Jennifer Ponce de León | University of Pennsylvania (2024)

Philosophy Today, 2020

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historic... more This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions, representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working through a number of diverse debates and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process that includes aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a collective, cultural revolution as its antidote.

American Quarterly, 2018

Philosophy Today, 2020

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing onthe tradition of historic... more This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on
the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the
aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of
false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time
in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions,
representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working
through a number of diverse debates and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo
Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process
that includes every aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a
collective, cultural revolution as its antidote.

Project MUSE, 2021

ASAP/Journal, 2018

ies and foments radical tendencies within the human rights movement in Argentina. This movement h... more ies and foments radical tendencies within the human rights movement in Argentina. This movement has been the principal force for building a social condemnation of state terrorism committed under the country’s last dictatorship (1976– 1983) and bringing its perpetrators to justice. Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) [Street Art Group] and Etcétera..., two collectives that have been at the forefront of artistic activism in Buenos Aires since the late 1990s, have fused their art production with forms of direct action that serve as crucial tactics of struggle for the human rights movement. Their work exemplifies ways that artists can take up and transform aesthetic forms, discourses, and

Philosophy Today

In this wide-ranging interview, Gabriel Rockhill discusses his most recent book, Counter-History ... more In this wide-ranging interview, Gabriel Rockhill discusses his most recent book, Counter-History of the Present, in the broader context of his research to date on aesthetics, politics and history, as well as its relationship to important interlocutors like Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon and Simone de Beauvoir. He explains the similarities and important differences between genealogy and counter-history, and he elucidates how his work performs a materialist deconstruction that contests the idealist logocentrism operative in purely textualist modes of interpretation. The interview also develops an account of “radical geography” that calls into question culturalist spatial imaginaries, which plague certain forms of decolonial theory that diminish or efface social stratification and class conflict. The discussion thereby contributes to the development of a new model for critical social theory with an internationalist perspective, w...

This article examines Raiders of the Lost Crown (2013) by Fran Ilich (b. 1975, Tijuana) as an exa... more This article examines Raiders of the Lost Crown (2013) by Fran Ilich (b. 1975, Tijuana) as an example of current experimental artistic-literary production that uses transmedial narrative forms to articulate a capacious anticolonial critique and trace historical connections between (neo)colonial and (neo)imperial formations. Raiders took the form of an alternate reality game wherein players were charged with re-capturing a legendary pre-Columbian Mexica (Aztec) headdress from an Austrian museum. The gameplay unfolded across myriad platforms, including an intervention at the museum, epistolary exchanges, a petition campaign, and participation in a solidarity economy. With mordant wit and calculated deception, Raiders puts on display the colonial character of museums, neoliberal economic regimes, and the geopolitical determinations that define debt and property, while ironizing and provincializing Eurocentric humanism’s universalizing claims and the moral feelings founded upon these. Raiders critiques the neocolonial character of the Mexican state and its indigenismo in a manner that attests to the influence Zapatista discourse and the history of the EZLN have had upon the politics and aesthetics of Ilich’s work. Finally, in a speculative and utopic register, Raiders invokes the possibility of a future beyond European colonial modernity.

Through an analysis of protest art produced within the Argentine human rights movement from 1998-... more Through an analysis of protest art produced within the Argentine human rights movement from 1998-2000, this paper shows how artists take up and transform aesthetic forms, discourses, and tactics produced by social movements and, in so doing, contribute to these movements’ aesthetic repertoires and political narratives. The groups Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) and Etcétera… participate in the Argentine human rights movement through their interventionist art practices that are also forms of direct action. Their work pushes for a radicalization of the movement by mobilizing its social condemnation of state terrorism under the past dictatorship towards a critique of the multiform violence of capital and the ongoing violence of the postdictatorial neoliberal state. Through an analysis of their work, this essay also theorizes struggles over historical narratives and the ways these enable or occlude apprehensions of violence and recognition of its agents, uses, and effects. The counter-hegemonic historical narratives I track in this essay refute state narratives and liberal ideologies to enable alternate apprehensions of violence and justice, while elucidating the historical constitution of the present social order.

Contemporary Theatre Review, 2005

... The No-movie Interview: Chicano Art Collective, Asco (1972 – 87)', Jump Cut, 39 (1994 ..... more ... The No-movie Interview: Chicano Art Collective, Asco (1972 – 87)', Jump Cut, 39 (1994 ... of conceptual art, interventionist performance, expressionist painting, mail art, set design, andanimation. ... allusions to film history in 'Hollywood Extras: One Tradition of “Avant-Garde” Film in ...

