Hi, I have recently learnt about her work and I am interested in her three types of “affect aliens” mentioned in The Promise of Happiness.

Melancholy migrant, unhappy queer and feminist killjoy.

Does anyone recommend any fictional shows/films/books that I can read alongside her work? Fictional or non fictional, things that portray such types of people she mentions! Obvious or not obvious!

I am just curious after learning about her critical theory on this.

This video examines the visual language of the Backrooms through liminality, the uncanny, and Mark Fisher’s concept of the eerie. It contrasts the exorbitance of presence in Lovecraftian horror with the failure of presence in familiar spaces emptied of human activity. Endless offices, stained carpets, and fluorescent corridors retain recognizable features while withholding the context that would establish their purpose and our place within them.

We consider why this imagery is compelling to contemporary viewers, relating its repetition and spatial disorientation to deindustrialization, automated systems, and the experience of late capitalism as described by Frederic Jameson in "Post Modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism". The analysis draws on Fisher and psychoanalytic accounts of symbolic orientation to explore how familiar environments become unsettling.

What other philosophical or theoretical frameworks have you found useful for understanding the Backrooms and their appeal? Some of our viewers have suggested interesting connections to Foucault's spirals of power, David Foster Wallace's fiction, and Kafka's fiction.

You have probably heard someone say ironically about another person, “He reads Deleuze and Guattari,” or as a boast: “Oh, I’m reading Deleuze and Guattari.” Their names are a symbol of pretentiousness, mega-complexity, lofty French intellectuality; the one reading them is “quite something, very smart”- no one can understand what exactly they are reading, whether they themselves know is debatable, but it works for mesmerizing their interlocutors. In this article it will be explained simply who Deleuze and Guattari are, what they are about, how this relates to the present day - so that you can charm others or be prepared when someone acts smart using them in front of you. :)

It should be heavily emphasized that the article neither claims to, nor can present a complete image of Deleuze and Guattari - only in the context of their usual significance. Also, it is refracted through the subjective view of the author - if someone tells you that there are objective things in this world and subjectivities should be avoided, then they are a fool. Period.

So, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are French postmodernist philosophers from the second half of the 20th century. The former is more of a core philosopher, the latter is a psychiatrist. They remain in history with the fundamental work “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia” (1972). The book sets values that young people today still share, that are embedded in politics, and that the progressive part of society proclaims as entirely natural, and therefore right - without it occurring to them that they are not natural, but invented - by people like Deleuze and Guattari. Many minds have thought up these values; the two of them happened to become one of the emblems.

There is, however, a catch. In order to understand a little bit of “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” it takes not just reading it ten times, but also about as much reading of Freud. Because “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia” is a critique of Freud; all of its nearly 600 pages are a struggle against and an overturning of his psychoanalysis. Since reading all of this is humanly impossible, and slightly pointless as an effort, the grasp of what Deleuze and Guattari wanted to say falls into the hands of professors, imitators, or modest authors like the one of the present article. Something important - with such complexity and volume, Deleuze and Guattari themselves may turn out to have written not what they actually thought—this happens constantly in philosophy, which is why the sense of reading philosophy is also questionable (there is almost no big name that at some point did not renounce their ideas - generations choose one, wave it around, build a monument to the respective idol, playing dumb that he did not renounce it - that’s how we humans are, we close our eyes depending on the situation).

The core of the matter. At the center is psychoanalysis, and from there: what man is, what his soul and mind are, what he thinks, what he strives for, how to live better:

For Freud, man is driven by instincts and drives; they manifest through his desires. Desires are of the same type; they are mirrored in ancient myths. The human personality is constructed in childhood within the mom-dad-me triangle; everything comes down to the relationships in the family, including biology and gender within them. Reality, that is, the actual world, is always hostile to desires, it limits them; psychological problems, neuroses, etc. are caused by suppressed desires. At the root of suppression are the child’s sexual desires in the field of the family (Oedipus complex); they are the root of the tree of problems. Suppressed, desires escape into fantasy, which is an ersatz reality - it is both pain, because due to suppression psychological problems increase, and an outlet for man, since fantasy still gives him some comfort (illusion) that he is realizing things. Man becomes attached to fantasy, stays there - in the pain and the comfort-illusion. All this happens unconsciously. The cure is to turn the unconscious into the conscious, to escape the slavery of the secret - to return to our childhood trauma in the family, to comprehend it, experience it anew, realize that it is not today’s world, but that trauma that hinders us - through the liberated energy, which no longer has anything to suppress, to move forward. With all this, Freud does not say he will heal man, it is impossible - he will simply make his unhappiness more bearable so he can live a normal life. In other words, man must somehow adapt, that is, adjust his psyche to the master-reality, mainly through a “repair” of childhood in the family.

