Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory: Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

Preface  Introduction  1.Alienation, Illusion, Fetishism and Non-Identity Thinking in Nietzsche’s Critical Theory  2. Negativity and Illusion in Walter Benjamin’s Dialectics  3.Cornelius Castoriadis’s Social Imaginary, Socialism and Autonomy Reconsidered. A Critical Theory Reading  4. Debunking the Illusions of the Spectacle Through Negative Dialectics. How the Open Marxism of the Situationists Cracks Capitalism

"In this exciting and important book, Vasilis Grollios looks at the complex relationship between the fetishism of the social forms and material essence through the lens of a negative dialectic. Working off his previous book on this subject, Grollios explores Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists in order to reveal how each of these thinkers engages in fundamentally Marxist understandings of this relationship without replicating the dangers that come from what might be called a positive dialectical outlook. This work is not hagiographic. These thinkers come in for their share of criticism but overall, Grollios shows how these authors demonstrate the power of materiality to resist phantasms of capitalism and how class struggle and alienation remain at the center of contemporary politics."
James Martel, Professor, Department of Political Science, San Francisco State University

"In this exciting and important book, Vasilis Grollios looks at the complex relationship between the fetishism of the social forms and material essence through the lens of a negative dialectic. Working off his previous book on this subject, Grollios explores Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists in order to reveal how each of these thinkers engages in fundamentally Marxist understandings of this relationship without replicating the dangers that come from what might be called a positive dialectical outlook. This work is not hagiographic. These thinkers come in for their share of criticism but overall, Grollios shows how these authors demonstrate the power of materiality to resist phantasms of capitalism and how class struggle and alienation remain at the center of contemporary politics."
James Martel, Professor, Department of Political Science, San Francisco State University
Vasilis Grollios’ new book is a distinctive and important contribution to contemporary Critical Theory. In a series of innovative readings of Benjamin, Castoriadis, the Situationists and above all Nietzsche, he shows how they contribute to the tradition of Open Marxism based in the work of the early Frankfurt School. This book will be of interest to political philosophers, activists and all those interested in the pursuit of new pathways beyond the social and political forms of capitalist society.

Paul Patton, Wuhan University
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen interviews Vasilis Grollios for APA Blog Recently Published Book Spotlight series here:
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/09/27/recently-published-book-spotlight-illusion-and-fetishism-in-critical-theory/

Vasilis Grollios holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where he has taken all his degrees (B.A., M.A. in the history of philosophy and Ph.D.). He was a holder of a postdoctoral fellowship with the Greek Institute of Research and Technology. He has taught at various Greek universities and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of York, UK. Grollios is the author of Negativity and Democracy. Marxism and the Critical Theory Tradition (Routledge 2017) and has been published in academic journals such as Constellations, Critical Sociology and Philosophy and Social Criticism.