Culture Wars – Page 2 – Dustin J. Byrd, Ph.D.

On December 7th, 2024, I had the wonderful opportunity to join Rudy Leal McCormack and Maior Levitin on “The Fromm Connection,” wherein we discussed a variety of topics as they related to my recent publication, “Can Religion be Rescued in the 21st Century: On Erich Fromm’s Religious Humanism in an Age of Authoritarian Populism” (Journal of Psychosocial Studies). I deeply appreciate their invitation to discuss Erich Fromm and his continual relevance to today’s society.

I’m pleased to announce that my latest article, entitled, “From ‘We want to destroy the regime’ to ‘We want to destroy the world order’: Russian Multipolarity and the Enlistment of the Post-Arab Spring Dār al-Islām,” has now been published. It was a part of a special issue on Contemporary Muslim Thought for the journal Philosophy and Society 35, no. 3 (University of Belgrade, Serbia). In the article, I discuss Putin’s (and Alexander Dugin’s) attempt to take advantage of the turmoil in the Muslim world, especially the Middle East, to enlist their support in Russia’s rightwing challenge to the American-led Neo-liberal “rules based order” and the dismal prospects of such a “multipolar” affront to unipolarity being effective.

It is available here: “From ‘We want to destroy the Regime’ to ‘We want to destroy the World Order.'”

On September 27, 2024, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the 2024 Courageous Leadership Colloquium for The University of Olivet. In my presentation, I spoke about the importance of disobedience, especially as it relates to being existentially free.

On September 15, 2024, I had the wonderful opportunity to present my work at the inaugural Erich Fromm Society of North America conference at Gonzaga University. My presentation was on the problem of “oikophobia,” or fear/hatred of all things our own). Oikophobia entails the pathological disavowal of all things Western, including the civilization, culture, history, religion, philosophy, etc. It has plagued a portion of the political Left, especially in academia. I argue that for the Left to abandon the Western inheritance is to leave it in the hands of the far-right, who will functionalize it as a tool of repression against all things “non-Western” residing in the West. What is needed is a dialectical approach to the Western inheritance, not an abstract negation. A video of my presentation can be found on the Dustin J. Byrd Audio-Visual Archive on YouTube.

I’m pleased to announce that my latest co-edited book, “Sigmund Freud as a Critical Social Theorist: Psychoanalysis and the Neurotic in Contempoary Society” will be released at the end of November, 2024. My co-editor, Seyed Javad Miri, and I conceived of this book amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as we were both reading Freud. We wanted to show not that Freud was right about everything – he certainly wasn’t, but rather that Freud’s work continues to be theoretically fruitful in a variety of disciplines and subject. Thus, the thread that unites the chapters in the book is the realization that Freud is not dead, but rather is alive and well within critical social theory.

The portrait of Freud used for the cover was painted by a former student of mine at The University of Olivet, Mahalia Stelter, who is an amazing portrait artist. It was a great pleasure to commission the painting for the purpose of this book.

Contributors: Joan Braune, Jimmy Butts, Dustin J. Byrd, Mlado Ivanovic, Clint Jones, Howard L. Kaye, Ulrike Kistner, Lauren Langman, Gregory Joseph Menillo, Seyed Javad Miri, Michael Naughton, Délia Popa, Francesco Ranci, Iaan Reynolds, Rudolf J. Siebert, Yannis Stavrakakis, Alfred I. Tauber, Michael J. Thompson, Eli Zaretsky

Freud as a Critical Social Theorist: Psychoanalysis and the Neurotic in Contemporary Society

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the on-going culture wars (kulturkampfen) with Critical Theorist, Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert. We discussed the history of culture wars, their relevance to current politics in the United States and Europe – especially regarding right-wing populism and Neo-fascism, and possible future of the culture wars. This discourse was sponsored by Ekpyrosis Press and the Institute for Critical Social Theory.