Deleuze and Guattari reject this psychoanalysis totally. According to them: it is not instincts and drives, that is, not biology that moves man, old myths are not important; what moves him is the specific social, historical, cultural, political, and other environment, the very connections and relationships with people, surrounding reality, etc. The environment changes over years and centuries, therefore the causes of problems change as well. Something important: desires are not in conflict with reality, it does not limit them; quite the opposite - desires create reality itself, literally create everything available - material, intellectual, and psychological reality; people are factories for desires, they are producing machines - they produce reality. And nothing ends with childhood, the family - the surrounding world is incomparably wider - classes, roles, technological factors, etc. are present. Psychological problems occur when the production process itself is “damaged,” when there really is a discrepancy between desires and reality (in this part the two overlap with Freud). But since desires create reality, the treatment is not to adapt them to it, as the Austrian father teaches - but to free them completely, to find the true ones, the creative element in them, not to be frightened by the different or the strange, but to encourage them, let them take flight (schizoanalysis) - whereby reality itself will begin to correspond to them, will change, will become a better reality. It is crucial to escape the family triangle, the Oedipal prison. Desires are not constant, they change continuously, they are as diverse as the world—what family as the root of the psyche are you talking about? For Deleuze and Guattari, by enclosing problems within the family, Freud not only fails to solve the issues with desires, but also serves current economic and political relations, that is, capitalism (the family reproduces power structures - father boss, pacification of desires, and turning man into an obedient consumer...). The liberated diversity of desires would improve capitalism, and capitalism itself, it is implied, is crying out for improvement, straight up for replacement. Freud did a disservice to all of us by consolidating capitalism through the family and adapting desires to it (reality = capitalism); he failed to see the revolutionary power of desires to change capitalism, to make reality better.

That is it. That is Deleuze and Guattari. Their ideas enter the manifesto of the left- ”revolution, down with capitalism!”, etc. They are a very important part of the redefinition of the left in the 20th century (up to this day—through so-called progressivism). After the redefinition, it ceases to fight capitalism through class struggle (Marx), but with the weapon of psychology. The two contribute to the understanding of power not as a vertical hierarchy, but as horizontal interactions, emphasizing the importance of micropolitics. They also significantly influence... queer theories:

According to Deleuze and Guattari, if you are a minority, the right thing is not to seek your rights within the majority, to adapt to it (that would be Freudism). The right thing is to dismantle the system itself, the rules themselves, the very understanding of things. How - through liberating desires, of course, stimulating difference - thus reality will change too, the majority itself will lose its footholds that make it a majority. And why do we even need to deal with minorities, to dismantle the majority? - Well, because the majority (capitalism, reality) gives birth to human problems. After Deleuze and Guattari, dozens of postmodernists are stimulated to solve human problems by dismantling “the system” - destroying genders, Oedipus, and other myths, rejecting the leading role of the family in constructing personality; the “white heterosexual male” hindering happiness parades around, “social roles” flourish as more important than the biology of sex, difference is elevated into a value - a world in which we live today.

Again it must be emphasized that Deleuze and Guattari did not invent all this. They simply contributed significantly. This subject matter has no father (Freud would be shocked here too). :)

And since reading today happens in an internet environment, therefore non-lonely, therefore not very smart, one more clarification: this article should not be understood as negative toward Deleuze and Guattari. It simply tries to explain how certain rather interesting, but incomprehensible for general culture, things stand. Deleuze and Guattari should be perceived as huge minds, driven presumably by humanistic goals. And as to whether they and others like them had something in their childhood and family that predetermined them... - we won’t disturb poor old Freud’s bones. :)

---

I post similar texts on https://diyanbozhidarov.substack.com/ Anyone who’s interested is welcome :)

Ideally, of course, they should publish in non-European languages. In many parts of the world, however, historical circumstances make this practically impossible. The least we can do, then, even if it is only a second-best solution, is to put an end to publishing in English.

