, The First Place (2014), Malouf paints a remarkable picture of Australia … He points to the distinct differences in topography between Australian cities, and he makes the interesting claim that the hilly features of Brisbane and its meandering river shape, in some elemental way, a distinctive manner of thinking about the world.

Essay: Everlasting Inscription (铭刻未央)

by Darren Jorgensen and Tami Xiang

Wang Qingsong’s monumental photography unveils the deep structures of Chinese history and society. The title of the first survey of Wang’s work in Australia, exhibited at the Cullity Gallery in the School of Design at the University of Western Australia, is Everlasting Inscription. It attempts to describe Wang’s resistance to the forgetting of Chinese history, while illuminating the structural legacies by which life in China assumes its collective shape.

Call for Papers: International Conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe – Social Modernization and Cultural Modernity

The International Conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe will be held during November, 2026 in Chengdu, China. This will be an opportunity for the presentation of new work and research results across a wide variety of Eastern Europe Marxist Critical Theory Studies, to enhance the world-wide field of Marxist critical theories, to share studies of critical theory of Eastern Europe, and to promote the construction of Chinese Marxism and its aesthetics.

Event: Displaced Ecologies – Bauman Memorial Conversations

Thesis Eleven is delighted to share details of the first public event in the inaugural Bauman Memorial Conversations, a new biennial series of public dialogues hosted by the Bauman Institute.

The 2026 Conversations, “Thinking Displacement,” will explore displacement in its human, ecological, and intellectual dimensions. The first conversation will be held online on March 25, 2026.

Issue 192, February 2026 – Democracy and the Empire

Contributors: Thomas Furse, Lorenzo Buti, Rodrigo , Aaron Augsburger, Luyang Zhou, Udeepta Chakravarty, Bjørn Schiermer, Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen, Nikos Kapitsinis, Domonkos Sik, Roger Burrows, Zoran Poposki, Shaun Best, Trevor Jackson and Tom Boland

Essay: The Art History and Contemporaneity of Terry Smith

by Darren Jorgensen

For five decades, Terry Smith has been a crucial part of conversations on both Australian and contemporary art. Since his 1974 essay, ‘The Provincialism Problem,’ through to a series of publications on global contemporary art, Smith has been both prolific and influential in the discipline of art history.

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