Lily Lynch at Jacobin:
Ypi, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, is a transgressive “Kantian Marxist” (her own descriptor) in a world in which the Right claims a monopoly on transgression. Although she made her career as a serious interpreter of nineteenth-century German philosophy, she has also published widely on Marxism and political parties. Ypi’s last book, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, released in 2021, held up Hoxha’s Albania as a funhouse mirror, bringing liberalism’s ideological delusions into relief in the process. The book was an international hit: it received near-universal acclaim and was translated into thirty-five languages.
In Albania, however, Free caused an uproar. Some objected to what they viewed as the book’s insufficiently grim portrait of communism. Others were put off by Prime Minister Edi Rama’s presence at its launch. The latter critique led to a heated dust-up in the letters pages of the London Review of Books between Ypi and her reviewer, Granta editor Thomas Meaney. It felt like a throwback to a time when literary culture had higher stakes.
More here.
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