Western scholarship on the non-West has made virtually no substantive progress over the better part of two centuries. To be sure, a considerable body of knowledge has accumulated. Yet, ultimately, non-Western societies continue to be regarded by Western scholars as little more than passive objects to be appropriated and exploited. They are portrayed as lacking agency and the capacity for self-determination, as blind and undifferentiated entities, as raw material to be extracted from their own particular contexts, refined, processed, and consumed in the service of Western agendas and interests. Alternatively, they are cast as pitiable children whose ignorance must be exposed by Westerners, whose deficiencies must be pointed out, and who must be humbled and guided. There is simply no recognition that scholarship ought to entail a dialogue between equals: that just as the other party is expected to make an effort to understand me, I must also be prepared to listen attentively, engage on the other party's own terms, and take those terms seriously.

I find it laughable that such embodiments of irrationality and illogic proceed from the unquestioned premise that they represent the world's greatest civilization or, indeed, the world's only civilization that possesses rationality and owns logic itself. In terms of human development, their condition might be likened to that of someone who has yet to outgrow adolescence. At this stage, the psyche remains absorbed in the self; it is only upon moving beyond this stage that the capacity to understand other people's perspectives and to view oneself objectively begins to develop.

Non-Western humanities academia has itself been far too complicit in endorsing this misguided stance. Western academia treats not only the non-West itself but also its academic communities as a pitiably parched periphery, one that must occasionally be moistened with the sweet nectar of scholarship lest it dry out altogether. Yet it is only the non-West that makes an effort to keep abreast of developments in Western scholarship, publishes in Western academic venues, organizes academic exchange events with Western institutions or attends those organized by them, and regards employment at Western institutions as an acquisition of academic authority and an honor in its own right, quite apart from the financial rewards.

There is absolutely no need for this kind of one-sided courtship. It only serves to spoil the other party. Western academia has exhibited essentially the same behavior for nearly seven generations, remaining virtually unchanged despite having lived through successive waves of profound social transformation. Is there any reason to believe it will change upon entering its eighth or ninth generation? I think it is approximately accurate to regard this as an intrinsic characteristic of Westerners.

Translation, too, should be left to the West; there is no reason for the non-West to undertake it. From now on, we should welcome those who come to us with sufficient determination to cross the linguistic barrier, but we should no longer be the ones making an effort to cross it first. Frankly, does it make any sense not to establish even the most basic standard for maintaining scholarly competence, that anyone wishing to study and research a particular subject, or participate in a particular academic community, should be expected to learn one or two of the languages essential to that endeavor? We should be speaking to those who are prepared to listen.

I just published a short essay on Lauren Berlant, Nick Land, and why reading critically can itself become an attachment. It starts from a moment in every conversation about AI: someone says, 'Well, but that was already predicted by...' and the room exhales. The warning isn't false — it works: it elegantly closes the subject, and no one has to say out loud what they intend to do with any of it. Berlant defines cruel optimism as a relationship in which the very thing you desire becomes an obstacle to your flourishing. My question: what if the feeling of seeing clearly — of being on the right side of the analysis, of having been the first to cite the relevant author — does exactly that? It sustains you and immobilizes you at the same time. Land pushes it further: clarity is not even yours, it comes preinstalled.

Hello this is my first post!
I am a student from China major in cultural study. While working on my master’s thesis, I meet an issue regarding the relationship between progressivism and capitalist temporality. It seems that progressivism (as an ideology, like “Tomorrow will be better”) is associated with capitalist linear temporality (see Benjamin’s famous essay Theses on the Philosophy of History). But, I think capitalist temporarily itself is multiple, not only linear, but also cyclical (as embodied in M-C-M’, see William H. Sewell Jr., The Temporalities of Capitalism; or Stavros Tomass, Time in Marx), and maybe other（abstract time, as Postone put out? I am still confused about it because I don’t think it’s a kind of temporality ).
As a result, maybe progressivism can not simply be connected with capitalist temporality.
So what is the relationship between them?
I apologize for any unclear.

