In this essay, Enrique Dussel provides a textual “rereading” of Karl Marx’s theory of fetishism according to his scattered but significantcomments on religion as they extend throughout the whole of his work. In Part I, “The Place of the Subject of Religion in the Whole Work of Marx,” Dussel demonstrates Marx’s differentiation between a critique of the essence of religion and its manifestations, arguing that there is a space in Marx for a anti-fetishized liberatory religion. In Part II, “Toward a Theory of Fetishism in General,” he provides a methodological account of such a religion, as well as a panorama of the content of this essence of religion. These accounts provide the basis for more clearly identifying both religious fetishism and the fetishist character of capital.

The normative politics of Rorty’s Achieving Our Country are inextricably related to the political-philosophical principles of Contingency,irony, and solidarity, yet the nature of this relation is not explicit, particularly regarding Rorty’s earlier public/private sphere distinctionand renunciation of metavocabularies. This paper argues that Rorty’s call for patriotism as a necessary condition for political practiceand a romantic historicism that replaces intersubjectively recognized history, leads to a privatized conception of the nation, betraying the most promising principles of Contingency, irony, and solidarity, and threatening the necessary conditions of democratic and solidaristic practices. This critique also accounts for the theoretical lacunas in Rorty’s most recent essays attempting to elucidate American Empire.

In this essay, Fred Dallmayr considers the writings and activism of Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things and Power Politics. First, Dallmayr examines the proper role of the writer-activist, comparing Roy to Edward Said. For each, writing and politicsare neither separate nor are they independent of the writer’s distinctive being-in-the-world. He then examines her critique of corporate business and the war machine, especially in relation to the construction of destructive “mega-dams” in India. The privatization of public services in India has done little to provide safe drinking water and electricity to some eighty percent of India’s rural population. Dallmayr finds in Roy an unmatched voice of hope and commitment to a more just, more humane future, sustained by a love that will not quit.

In this essay, Enrique Dussel provides a textual “rereading” of Karl Marx’s theory of fetishism according to his scattered but significant comments on religion as they extend throughout the whole of his work. In Part I, “The Place of the Subject of Religion in the Whole Work of Marx,” Dussel demonstrates Marx’s differentiation between a critique of the essence of religion and its manifestations, arguing that there is a space in Marx for a anti-fetishized liberatory religion. In Part II, “Toward a Theory of Fetishism in General,” he provides a methodological account of such a religion, as well as a panorama of the content of this essence of religion. These accounts provide the basis for more clearly identifying both religious fetishism and the fetishist character of capital.