Marx, the Critique of Commodification, and the Genesis of “Universal Convertibility into Value”: Foundations for Adorno and Horkheimer

Marx, since the 19th century, decoded the growing commodification where everything becomes convertible into monetary value — a key phenomenon for understanding capitalist society and its excesses. Adorno and Horkheimer extended this critique in their analysis of the society of equivalence and industrial culture. #Marx #CriticalTheory…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/10/04/marx-the-critique-of-commodification-and-the-genesis-of-universal-convertibility-into-value-foundations-for-adorno-and-horkheimer/

Karl Mannheim: Thinking Ideology as the Social Production of Knowledge

Karl Mannheim founded the sociology of knowledge: he demonstrates that all ideas are socially produced. Ideology is no longer simply the property of the dominant groups but a full epistemological framework. This critical approach to knowledge has influenced thinkers such as Adorno, Habermas, and contemporary critical theory.#sociology #epistemology #criticaltheory #postMarxism The Sociology of…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/10/04/karl-mannheim-thinking-ideology-as-the-social-production-of-knowledge/

The Enlightenment promised reason, progress, and justice — but left us with structures that privilege the loudest present over the silenced future.

These spectres will linger through Día de Muertos and Hallowe’en. After that, who knows whether they’ll still answer when called.

https://philosophics.blog/2025/10/04/temporal-ghosts-and-rational-spectres-an-anti-enlightenment-collection/

#Essay https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17263384

#Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Gr8esgQnHp40PbgoKtnoz?si=xctGZZbHT_uWAvBPiOKrYQ

#Philosophy #PoliticalTheory #CriticalTheory #AntiEnlightenment #Democracy #Presentism #FutureGenerations #ClimateJustice #Blog

Habermas and the Critique of Functionalist Reason: Towards a Critical Theory of Modernity

In his “#Critique of Functionalist Reason,” #Habermas distinguishes two levels of society and proposes a #CriticalTheory of #modernity: overcoming the #domination of #TechnicalSystems to restore #communication, #emancipation, and #meaning.#functionalistReason #philosophy #politicalPhilosophy In Critique of Functionalist Reason (Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft), Jürgen…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/habermas-and-the-critique-of-functionalist-reason-towards-a-critical-theory-of-modernity/

"Sourced from the Max-Horkheimer-Archiv (MHA), both fragments—“On The Relation Between Critical Intellectuals, the Proletariat, and the Communist Party” and “The Curse of Writing Today”—are located under the subheading “Miscellaneous Manuscripts (1946),”1 filed alongside three (of the four surviving) typescripts from Horkheimer’s “Conversations with Theodor W. Adorno,” recorded during the first two weeks of October 1946, about the planned sequel to Dialectic of Enlightenment. These Diskussionsprotokolle were first published posthumously in Volume 12 of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften under the title: “Rettung der Aufklärung. Diskussionen über eine geplante Schrift zur Dialektik.”2 In addition to these discussions, the last two fragments under the same subheading were also selected for publication in the same volume of Horkheimer’s GS: “Towards a Critique of the American Social Sciences” and “The Fate of Revolutionary Movements,” each of which is also dated “October 1946.”3 One possible motive for the omission of the fragments below from Horkheimer’s GS is difficulty in determining authorship. Despite a number of indications to the contrary in the text of the fragments themselves, the archivists (tentatively) attribute them to Adorno alone—a problematic approach the archivists seem to have adopted for several other unpublished fragments from the archive with indeterminate authorship as well.4 In terms of content, there are two grounds for rejecting this attribution."

https://ctwgwebsite.github.io/blog/2025/HA_Fragments_1946/

#CriticalTheory #Marxism #FrankfurtSchool #Adorno #Horkheimer

🌈 Rainbow Pill Collective
feminist tech-art-theory collective

we reject the binary choice between 🟥 redpill & 🟦 bluepill –
instead: 🌈 the rainbow pill
→ complexity, contradiction, queerness, affect & speculative futures

🔍 we do:

technology & gender

antifeminism & extremism

art, theory & resistance

🖼 pop-up installations
📚 blog, essays
🤝 collaboration? get in touch 💌

🔗 🌐 rainbow-pill.github.io

#feminism #queertech #criticaltheory #intersectional #antifeminism #techpolitics #manosphere

Does transparency really build trust? Or does it just replace trust with surveillance?

I wrote about Byung-Chul Han's "The Transparency Society" and his argument that our cultural demand for constant visibility is actually a form of control—one that erodes intimacy, flattens meaning, and sabotages democratic life.

Han's take: opacity isn't democracy's enemy. It might be its condition.

Read here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-174928129

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #ByungChulHan #Transparency #DigitalCulture

Hydraulic Despotism: The Infrastructural Matrix of Power

Exploring hydraulic despotism (Wittfogel): when control of water became control of people. From ancient irrigation empires to today’s data and energy infrastructures, the logic of centralization and dependence persists. What does this genealogy reveal about our era of the megamachinocene? #philosophy #criticalTheory #infrastructure Hydraulic Despotism: From Irrigation Empires to Technological Infrastructures The…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/hydraulic-despotism-the-infrastructural-matrix-of-power/

We scold AI for “hallucinations” – invented books, fake citations, Socrates debating Quidditch. But humans are the real hallucination machines. We carved race and selfhood out of fog, baptised them in violence, and called them truth. Censuses, laws, diaries, courts – these stabilised fictions until they felt natural. They don’t need metaphysics; they’re real because people kill for them

https://philosophics.blog/2025/10/01/machines-hallucinate-humans-call-it-civilisation/?utm_source=mast&utm_medium=social

#AI #Hallucinations #Philosophy #Race #Identity #Self #Enlightenment #CriticalTheory

Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate by Steven A. Johnson

https://archive.neural.it/init/default/show/3309

#interfaceculture #interfacedesign #creativetechnology #interactiondesign #digitalcultures #technoculture #technosphere #experiencedesign #mediahistory #mediaarthistory #computerhistory #digitaldesign #graphicdesign #criticaltheory #criticalinformationstudies #mediatheory #mediastudies #digitalhumanities #informationtheory #digitalstudies #mediaculture