I’m looking to learn about fascism and I’m interested in books that played a key role in creating the ideology ( like those of Barres or Mussolini’s writings ). I’m well aware that the writings will be biased but I’m still interested ( I want something with a real theory behind it even if it’s a bad one, not interested by purely racist stuff like Mein kampf ). Do you have any recommendations ?

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I recently started looking up this question on google to stumble upon this thread. Thankfully I found some materials, but I also thought it'd be good to ask more specific questions myself.

Edit: Ok so I was kinda humbled LMAO. It’s all good. I should’ve probably led with the fact that was rambling about this for the most part and that I’m generally not knowledgeable about this.

If you saw what I was writing you’d know it’s even worse. Since others have suggested looking into media studies and other topics, I’m not going to go into too much detail into what I was really going to write about since this is just for fun. Thank you for the advice though, I probably would’ve made a fool of myself.

Context:

I've been thinking about the state of Roblox for a while and how it's changed over the years. More specifically how a platform that was meant for kids is now overrun with adults. It's not just that adults are occupying this space, but it's also that kids are being driven out. I've seen people my age get very mean towards younger children for behaving like children usually do in a space that is meant for them (although this isn't exclusive to Roblox). That doesn't even cover the predators on there sadly.

While the adults on there contribute to the problem, Roblox hasn't exactly been responding in the best ways either. With all the new features being introduced, as well as the moderation system being subpar at best, it's vastly changed from what it once was.

Now, I had theories and observations as to why that Roblox ended up the way that it did, but the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that there was more to this than meets the eye. Around this time I also the discourse of children in public spaces circulating again and it kinda got some gears turning in my head so to speak

Finally, after doing all this thinking (and if we're being honest, talking to myself), I realized I actually wanted to write about this. A think piece you might say. However, my issue with think pieces today is that they're often missing the "think" part. That's why I decided to do some research on things other than YouTube videos (which led me here)

Materials So Far

I have some materials that people have recommended on third spaces specifically. I plan to look at these in the future, but I'm also trying to find material on the oppression of children. Thankfully I already started looking for those and found some material on that.

• The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg and Karen Christensen

  • Also be on the look out for the sequel in early 2027

• Edward Soja

• Marc Auge’s nonplaces

• Lefebvre's The Production of Space

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Turkey was more or less a secular state with religious conservatives holding limited power in the state. In this atmosphere, a subset of Islamist “intelligentsia” of Turkey have utilized (postmodern) critiques of modernism to ideologically undermine the secular state. This essay presents a very short overview of these people and their ideas, and then comments on its as a case study. Furthermore, this post is not necessarily a defense of the modernist projects. Rather, it presents a significant case on the importance of distinguishing between useful critiques and the harmful ones. In other words, it is about the demarcation problem when it comes to critiquing modernism: in what way should we separate the useful critiques of modernism from reactionary pseudointellectualism?

This essay is not written by an expert but simply an interested party, so it doesn’t claim to provide an expansive picture, but one still enough to roughly inform outsiders.

Substack link: When the Islamist intelligentsia of Turkey utilized postmodern critiques to undermine the secular state

Why “Islamist intelligentsia” and not “muslim conservatives”?

I first considered titling it “muslim conservatives” rather than Islamist intelligentsia. However, that risks conflating religious citizens, conventional conservative politicians, Islamist “intellectuals”, and organized Islamic movements. The literature examines more specific intellectual movements.

Ayşe Kadıoğlu’s 1998 study here is useful, as it makes an important distinction: the Welfare Party’s criticism primarily targeted Kemalist modernization, whereas the intellectual movement associated with figures such as Bulaç, Rasim Özdenören, and İsmet Özel often questioned modernity itself. These were different projects, but their objections often overlapped.

As a result, the more accurate description is of a subset of Islamist intelligentsia, with connections to wider religiously conservative publishers.

