| Editor | Russell Berman |
|---|---|
| Categories | Politics, Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Culture |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Founder | Paul Piccone |
| First issue | 1968 |
| Company | Telos Press |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | http://www.telospress.com |
| ISSN | 0090-6514 |
Telos is an academic journal published in the United States. It was founded in May 1968 to provide the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective. It sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction relevant for the US. In order to avoid the high level of abstraction typical of Husserlian phenomenology, the journal began introducing the ideas of Western Marxism and of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.[1][2][3]
With the disintegration of the New Left and the gradual integration of what remained of the American Left within the Democratic Party, Telos became increasingly critical of the Left in general. It subsequently undertook a reevaluation of 20th century intellectual history, focusing primarily on forgotten and repressed authors and ideas, beginning with Carl Schmitt and American populism. 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. 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.[4][5][6]
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Telos Press Publishing, founded by Paul Piccone, is the publisher of both the journal Telos as well as a separate book line. Based in New York City, it is widely known for having introduced English-speaking audiences to the works of Ernst Jünger, György Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Carl Schmitt, Jean Baudrillard, Matthias Küntzel, Jean-Claude Paye, photographer Kiki of Paris, Lucien Goldmann, Gustav Landauer, and Péter Szondi. Among others the journal has published original contributions from Claude Lefort, Paul Feyerabend, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard. Telos Press Publishing's current bookline editor is Timothy Luke.
The Telos Institute is an organization affiliated with Telos that hosts annual conferences to examine scholarly topics such as "social theory, political philosophy, intellectual history, and contemporary culture."[7] The current director of the Telos Institute is David Pan, who also serves as the Review Editor for Telos.[8] [9]
TELOSscope[10] is Telos Press Publishing's blog. Displayed on the main page of the website and updated several times a week, TELOSscope posts original essays, question-and-answers with authors and intellectuals, and introductions to journal issues. In September 2009 Telos Press launched TELOSthreads, an initiative designed to showcase Telos’s online archives. As part of this initiative, staff bloggers regularly highlight an article from a past issue of Telos and use it as a springboard for further reflection about the article's topic. An index of subject categories is available on the Telos Press website, which allows visitors to browse journal articles according to their shared themes and concerns.
TELOScast is a social media initiative that seeks to engage readers through regular podcasts, featuring interviews, highlights from Telos articles, and roundtable discussions. Telos Press has also begun posting YouTube videos, featuring broadcasts from the publisher and editor, as well as footage from the annual Telos Institute conference, held in New York City.
Telos Press is currently in the process of one of its biggest initiatives to date: the digitization of the complete archive of Telos back issues, from 1968 to the present. Once this project is complete, the full archive – over 40 years of Telos – will be available online to institutional subscribers for 2012 renewals. Through Highwire Press, Telos' online publisher, readers can access a complete gallery of Telos back issues, cover art, and an index of every article, review, or commentary published in Telos.