Issue 187, April 2025 – Challenging Rationalities of the Ecumene

Contributors: Slawomir Czapnik and Tomasz Krawczyk, Howard Prosser, Ricardo P Regatieri and Lucas Trindade, Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen, Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati, Bernardo Paci, Sonny Osman, Henrique Augusto Alexandre, Janine Gertz, Theresa Petray, Miriam Jorgensen, Alison Vivian and Coralie Achterberg, Raymond Grenfell and Fausto Butta, Mathijs van de Sande and Gaard Kets, Franz-Josef Deiters, David Roberts, and Edmund Mendelssohn

Article: Saving Australia for the Middle? The 2025 Federal Election

by Lloyd Cox

The 2025 Australian federal election will be remembered for both the scale of Labor’s victory and the implosion of the Liberal and National Party Coalition whose leader, Peter Dutton, lost his own seat. Together, they almost guarantee Labor at least another six years in power, while raising serious doubt about the long-term viability of an aging Liberal Party now at war with itself.

Article: War Has Made Our Social Order

by Siniša Malešević

War is not an exception that suddenly interrupts normal social life. Nearly every aspect of social life including the governance structures, social hierarchies, gender and sexual relations, religious identities, class dynamics, ethno-racial stratification, educational practices, heath systems or the administrativeand administrative apparatuses have all been molded by legacies of specific wars. Whether we like it or not, warfare has historically been and remains a norm that constantly shapes our social order.

Conference Report: In Memory of Zygmunt Bauman, Sichuan University 2024

by Eric Ferris

Previously honoring Agnes Heller and George Markus, the conference was part of an ongoing, larger Chinese federal research project on aesthetics which, in part, is a canopy for critical theory and has to date resulted in serious scholarship on Eastern European Marxist thinkers by Chinese intellectuals. Co-sponsored by Thesis Eleven, The Research Center for Marxist Theory of Literature in the College of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, and the Marxist Aesthetics Committee of the Chinese Association of Aesthetics, the conference not only reflected Bauman’s global influence, it was also an example of how his influence continues to grow.

Issue 186, February 2025 – Critical Theory, Aesthetics and Speculative Philosophy: A Special Edition on the Thought of Gillian Rose

This special edition of Thesis Eleven focuses on the thought of British philosopher and critical theorist Gillian Rose. With contributions focusing on Rose’s political thought, her literary and aesthetic philosophy, and her engagement with Hegel, this edition hopes to further establish Rose’s work as part of the canon of late 20th century philosophy. Additionally, this issue also contains an interview with New School critical theorist Jay Bernstein, who was close friends with Rose, as well her previously unpublished lecture, “Does Marx Have a Method?”