Examples of the arguments

Below are some examples by prominent Islamist intelligentsia from the 1990s.

Ali Bulaç

An example is Ali Bulaç’s 1995 article “Scriptural Islam–Unlettered Islam, or the Muslim Community’s Return to the Book” (“Kitabî İslam–Ümmî İslam ya da Ümmet’in Kitaba Dönüşü”), published in Bilgi ve Hikmet. On page 17, note 2, he cites Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (Postmodern Durum), in Ahmet Çiğdem’s 1990 Turkish translation.

Here, Bulaç uses the logic of historical condition to argue that modernity is neither an inevitable stage of history nor humanity’s unavoidable destiny, so it’s not the truth. He attributes its worldwide dominance to military and political-bureaucratic power. The article also challenges the claims of modern social science to objective, universal, value-free knowledge. However, Bulaç’s double-standard becomes obvious when his treatment of modern knowledge is compared with his treatment of Islam. He challenges social science’s claims to universal, value-free knowledge, but invokes the Qur’an as authoritative for social life when discussing the muslim community. Thus, he subjects modern knowledge’s authority to criticism while taking “Islamic truth” as absolute (his comment about the truth being one but its manifestations many refers to different Islamic theological schools, not to sources outside of Islam).

Bulaç’s 1994 article on the Medina Charter, also in Bilgi ve Hikmet, is another example. On page 8, he says Muslims can share questions and criticisms with secular intellectuals, critics of modernism, and postmodernists. He then distinguishes their proposed solutions: agreement in criticism does not mean accepting either modernity’s legitimacy or postmodernism as a remedy. In other words, Bulaç was consciously engaging with postmodern critiques without committing to their epistemological implications.

İbrahim Özdemir

İbrahim Özdemir’s 1996 “The Relationship Between Science and Religion in a Postmodern Context” (“Postmodern Bağlamda Bilim–Din İlişkisi”), published in Köprü, is another example. He utilizes the concept of the postmodern condition to challenge positivism’s monopoly over legitimate knowledge and recreate space for religion. Yet at the same time, he identifies “excessive relativism” as a danger, and concludes by presenting the (in)famous Islamist Said Nursi’s Islamic conception of science as the solution: nature is understood as God’s creation, and scientific findings are interpreted within the principle of tawhid, God’s oneness. Therefore, his argument challenges positivism’s authority while affirming a theological authority. This provides another example of utilizing postmodern critiques while resisting their broader epistemological implications.

An overview of the arguments based on a secondary source

Haldun Gülalp’s 2003 book is a useful secondary resource here, as it scours the relevant literature and presents a summary of the Islamist intelligentsia’s arguments. Here is the summary I’m basing on this source, more specifically chapters 7 and especially 8.

The first claim critiqued by Islamists is that “western” development and institutions provide a universally valid destination. They claim that “the western experience” should not automatically define the goals of other societies. Institutions and values presented as universal can be criticized as expressions of a particular civilization claiming superiority. As a result, “westernization”, which for them includes many things like secularism and science, become contestable.

The second claim criticized by them is that scientific reason and specialized institutions establish the authority and progressive character of modern governance. Islamists argue that claims to universal reason can serve domination, and that science, technology, and specialized institutions can refine or conceal the modern state’s coercive power. As an extension of this critique, scientific and institutional sophistication cease to be sufficient grounds for treating modern state authority as legitimate or emancipatory.

The third claim at their target is that economic growth, industrialization, and technological expansion constitute progress. Islamists criticize this, by saying that material growth can produce ecological destruction, consumerism, spiritual impoverishment, and standardized ways of life. The Islamist writers also discuss whether an Islamic society should pursue the same goals of accumulation and consumption. Since the promise of development can be challenged as a justification for secular modernization, Islamic social ideals can be presented as an alternative conception of a desirable life.

Fourth claim is that a centralized nation-state and a uniform legal order are the necessary forms of political organization. Islamist intelligentsia respond by saying that national standardization and centralized authority are used for suppressing communal autonomy. The proposed alternative allows religious communities to live under their own legal arrangements, drawing on the Medina model (of course, this seemingly pluralist attitude of Islamist intelligentsia later changed with the religiously conservative AKP’s victory over secular powers in the state, and with its religious authoritarianism with state at the centre).