Glq-a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2006

The Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique summer school is an intensive research... more The Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique summer school is an intensive research program whose primary objective is to provide an international forum for trans-disciplinary and comparative work in critical social theory, in the most expansive sense of the term. Participants are exposed to the work of contemporary thinkers and engage with current debates in the Francophone world and beyond (past speakers have included Domenico Losurdo, Geneviève Fraisse, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Rancière, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Amy Allen, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Bernard Stiegler). Special attention is paid to traditions of thought that have been excluded from the academy, including Marxism, the black radical tradition, anticolonial theory, anti-capitalist feminism, materialist queer theory and radical ecological thought.

The summer program is organized around rigorous collective debates and theory in action. Our invited guests are asked to share work in progress and participate in discussions of their research. Participants in the program—unless they opt out—work on and present their own research projects in working groups. The overall objective is to bring together a diverse panoply of thinkers in order to cultivate productive, collaborative and transdisciplinary research.

For more information: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/

The Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique runs an intensive research program in Pa... more The Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique runs an intensive research program in Paris, and simultaneously online, whose primary objective is to provide an international forum for trans-disciplinary and comparative work in critical social theory, in the most expansive sense of the term. Participants are exposed to the work of contemporary thinkers and engage with current debates in the Francophone world and beyond. Special attention is paid to traditions of thought that have been structurally suppressed in the academy, including Marxism, the black radical tradition, anticolonial theory, socialist feminism and radical ecological thought.

The summer program is organized around rigorous collective debates and theory in action. Our invited guests are asked to share work in progress and participate in discussions of their research. Participants in the program—unless they opt out—work on and present their own research projects in working groups. The overall objective is to bring together a diverse panoply of thinkers in order to cultivate productive, collaborative and transdisciplinary research.

For more information: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/

Philosophy Today, 2020

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historic... more This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions, representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working through a number of diverse debates and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process that includes aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a collective, cultural revolution as its antidote.

American Quarterly, 2018

Philosophy Today, 2020

This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing onthe tradition of historic... more This article sets forth a compositional model of ideology by drawing on
the tradition of historical materialism and further developing its insights into the
aesthetic composition of reality. It demonstrates how ideology is not simply a set of
false beliefs but is rather the process by which social agents are composed over time
in every dimension of their existence, including their thoughts, practices, perceptions,
representations, values, affects, desires, and unconscious drives. By working
through a number of diverse debates and authors—ranging from Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels to Louis Althusser, Eduardo Galeano, Rosaura Sánchez, and Paulo
Freire—it thereby elucidates how ideology is best understood as an aesthetic process
that includes every aspect of sense and sense-making, and that therefore requires a
collective, cultural revolution as its antidote.

Project MUSE, 2021

ASAP/Journal, 2018

ies and foments radical tendencies within the human rights movement in Argentina. This movement h... more ies and foments radical tendencies within the human rights movement in Argentina. This movement has been the principal force for building a social condemnation of state terrorism committed under the country’s last dictatorship (1976– 1983) and bringing its perpetrators to justice. Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) [Street Art Group] and Etcétera..., two collectives that have been at the forefront of artistic activism in Buenos Aires since the late 1990s, have fused their art production with forms of direct action that serve as crucial tactics of struggle for the human rights movement. Their work exemplifies ways that artists can take up and transform aesthetic forms, discourses, and

Philosophy Today

In this wide-ranging interview, Gabriel Rockhill discusses his most recent book, Counter-History ... more In this wide-ranging interview, Gabriel Rockhill discusses his most recent book, Counter-History of the Present, in the broader context of his research to date on aesthetics, politics and history, as well as its relationship to important interlocutors like Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon and Simone de Beauvoir. He explains the similarities and important differences between genealogy and counter-history, and he elucidates how his work performs a materialist deconstruction that contests the idealist logocentrism operative in purely textualist modes of interpretation. The interview also develops an account of “radical geography” that calls into question culturalist spatial imaginaries, which plague certain forms of decolonial theory that diminish or efface social stratification and class conflict. The discussion thereby contributes to the development of a new model for critical social theory with an internationalist perspective, w...

