Established in May 1968 by Paul Piccone and fellow students at SUNY-Buffalo with the intention of providing the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective, the journal, which has long considered itself heterodox, has been described as turning to the right politically beginning in the 1980s.[2][5][6]
Telos was founded by Paul Piccone and fellow working-class philosophy students in May 1968 at SUNY-Buffalo, though it was never formally associated with SUNY or any other university.[1][2][9] Elisabeth K. Chaves writes that "this non-institutionalization, in academia or elsewhere, helped keep the journal distinct from other positions within the [intellectual] field, and it reveals a kinship to artists within the field of cultural production that choose to practice 'art for art's sake,' disdaining the economic and political power found at the dominant pole."[10][undue weight? – discuss]
According to Chaves, the journal specifically saw its objective as "vindicat[ing] the ineradicability of subjectivity, the teleology of the Western project, and the possibility of regrounding such a project by means of a phenomenological and dialectical reconstitution of Marxism in conjunction with the New Left."[11][undue weight? – discuss] In this light, the journal sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction relevant for the United States. In order to avoid the high level of abstraction typical of Husserlian phenomenology, however, the journal began introducing the ideas of Western Marxism and of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School to a North American audience.[12][13][14] In a 1971 pamphlet, members of the Chicago Surrealist Group said Telos conference organizers were "capable only of promoting the peaceful coexistence of various modes of confusion".[15][third-party source needed]
Poster from the Telos website describing the journal's development.
Over time, Telos became increasingly critical of the Left in general, with a reevaluation of 20th century intellectual history, focusing on authors and ideas including the Nazi legal philosopher Carl Schmitt,[16][2] federalism, and American populism through the work of Christopher Lasch.[citation needed] Eventually the journal rejected the traditional divisions between Left and Right as a legitimating mechanism for new class domination and an occlusion of new, post-Fordist political conflicts—part of its critique of the New Class or professional-managerial class.[17] This led to a reevaluation of the primacy of culture and to efforts to understand the dynamics of cultural disintegration and reintegration as a precondition for the constitution of that autonomous individuality critical theory had always identified as the telos of Western civilization.[18][19][20]
During the journal's "conservative turn" in the 1980s, many editorial board members, including Jürgen Habermas, left Telos.[2] The academic Joan Braune writes that one cause for the resignations was Piccone's support of United States intervention in Nicaragua.[16][undue weight? – discuss] According to Chaves, the journal's split with Habermas was due significantly to the second generation of Critical Theory's embrace of the linguistic turn.[21][undue weight? – discuss]
In 1994, the paleoconservativeSam Francis was a keynote speaker at a Telos conference in New York about populism.[16][22][23] The audience "shifted uncomfortably in their seats and chuckled in embarrassment" when Francis said the 1947 anti-austerity riots targeting Jews in England were an authentic form of populism to embrace, as recalled by Joseph Lowndes.[6][22]
Advertisement for 1994 Telos conference "Populism and the New Politics"
Telos had ties with figures of the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine, and was sympathetic to the Lega Nord in Italy, though Telos' support for NATO military intervention against Serbia in 1999 to prevent ethnic cleansing was a tension with paleoconservatives.[5][6]
Noting various criticisms, Timothy Luke, a Telos editor, described the journal in a 2005 remembrance of Piccone as "out beyond the margins of the established academy ... featuring the voices of alternative networks recruited from the contrary currents of many different intellectual traditions".[25][26] According to Chaves, the journal "always maintained a critical distance from any party or political movement."[27][undue weight? – discuss]Telos author John K. Bingley wrote in 2023 that "the clash of divergent opinions" is "at the core of [the journal's] identity."[28]
The journal is published by Telos Press Publishing and the editor-in-chief is David Pan.[29] It is affiliated with the Telos Institute, which hosts annual conferences, select papers from which are published in Telos.
Telos Press Publishing was founded by Paul Piccone, the first editor-in-chief of Telos, and is the publisher of both the journal Telos as well as a separate book line. It is based in Candor, New York.
References
^ abGary Genosko with Kristina Marcellus, Back Issues: Periodicals and the Formation of Critical and Cultural Theory in Canada (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019): 1-20.
^ abcdeChaves, Elisabeth K. (2016). Reviewing Political Criticism: Journals, Intellectuals, and the State. Routledge. pp. 84–90. ISBN978-1-315-60621-7. Piccone suggested that the journal's "conservative turn" was a potential source of energy and creativity (Piccone 1994, p.206). While Telos took pride in its transgressions over the years and used its functionality to carve out an identity, the journal's style and affinity for the margin, and letting everyone know that it prefers the margin, may give the impression that heterodox is not just a manner of critique but a way of being.
^Stephen Eric Bronner, Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017): 87, 90.
^"About Telos". Telos Press. Retrieved December 9, 2023.
^ abAshbee, Edward (March 2000). "Politics of paleoconservatism". Society. 37 (3): 75–84. doi:10.1007/BF02686179. ISSN0147-2011. Some of the principal figures associated with Chronicles have established close ties with Telos, a formerly leftist journal of philosophy and politics that owed its origins and much of its later development to the Frankfurt School. The concepts associated with Critical Theory drew Telos towards ideas that form common ground with the paleoconservatives.
^Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examoination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism," doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 2, 2011, 178, 174, available at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstreams/a8d04950-234f-47f3-a153-b4f7d382624d/download
^Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examoination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism," doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 2, 2011, 179, available at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstreams/a8d04950-234f-47f3-a153-b4f7d382624d/download
^Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examoination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism," doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 2, 2011, 181, available at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstreams/a8d04950-234f-47f3-a153-b4f7d382624d/download, citing journal founder Paul Piccone
^Surrealist Intervention: Papers Presented by the Surrealist Group at the Second International TELOS Conference (Buffalo, NY), November 1971, 2; see also Abigail Susik, "Chicago Surrealism, Herbert Marcuse, and the Affirmation of the 'Present and Future Viability of Surrealism," Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 11:1 (2020), 42-62, available at https://jsa-asu.org/index.php/JSA/article/download/23/20/115
^Timothy W. Luke, "The Trek with Telos: A Rememberance[sic] of Paul Piccone (January 19, 1940—July 12, 2004), Fast Capitalism 1 (2) (2005), https://fastcapitalism.uta.edu/1_2/luke.html; Telos Staff, "Populism vs. the New Class," Telos 88 (Summer 1991), 2-36, 6.
^Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic Books, 1987): 151-52.
^Jennifer M. Lehmann, Social Theory as Politics in Knowledge (New York: Emerald Group Publishing, 2005): 81-82.
^Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examoination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism," doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 2, 2011, 250-51, available at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstreams/a8d04950-234f-47f3-a153-b4f7d382624d/download
^"Populism and the New Politics" (conference announcement), back matter, New German Critique 61 (Winter 1994), back matter (behind paywall), https://www.jstor.org/stable/488627
^"Timothy W. Luke, "The Trek with Telos: A Rememberance[sic] of Paul Piccone (January 19, 1940—July 12, 2004), Fast Capitalism 1 (2) (2005), https://fastcapitalism.uta.edu/1_2/luke.html
^Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examoination of the Re-viewing Practices of Telos, The Public Interest, and the Journal as an Institution of Criticism," doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, June 2, 2011, 193, available at https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstreams/a8d04950-234f-47f3-a153-b4f7d382624d/download