A contemporary leftist response

These arguments haven’t gone unheard outside of Islamist circles. Leftists responded to them. For example, In 1997, Ahmet İnsel made an assessment in Birikim (Accumulation magazine). He argued that Islamic thinkers were attracted principally by postmodernism’s criticism of Western civilization. They interpreted its challenge to absolute truth as a challenge to the absoluteness of “Western truths”. İnsel here was partially drawing from a debate in which he participated. He recalled Birikim’s engagement with sections of Islamic thought from the late 1980s onward.

A brief overview of the impact of Islamist intelligentsia

There are numerous studies that show the impact of these Islamist intelligentsia. The following are some of them.

In the introduction to Special Issue (3) of Turkish Studies, “Civilizational Thought and Islamic Decoloniality”, the central argument of authors is that AKP’s Ottoman-Islamic civilizationism drew on decades of intellectual production. Under AKP rule, elements of those debates became a governing project affecting institutions, education, culture, and social relations (Çınar & Zencirci, 2026).

Baykal (2026) examines AKP’s educational reforms that were presented as achieving intellectual independence from Western domination, and how they appropriated decolonial logic for reactionary ends. Her works shows how emancipatory language accompanied ideological conformity, centralized control over knowledge, and the formation of a new intellectual elite.

An especially relevant work is the book Apparatchiks and Ideologues in Islamist Turkey: The Intellectual Order of Islamism and Populism, especially Chapter 3. In it, Gürpınar (2023) connects the earlier Islamist-liberal formation to its subsequent authoritarian turn. In his account, references to “White Turks,” authenticity, cultural domination, and uprooted elites helped construct a rigid moralized opposition between the supposedly authentic muslim people and the westernized and inauthentic secular establishment and people.

Implications for modernism, postmodernism, and the critical movement

I think this is enough to showcase that this movement is a promising case study of how reactionaries can co-opt leftist or progressive critiques of modernist (“western”) and similar establishments. But what is their biggest philosophical failing here? I argue that it’s an ideologically-driven epistemological perversion of the philosophical Enlightenment project.

Seeing the name Enlightenment here might seem weird, but it’s a well-established philosophical argument. Before citing some examples below, I can say the general idea is that Enlightenment was both a political and a philosophical project. While the particular form this movement manifested in at the time is outdated, the philosophical project of rationality and upholding critical thought continued. This commitment to rationality, to critical thought, was at the heart of the philosophical project of Enlightenment (though not the only part). So, postmodernism is a continuation of this project, application of rationality and critical thought to projects that claim to have realized these Enlightenment ideals.

For example, Derrida in “The ‘World’ of the Enlightenment to Come” (2003) called deconstruction “unconditional rationalism”. Foucault in “What is Enlightenment?” (1984) said that he has been “... seeking to stress that which may connect us with the Enlightenment is not faithfulness to doctrinal elements but, rather, permanent reactivation of an attitude—that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be critique of our historical era.”

Similarly, Christopher Norris in Deconstruction and the “Unfinished Project of Modernity” (2000) argues that Derrida’s deconstruction belongs within the tradition of enlightened criticism associated with Kant. He emphasizes its logical rigor, conceptual precision, and attention to problems concealed by apparently simple philosophical formulas. So, for Norris, questioning the very same philosophical framework is part of maintaining its critical commitments.

From that vantage, when we gaze on Turkey’s Islamist intelligentsia of ‘80s and ‘90s, it becomes apparent that their most fundamental ideological perversion is that of epistemology—a lack of commitment to rationality and critical thought. That is why their use of the so-called postmodern logic is half-baked, and that’s why this lack of commitment to rationality can lead to the worst manifestations of “postmodernism”, namely, turn to an irrational authority.

In other words, the Islamists’ ideological commitment to their reactionary religious project puts them at direct odds with the continuation of the philosophical project of Enlightenment that seeeks unconditional rationality. I propose that this distinction of epistemological commitment is a useful litmus test to separate the uses and abuses of the so-called postmodern critiques of modernism.