This article examines Raiders of the Lost Crown (2013) by Fran Ilich (b. 1975, Tijuana) as an exa... more This article examines Raiders of the Lost Crown (2013) by Fran Ilich (b. 1975, Tijuana) as an example of current experimental artistic-literary production that uses transmedial narrative forms to articulate a capacious anticolonial critique and trace historical connections between (neo)colonial and (neo)imperial formations. Raiders took the form of an alternate reality game wherein players were charged with re-capturing a legendary pre-Columbian Mexica (Aztec) headdress from an Austrian museum. The gameplay unfolded across myriad platforms, including an intervention at the museum, epistolary exchanges, a petition campaign, and participation in a solidarity economy. With mordant wit and calculated deception, Raiders puts on display the colonial character of museums, neoliberal economic regimes, and the geopolitical determinations that define debt and property, while ironizing and provincializing Eurocentric humanism’s universalizing claims and the moral feelings founded upon these. Raiders critiques the neocolonial character of the Mexican state and its indigenismo in a manner that attests to the influence Zapatista discourse and the history of the EZLN have had upon the politics and aesthetics of Ilich’s work. Finally, in a speculative and utopic register, Raiders invokes the possibility of a future beyond European colonial modernity.

Through an analysis of protest art produced within the Argentine human rights movement from 1998-... more Through an analysis of protest art produced within the Argentine human rights movement from 1998-2000, this paper shows how artists take up and transform aesthetic forms, discourses, and tactics produced by social movements and, in so doing, contribute to these movements’ aesthetic repertoires and political narratives. The groups Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) and Etcétera… participate in the Argentine human rights movement through their interventionist art practices that are also forms of direct action. Their work pushes for a radicalization of the movement by mobilizing its social condemnation of state terrorism under the past dictatorship towards a critique of the multiform violence of capital and the ongoing violence of the postdictatorial neoliberal state. Through an analysis of their work, this essay also theorizes struggles over historical narratives and the ways these enable or occlude apprehensions of violence and recognition of its agents, uses, and effects. The counter-hegemonic historical narratives I track in this essay refute state narratives and liberal ideologies to enable alternate apprehensions of violence and justice, while elucidating the historical constitution of the present social order.

Contemporary Theatre Review, 2005

... The No-movie Interview: Chicano Art Collective, Asco (1972 – 87)', Jump Cut, 39 (1994 ..... more ... The No-movie Interview: Chicano Art Collective, Asco (1972 – 87)', Jump Cut, 39 (1994 ... of conceptual art, interventionist performance, expressionist painting, mail art, set design, andanimation. ... allusions to film history in 'Hollywood Extras: One Tradition of “Avant-Garde” Film in ...

Glq-a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2006

The Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique summer school is an intensive research... more The Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique summer school is an intensive research program whose primary objective is to provide an international forum for trans-disciplinary and comparative work in critical social theory, in the most expansive sense of the term. Participants are exposed to the work of contemporary thinkers and engage with current debates in the Francophone world and beyond (past speakers have included Domenico Losurdo, Geneviève Fraisse, Pierre Macherey, Jacques Rancière, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Amy Allen, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Bernard Stiegler). Special attention is paid to traditions of thought that have been excluded from the academy, including Marxism, the black radical tradition, anticolonial theory, anti-capitalist feminism, materialist queer theory and radical ecological thought.

The summer program is organized around rigorous collective debates and theory in action. Our invited guests are asked to share work in progress and participate in discussions of their research. Participants in the program—unless they opt out—work on and present their own research projects in working groups. The overall objective is to bring together a diverse panoply of thinkers in order to cultivate productive, collaborative and transdisciplinary research.

For more information: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/

The Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique runs an intensive research program in Pa... more The Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique runs an intensive research program in Paris, and simultaneously online, whose primary objective is to provide an international forum for trans-disciplinary and comparative work in critical social theory, in the most expansive sense of the term. Participants are exposed to the work of contemporary thinkers and engage with current debates in the Francophone world and beyond. Special attention is paid to traditions of thought that have been structurally suppressed in the academy, including Marxism, the black radical tradition, anticolonial theory, socialist feminism and radical ecological thought.

The summer program is organized around rigorous collective debates and theory in action. Our invited guests are asked to share work in progress and participate in discussions of their research. Participants in the program—unless they opt out—work on and present their own research projects in working groups. The overall objective is to bring together a diverse panoply of thinkers in order to cultivate productive, collaborative and transdisciplinary research.

For more information: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/