Pieces by Kate Soper

It’s 50 years since the first issue of Radical Philosophy was published in 1972. To mark the occasion, we asked a selection of former editors to share their recollections and reflections on their time on the job. We wanted to hear from those involved in the early years, without neglecting those who had participated in […]

REVIEWS Capitalocene Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, Verso, London and New York, 2015. 316 pp., £60.00 hb., £19.99 pb., 978 1 78168 901 1 hb., 978 1 78168 902 8 pb. Jason Moore is a key figure in the World-Ecology Research Network, an international grouping […]

Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital Kate Soper J.M. Bernstein, Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury Alastair Morgan Kenneth Goldsmith, Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century John Millar Boris Groys, In the Flow Hammam Aldouri Peter Fleming, The Mythology of Work: How […]

Obituaries An English Marxist John Mepham, 1938–2012 John Mepham, one of the founding editors of Radical Philosophy, died in London, in September, aged 73. ^ He was a fine thinker and much valued teacher, whose expertise ranged across science, philosophy and literature. During his period as a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sussex […]

Reviews Inside the factory, and outFredric Jameson, Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume One, Verso, London and New York, 2011. 158 pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 84467 454 1. Fredric Jameson’s latest book, published hot on the heels of a monograph on Hegel’s Phenomenology (The Hegel Variations, 2010) and a large collection of essays on […]

SYMPOSIUM Spectres of Derrida The limits of hauntology G hosts are not renowned for their sense of humour. As Charles Lamb (he of the undeconstructed tales from Shakespeare) put it; ‘Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?’ But the ghost ofthe theorist of farcical returns might well […]

REVIEWS Paradise postponed David Schweickart, Against Capitalism, Cambridge and Paris, Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de I’Homme, 1993. xiii + 387 pp., £40.00 hb., 0 521 41851 8. Despite a dismal economic performance since its resurgence in the late 1970s, it is currently fashionable to be for capitalism. Throughout the […]

‘When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say?’ Sue Bridehead’s question – or rather exclamation – in Jude the Obscure – is, of course, rhetorical; and Hardy has surely been vindicated in this appeal to […]

REVIEWS RULING PASSION STRONG IN DEATH Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault, London, Faber, 1993. 363pp, £9.99 pb, 0 571 169732. David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, London, Hutchinson, 1993. 583pp, £20 hb, 0 09 1753449. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, London, Harper Collins, 1993. 491pp, £18 hb, 0 00 255267 1. ‘Alive,’ claims […]

NEWS E. P. Thompson, 1924-1993 The great bustard has winged off, removing as he went one of the prime attractions of these shores, and one of the few remaining reasons for still proclaiming intellectual allegiance to them. Thompson liked to present himself as an earth-bound English creature incapable of much soaring. But he had enough […]

Kate Soper, Troubled Pleasures: Writings on Politics, Gender and Hedonism Peter Osborne, ed., Socialism and the Limits of Liberalism Dave Archard Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth and Essays on Heidegger and Others, Philosophical Papers, Vols. I and II Kate Soper Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction Richard Rorty Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of […]

LETTERS Dear Radical Philosophy, I am writing to make some criticisms of Kate Soper’s article ‘Feminism, Humanism and Postmodernism’ in RP55 (Summer 1990). I would first like to challenge the following passage: . . If this sameness itself is challenged on the grounds that there is no ‘presence’ of womanhood, nothing that the term ‘woman’ […]

Feminism, Humanism and Postmodernism Kate Soper I shall not begin, as I probably should, by offering to define my terms. Instead, I shall acknowledge that I have brought together three concepts admitted on all sides to be well-nigh indefinable. Or, if they are definable, they are so only by reference to a particular thinker’s usage […]

Greenham Common: An Exchange Kate Sopev and Alison Assitev On 12 December 1982, some 35,000 women congregated at the Greenham Common air force base near Newbury to create an ‘event’ unique in the history of antinuclear protest. On the following day, more than a thousand who stayed behind with members of the resident Peace Camp […]

COMMENT Nuclear Disarmament Kate Soper The Editorial Collective regards nuclear disarmament as an extremely important issue at the present time. It therefore decided that the following piece by Kate Soper should be given prominence in Radical Philosophy 27. The views expressed are Kate’s: they do not represent the unanimous opinion of the Collective. While millions […]

NOTE ON TBllCllNTlnClTYOr rRlUD’IINTERPRlTATlON OrDREAMI KateSoper In Chapter I of Conjectures and Refutations, K. Popper raises the question of the scientificity of certain theories, which he then proceeds to reject as unscientific on the basis of the now celebrated criterion of falsifiability. Freud’s is one of these theories. (Those of Marx and Ad1er are the […]

l- AltJlUsser, L. 1969 For Marx, London, Penguin; 1974 Elements d’autocritig~, Paris, HacheUe Arato, A. 1972a ‘Lukacs’ Theory of Reification’, Telos 11, pp25-66; 1972b Notes on ‘History and Class Consciousness’, Philosophical Forum Vol. JII, pp386-400 Colletti, L. 1973 Marxism and Hegel London, New Left Books Fecnberg, A. 1971 ‘Heificationand the Antimonies of Socialist Thought’ Telos […]

expected is an analysis of our present situation with s’ome general guidelines for the transition to socialism. Dialectical change provides us with ever new situations which for an understanding demand that a wide range of experience .be drawn upon from within and without the revolutionary core. This in turn requires a respect for the opinions […]

Interview kate soper An alternative hedonism tb: iʼve been influenced by your work over many years, and oneof the things that has impressed me is the way that your writings have always seemed timely. Re-reading your work forthis conversation I was struck by the continuities running through it. Youʼre not just responding to intellectual fashions; […]

Reviews Respect (or lack of it) Peter Coates, Nature: Western Attitudes since Ancient Times, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998. viii + 246 pp., £45.00 hb., 0 7456 1655 0. ^ Tim Hayward, Political Theory and Ecological Values, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1998. viii + 196 pp., £49.50 hb., £13.95 pb., 0 7456 1808 1 hb., 0 7456 […]

All of those working in the broad field of environmental studies (and I here include, among others, philosophers, geographers, political ecologists, sociologists, cultural historians and critics) are likely to agree on two points: first that the term ʻnatureʼ, which has been so central to their various debates, has lost its all-purpose conceptual status, and can […]