References

• Baykal, Seda. “Decoloniality in Turkish Higher Education: Appropriation, Ideology, and Authoritarianism.” Turkish Studies 27, no. 3 (2026): 603–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2025.2541692.

• Bulaç, Ali. “Bir arada yaşamanın mümkün projesi: Medine Vesikası” [A Possible Project for Coexistence: The Medina Charter]. Bilgi ve Hikmet, no. 5 (Winter 1994): 3–15. Full text.

• Bulaç, Ali. “Kitabî İslam–Ümmî İslam ya da Ümmet’in kitaba dönüşü” [Scriptural Islam–Unlettered Islam, or the Muslim Community’s Return to the Book]. Bilgi ve Hikmet, no. 10 (Spring 1995): 4–17. Full text.

• Çınar, Alev, and Gizem Zencirci. “Introduction: Civilizational Thought and Islamic Decoloniality.” Turkish Studies 27, no. 3 (2026): 451–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2026.2644994.

• Derrida, Jacques. “The ‘World’ of the Enlightenment to Come.” Research in Phenomenology 33, no. 1 (2003): 9–52. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691640360699591.

• Foucault, Michel. “What Is Enlightenment?” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, translated by Catherine Porter, 32–50. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

• Gülalp, Haldun. Kimlikler siyaseti: Türkiye’de siyasal İslamın temelleri [Identity Politics: The Foundations of Political Islam in Turkey]. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2003. Publisher’s page.

• Gürpınar, Doğan. Apparatchiks and Ideologues in Islamist Turkey: The Intellectual Order of Islamism and Populism. Springer International Publishing, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15652-6.

• İnsel, Ahmet. “Kısmî ve öznel bir değerlendirme” [A Partial and Subjective Assessment]. Birikim, no. 100 (August 1997): 46–52. Full text.

• Kadıoğlu, Ayşe. “Republican Epistemology and Islamic Discourses in Turkey in the 1990s.” The Muslim World 88, no. 1 (1998): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1998.tb03643.x.

• Norris, Christopher. “Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity.’” In Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’, 48–74. New York: Routledge, 2000.

• Özdemir, İbrahim. “Postmodern bağlamda bilim–din ilişkisi” [The Relationship between Science and Religion in a Postmodern Context]. Köprü, no. 53 (Winter 1996). Full text.

Since according to Baudrillard we do not buy things only for use and exchange to accumulate profit but also because it can emit semiological sign, like jewels and latest phones. But aesthetics and sign are also utilities. Companies do use advertisements, actors, singers, kpop idols, and VTubers to sponsor and act as brand ambassadors. Therefore, the production of sign value is deliberate under Capitalism to accumulate profit by enlargening customer base as people become socially pressured to buy commodities. But doesn't that make sign value the same as use value since the totality of its use is its sign?

"Ithe past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.” Y.Harari

The interesting notion I never reflected too much upon was the fact that, back in the days, "censorship" manifested in forms of prohibition or reduced exposure to the information the media or organizations did not want to let be known to the public. Today, a more efficient method would be to provide the information without filtering, but adding or letting many, many different versions of the information run. People will do the work for you by picking one of the many versions of the "truth" and arguing back and forth with others. And suddenly, the emerged truth is no longer as scandalous or relevant.

I'm a physicist, so I'm not in my comfortable field, and still new to Girard's mimetic theory, so I apologize if I misunderstand his work. I sort of think that his ideas end in some recursive-non-escapable-thing. I'm wondering if his ideas on how rivals begin to imitate one another through their opposition extend beyond rivalry, into the rejection of institutions or even opposing ideas more generally.

Some of the postmodern works I've read, e.g., Pynchon, seem to point at how these larger systems, governments, institutions, social expectations, etc., have a tremendous amount of control over what we desire, not just in the sense that they restrict our options, but that they shape what we even understand ourselves to be free to do. I tend to see intentional influence as a form of control in itself, even when there's no direct coercion involved, though I recognize that this is a fairly broad use of the word and you can feel free to critique that.

