Tessera

For @eflux.bsky.social, I wrote about Jaleh Mansoor’s new book and Marx’s metaphor of “universal prostitution” www.e-flux.com/notes/678337...

For Parapraxis, I wrote about Marx and Lacan. “Is there something inherent to Lacanianism itself that leads towards a politics of reaction?” www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/bad...

Bad Object — Parapraxis

Errant Marxist-Lacanian ideology Thomas Waller

parapraxismagazine.com

Some reflections on the new Gillian Rose lectures and the question of style for @criticalinquiry.bsky.social criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/thomas_walle...

Critical Inquiry

A journal of Art, Culture and Politics, Published by the University of Chicago

criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu

Sean O'Brien @seanobrien.bsky.social · last yr.

I've got a short review of Irene Small's new book on Lygia Clark and modernism in this month's issue of The Brooklyn Rail brooklynrail.org/2025/04/art_...

Irene V. Small’s The Organic Line | The Brooklyn Rail

Despite its epochal importance in the trajectory of modern art, the organic line has hitherto been excluded from official histories, which have tended to rely on categories like the grid, the monochro...

brooklynrail.org

I interviewed Bev Best about her book, The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Vale in Marx’s Capital. Up now at @endnotesjournal.bsky.social endnotes.org.uk/posts/sean-o...

There is a review of Roberto Schwarz and World Literature in today's Folha de S.Paulo (@folha.com): "Um livro britânico sobre Roberto Schwarz fala em urdu da China e Beethoven" folha.com/74xygd1e

Opinião - Mario Sergio Conti: Um livro britânico sobre Roberto Schwarz fala em urdu da China e Beethoven

O livro é bom não só por realçar os feitos de um pensador brasileiro, mas pelo que traz sobre a literatura mundial

folha.com

Roberto Schwarz and World Literature is now out in hardback with Palgrave Macmillan, marking the first book-length engagement in English with Latin America's foremost dialectician and one of the all-time great Marxist literary critics 1/

For next year's (virtual) ACLA, I'm organising a seminar with Carson Welch on 'Hegel and World Literature'. Please do consider sending in an abstract to us, and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions! www.acla.org/hegel-and-wo...

@seanobrien.bsky.social and I are editing a special issue of CLCWeb entitled 'Keywords for Value and Culture'. The aim is to bring together short essays that explore the dialogue between value-form theory and Marxist cultural studies. Details in the CFP below! docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb_cfp/1/

Sean O'Brien @seanobrien.bsky.social · 3y ago

I've got an article out in the latest issue of Qui Parle on art, autonomy, and subsumption. It's called 'Stably Unusual: Artistic Labor and Aesthetic Autonomy', and you can check it out here: read.dukeupress.edu/qui-parle/ar...

Stably Unusual: Artistic Labor and Aesthetic Autonomy

Abstract. This article critically compares two recent approaches to the problem of aesthetic autonomy: Dave Beech’s Art and Value and Nicholas Brown’s Autonomy. By recentering the differences betw...

read.dukeupress.edu

First instalment in the new series on Marx & the Climate Crisis now up at the 87. www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-ope...

Marx and the Climate Crisis #1: Marx and Nature by Sean O’Brien — the87press

This four-part lecture series asks what we can learn from Marx about the climate crisis: its origins, its impacts, and what possible solutions we might seek in the face of increasingly inadequate go...

the87press.co.uk

For anyone attending the Historical Materialism conference in London this weekend, I’ll be speaking on the roundtable ‘Keywords for Value and Culture’. If you’re free on Saturday morning 11:00-12:45, be sure to come along for the discussion!

I'm giving a talk on Roberto Schwarz and Henry James tomorrow at the University of Lisbon. If anyone's in the city and wants to attend, feel free to get in touch! Details are on the poster.

I've got two poems out in the latest issue of Postcolonial Text: 'Toll' and 'Or Eternity'. Both dealing with southern African themes, they're dedicated to the great Mozambican author Orlando Mendes and anti-apartheid activist/scholar Ruth First. www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pc...

'Toll' and 'Or Eternity' | Waller | Postcolonial Text

'Toll' and 'Or Eternity'

postcolonial.org