Emancipations Podcast

Joining me for his second appearance, Philipp Felsch explores the life and thought of Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era and Germany’s foremost living public intellectual. We trace Habermas's roots in the Marxist tradition, his role in the Frankfurt School, relationship to Adorno and Horkheimer, to his influential presence during the May 68 period across West Germany.

We discuss why Habermas’s theory of the public sphere has been so influential, and why he came to be so widely revered as a philosopher, especially within American academia. We then examine how Habermas abandoned Marxism in his turn to develop a comprehensive theory of communication. Habermas is known as an admonishing voice of reason, as the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society but in the wake of October 7th and his uncritical position on the genocide in Gaza, Habermas's intellectual supremacy seems to be coming to an end today.

Learn more about Philipp's new book, The Philosopher: Habermas and Us (translated by Tony Crawford) https://bit.ly/4qjpFTC

We discuss Pierre Bourdieu's legacy and its implications for understanding intellectuals. You can find C. Derick Varn at VarnVlog. In addition to going through some of Bourdieu's key categories, these are the primary readings we discuss:

Pascalian Meditations by Pierre Bourdieu 

Homo Academicus by Pierre Bourdieu

The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger by Pierre Bourdieu

"The Role of the Intellectual in the Modern World" by Pierre Bourdieu

Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu

My guest Yanis Iqbal is the author of The Sword and the Neck, a militant work of philosophy that insists Gaza must be approached not as a humanitarian "exception," but as a primary terrain of proletarian and anti-colonial struggle. Iqbal develops an incisive critique of contemporary leftwing philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Ètienne Balibar and the wider tradition of post-colonial thought in the wake of October 7th and the subsequent genocide in Gaza.

In this interview we discuss Iqbal's core ideas, the limits of post-colonial thought and the role of Marxist practice in the Palestinian liberation struggle. I encourage everyone to purchase Yanis Iqba's book The Sword and the Neck, published in 2025 with Iskra Books.

If you download the PDF for free, please make a contribution to Iskra as gratitude for their work. I wrote the Preface to this very fine work where I address a number of important questions that the book raises.

Yanis Iqbal is studying political science at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book 'Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia' and 'The Sword and the Neck.'

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We discuss the roots of anti-intellectualism in American life for the first episode in a four-part series co-created and presented with C. Derick Varn, "The Problem of Intellectuals."

Learn more about C. Derick Varn by checking out his show "VarnVlog" https://www.patreon.com/c/varnvlog/posts 

These are the primary readings we discuss: 

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

The American Intellectual Elite by Charles Kadushin 

The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as Social Type by Christopher Lasch

The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class by Alvin Gouldner

"The Missing Generation: Academics and the Communist Party from the Depression to the Cold War" by Ellen Schrecker

I am joined by Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University and Concurrent Professor of Marxism with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a critical discussion and analysis of Marxism in China and the tradition of Chinese Marxism.

We examine the ideological differences within the Chinese Communist Party from the time of Mao to the present, the main differences between Soviet and Chinese forms of Marxism, the core of Xi Jinping's thought, the impact of the "reform and opening up" period since Deng Xiaoping, to the status of class struggle in contemporary China.

Dr. Josef Gregory Mahoney is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Doctoral Supervisor (政治与国际关系教授、博士生导师) at East China Normal University (ECNU/华东师范大学); Founder and Director of the Center for Ecological Civilization (主任, 政治与国际关系学院生态文明研究中心); Vice Dean for the Institute of Singularity Politics (奇点政治研究院副院长); Associate Editor, US-based Journal of Chinese Political Science (SSCI and ranked first in the field according to JCR); and Co-Editor, ECNU Review. He also serves as a Concurrent Professor of Marxism (马克思主义兼职教授) and Senior Research Fellow (资深研究员) with Jiangsu’s top thinktank—the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (中国特色社会主义发展研究院)—based at Southeast University (东南大学) in Nanjing.

He’s consulted regularly on matters related to governance and international affairs by the China’s central government, the Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu governments, and foreign diplomats. One of China’s most-recognized international key opinion leaders, Dr. Mahoney has more 200 publications and appears frequently on global broadcasts (1000+), including Xinhua, CGTN, CCTV, BBC, RT International and TRT World, and is a regular contributor to China Radio International’s The Beijing Hour and The World Today and RTHK’s Backchat (Hong Kong). He writes, produces and performs high-level documentaries for BRTV, one winning First Prize (一等奖 in the category of International Communication (等奖, 国际传播) per the 第35届中国新闻奖 (2025).

He frequently publishes in the South China Morning Post, China Daily, Beijing Review, and writes for the CPC Central Committee’s foreign policy platform, China Diplomacy, among others. Previously he was a member of the Chinese team that translated Jiang Zemin’s Selected Works into English and subsequently a Senior Researcher with Beijing’s leading think-tank, the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (中共中央编译局), under the CPC Central Committee.

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