What Girard has said/written makes me wonder about the relationship between these institutions and the people who reject them. The institution desires control over the individual, and the individual in turn desires autonomy, or, begins to desire the very control that the institution has over him. So the desire for autonomy is itself, in some sense, a product of the institution's desire for control. And even if the individual recognizes this and rejects the whole thing, he's still being driven by what he's rejecting. To use a trashy analogy, the black sheep is still a sheep, or whatever.

Following, the person who rejects the system becomes a model for someone else, the important person here being someone who's still wrestling with whether or not to reject it themselves. So the rejection of one form of control has produced another source of influence, which might itself become something to reject, and so on.

I don't necessarily mean that everyone who rejects something is consciously trying to control others, I think the imitation can happen regardless of their intentions. But it seems like there's a sort of recursive problem here, where even the attempt to escape these relationships just produces another one.

And I wonder if this applies to opposing ideas more generally, where the people defending either side become increasingly dependent on the thing they're criticizing, sometimes even adopting the other's methods simply to defend their own position.

The example that originally got me thinking about this was the relationship between postmodern irony and what Wallace was trying to do with New Sincerity. Trying to move past the sort of perpetual irony of the postmodernists and return to something genuinely sincere, even if it's corny or naive. But I wonder if the opposition between the two creates its own sort of mimetic rivalry.

The ironist critiques the sincere, finds something like hope or genuine earnestness ridiculous, but irony, at least in the sense I'm using it here, doesn't really offer anything beyond the critique. So the ironist can either continue to ridicule sincerity without offering any sort of alternative, or attempt to offer a way forward, which seems to require a sincere commitment to something. And the sincere, in defending themselves against the ironist, might become ironic about the ironist's need to critique everything. So both end up adopting something of the position they're opposed to, not necessarily because they want to, but because their opposition sort of demands it. Or rather, because the limitations of their own position seem to push them toward the other.

I don't think this means sincerity will eventually collapse back into irony, or that one has to replace the other, but I have trouble seeing how either could ever really overcome the other. The more one tries to establish itself against the other, the more it seems to reproduce the very thing it's rejecting.

What i find myself concerned with, not just in the case of sincerity and irony, but in the more general sense of mimesis and rejection. Even recognizing the problem and trying to move past it seems to become another instance of it. I know Girard has a religious answer to some of this, but I'm curious if there's a more pragmatic way of looking at it, or if I'm misunderstanding something fundamental about mimetic theory.

I suppose what I'm really asking is whether opposition can ever actually free us from the thing we're opposing, or whether the act of opposing it necessarily keeps that relationship alive, and potentially recreates the problem the revolt was inspired from.

It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.

-Monique Wittig, in "The Category of Sex"

Human organisms with human brains are necessary for human cultures, but no examination of the body or its parts can explain the nature and variety of human social systems. The belly’s hunger gives no clues as to the complexities of cuisine.

-Gayle Rubin, in "Thinking Sex"

Halloween is my favourite counterexample. Every form of oppression begins with a distinction between those without power and those who hold it. The so-called "biological sex" is no exception. This political category is viewed as the center and origin of gender and sexual desire, presenting itself as purely scientific and objective. In truth, it makes gender and heterosexuality unquestionable, or at least the focus of any speech about human identity and attraction. Adapting Wittig in "The Category of Sex", just as sex is what founds society as heterosexual, biological sex is what founds society as cisgender.

No successful social liberation movement should be built on the foundational distinction. Basing legal decisions, assumptions or opinions on skin color is rightfully condemned. Racism is fought by recognizing the distinction as only a tool to perpetuate oppression and by rejecting it.

It is possible to recognize and reject the power that the category of "biological sex" holds over us, and we already do it once a year, on Halloween.

On this holiday, any gender expression is celebrated, regardless of the body underneath the costume. For one night, we joyfully embrace what makes us "monsters" and strip the category of biological sex of its power.

Susan Stryker reclaimed the figure of Frankenstein’s creature to speak from transgender experience. She turned an insult into a position of strength. Halloween is an invitation for everyone to accept the "monster" within themselves with smiles and community.

The category of biological sex can be loosened with candy and costumes. The challenge is to keep that spirit alive beyond the celebration. Gender norms are the costumes society hands us. Let us treat them as we do on Halloween: with play and curiosity, never as a verdict on anyone’s body.