Frictions

Laruelle, a historian and sociologist, explores the ideological foundations of the Putin regime, challenging simplistic portrayals of Russia. Her book Ideology and Meaning-Making Under the Putin Regime examines how ideology is actively produced and implemented in both Russian domestic and foreign policy. Situating Russia’s current politics within its broader intellectual and strategic traditions, the interview offers insight into how ideology helped pave the way for the war in Ukraine.

“…By meaning making, I really wanted to bring the idea that it’s not about propaganda. It’s not something that is purely opportunistic, done by a regime who doesn’t care at all about ideology and about the society and that just want to stay in power, which is a very current, very regular kind of widespread interpretation. It has that aspect, of course, but it’s much more complex than that. I think there was a genuine idea that we need to make sense of today’s Russia as it is now. It never existed with these boundaries, with these borders. It’s a new entity, born from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It had different historical representation, different territorial representation. We need to make sense. It’s really a nationhood process of trying to create the sense that will be shared by the population. So, it was really important for me to say, okay, it makes sense by the Russian authorities to create that ideological infrastructure. And I think I also wanted the meaning making aspect to say, it makes sense for us, external observer, to take and to read that very seriously and to take it not as a kind of fake news kind of propaganda, brainwashing things, but really to study it as a kind of something that tries to be a genuine construction, even if it has all the kind of regime security elements in the mind, in the back.”

In this wide-ranging interview, the political economist Vamsi Vakulabharanam analyzes the evolution of inequality in China from the Mao era to post-1978 market reforms, arguing that China has transitioned from being one of the most equal societies in the world to one characterized by a deep class-based inequality that compares to that in the United States. He attributes rising inequality to regional disparities, urban-rural gaps, class divisions, and the gradual adoption of capitalist practices.

“The official stance of the Chinese Communist Party on inequality has not changed since the time of reforms. Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Let some people and some regions get rich first’ dictum affords a certain freedom-in-the-concrete for experimenting with policies that are deeply capitalist in nature. The real question is whether the emergence and entrenchment of capitalist class structures in the larger society changes the complexion of that dictum and creates a new one—in order to help those that did not get rich first, let there be another people’s revolution. Since the party is inspired by Marx, I am sure that its leaders are not unaware of the fact that the economic processes they have unleashed perpetuate class-based inequalities.”

Schuringa challenges the notion that analytic philosophy is ahistorical, apolitical, and purely logical by situating its development squarely within the social and ideological foundations of its time, particularly to post-World War II in the United States. Analytic philosophy masks its liberal bourgeois roots and self-reinforces through a closed system of shared intuitions, resisting engagement with alternative worldviews or radical critiques.

“To subject analytic philosophy to a social history is to produce consternation and confusion among its adherents. One primary source of analytic philosophers’ frustration is that they just cannot imagine what a social history might be, other than a crude causal explanation of what seem to be intellectually respectable ideas in terms of hidden influences. History does not work like that, and my book does not take any such approach. But their presuppositions mean that it will remain largely illegible for them. Again, they will reach for the defence that surely the alleged unmasking of supposedly brute social forces applies just as much to things other than analytic philosophy, and especially to its bête noire, ‘continental philosophy’. Or it will be claimed that the treatment offered does not capture every single case of analytic philosophy. Indeed, the rebuttal will be advanced that there is, after all, no such thing as analytic philosophy.”

Kim reflects on filial devotion, aging, and the complexities of midlife through the lens of her deepening relationship with her immigrant mother. She recounts the emotional excavation of her grandparents’ graves in South Korea, her evolving understanding of family, and her ambivalence toward traditional milestones like motherhood. The essay is a meditation on memory, care, and the urgency of creating meaning—not through children or marriage, but through writing, presence, and connection across generations.

“My family is still the one I was born into: mother, father, and brother, all of them alive and well — the ultimate luck. Many friends have already lost their parents or slipped into sandwich-generation duties, raising their kids while scrambling for elder care. Others of us have traded reproduction for something like filial piety. I can think of quite a few childless friends who have moved to be near a parent or had a parent move in with them. Midlife for them — and for me — is an open-faced sandwich. The defining event of my adulthood will not be birth or adoption, but the deaths of my parents, especially my mom.”

The conversation explores the ethical, ecological, and legal implications of using AI to decode whale communication, raising questions about what it means to truly listen to non-human life. As participants in the discussion acknowledge that the potential to translate whale language could shift how humans perceive animal intelligence and expand environmental protections, they emphasize that care, reciprocity, and humility—rather than domination or instrumentalization—must guide such efforts. Ultimately, meaningful interspecies connection may lie not in speaking to whales but in learning how to listen with respect, responsibility, and restraint.

César Rodríguez-Garavito, Earth rights scholar, field lawyer, and the founding director of the More-Than-Human Rights (MOTH) Project at NYU School of Law, argues that “going forward, the question is, well, what if we understood the content of those vocalizations. The argument that we make in that paper is that, that would help us substantiate or reinforce findings that we already have on the features of whale life, such as socialization and cultural interactions. There’s already pretty solid science showing that whale pods behave in culturally specific ways: they eat certain food, they also use certain clicks, they have dialects. And that together with understanding the content of their vocalizations would, I would say, help us make a strong case for the protection of their social lives as opposed to only their individual lives.”