The Structuring Opposition of Capitalist Modernity

ISGAP

Speaker: Dr. Moishe Postone Affiliation: Department of History, University of Chicago Title: "The Structuring Opposition of Capitalist Modernity; Notes on History, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust" Location: Yale University, New Haven, CT Date: March 3, 2011 Description: Professor Moishe Postone relates historical changes and public responses to the Holocaust, especially on Left, to the historically changing configurations of capitalist modernity since 1945. He argues that the public responses to the Holocaust have tended to be structured by an opposition between abstract modes of universalism and concrete particularism. He argues that such responses have shifted with the changing configuration of capitalist modernity from a status configuration of the 1950s and 60s to a subsequent neo-liberal phase. He further maintains that the character of those responses and their relation to the changing configuration of capitalist modernity can be mediated by a theory of capital, on the one hand, and antisemitism on the other.