Telos (journal)
Template:Short description Template:Sources Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox journal Telos is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles on politics, philosophy, and critical theory, with a particular focus on contemporary political, social, and cultural issues.<ref name="Genosko2019">Gary 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.</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Stephen Eric Bronner, Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2017): 87, 90.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":6" /><ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref>
The journal's masthead lists its editor as David Tse-Chien Pan and its editor emeritus as Russell A. Berman.<ref>Telos Press, "Masthead," https://www.telospress.com/masthead</ref> Piccone died of cancer in 2004 at age 64.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
HistoryEdit
Template:Undue weight section The journal was established 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.<ref name="Genosko2019" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=Chaves>Elisabeth K. Chaves, "Writing that W/rights Politics?—An Examination 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</ref> 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."<ref name=Chaves/>
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."<ref name=Chaves/>Template:Undue weight inline 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Kenneth Anderson, "Telos, the critical theory journal and its blog," November 18, 2007.</ref> In a 1971 pamphlet, in reference to its heterodoxy, members of the Chicago Surrealist Group said Telos conference organizers were "capable only of promoting the peaceful coexistence of various modes of confusion".<ref>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</ref>Template:Third-party inline
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 legal philosopher and Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt,<ref name=":72">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> federalism, and American populism through the work of Christopher Lasch.Template: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.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>Danny Postel, "The metamorphosis of Telos," In These Times, April 21-30, 1991.</ref><ref>Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic Books, 1987): 151-52.</ref><ref>Jennifer M. Lehmann, Social Theory as Politics in Knowledge (New York: Emerald Group Publishing, 2005): 81-82.</ref>
During the journal's "conservative turn" in the 1980s, many editorial board members, including Jürgen Habermas, left Telos.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":6">Template:Cite book</ref> The academic Joan Braune writes that one cause for the resignations was Piccone's support of the United States intervention in Nicaragua.<ref name=":72" />Template:Undue weight inline 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.<ref name=Chaves/>Template:Undue weight inline The paleoconservative Paul Gottfried, a former student of Herbert Marcuse, former Republican Party activist, and critic of neoconservatism, joined Telos in the 1980s and 1990s.<ref name=":6" /> In January 2025, he was not listed on the journal's masthead.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
European New Right figures such as Alain de Benoist were key contributors to Telos in the 1990s.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Piccone asserted that the French New Right had incorporated "95 percent of standard New Left ideas".<ref name=":4" /> Joseph Lowndes describes Telos as "the major translator" to English of de Benoist and other New Right figures.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":5">Template:Cite news</ref> Their ethnonationalist ideas later influenced the alt-right.<ref name="Chaves" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" />
In 1994, the paleoconservative Sam Francis was a panelist at a Telos conference in New York about populism.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>"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</ref> 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 Lowndes.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /> Telos had ties with figures of the paleoconservative Chronicles magazine, and was sympathetic to the Lega Nord in Italy, though TelosTemplate:' support for NATO military intervention against Serbia in 1999 to prevent ethnic cleansing was a tension with paleoconservatives.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2" />
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".<ref>"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</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> According to Chaves, the journal "always maintained a critical distance from any party or political movement."<ref name=Chaves/>Template:Undue weight inline Telos author John K. Bingley wrote in 2023 that "the clash of divergent opinions" is "at the core of [the journal's] identity."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
The journal is published by Telos Press Publishing and the editor-in-chief is David Pan.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It is affiliated with the Telos Institute, which hosts annual conferences, select papers from which are published in Telos.
Abstracting and indexingEdit
The journal is abstracted and indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences, and Current Contents/Arts & Humanities.<ref name=ISI>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2023 impact factor of 0.1.<ref name=WoS>Template:Cite book</ref>
Telos Press PublishingEdit
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.