Ahoj,
as my life does not permit much work on the blog at the moment I thought I’d use the newsletter for what its name indicates: writing a letter on what’s new.
First things first, now that I stumble upon the word „new“: I was supposed to write a review on my friend, colleague and comrade Markus Hodec’s book Das Neue. Prolegomena zur Känologie (The New. Prolegomena to Kainology – Königshausen & Neumann, 2025), it was due for June. Sorry, Markus! One of the many things on the outskirts of my house of cards of dates and obligations that had to fall.
But what is new then, what did I do and what’s to come? Let’s start with the English stuff.
I am currently working on a paper that will form the basis of a chapter in my PhD and is directly connected to the whole „para-enlightenment“ business, namely to the „para“ part of it – an investigation into the Principle of Non-Contradiction and the justification of a Hegelian thesis on it: The PNC is a necessary presupposition to any thought whatsoever and there are necessary contradictions inherent in thought itself. „‘Why not start with contradiction?’ – Łukasiewicz and Priest on (Non-)Contradiction”, in: Jahrbuch der Prager Gruppe* 4, coming end of 2026. I will make it accessible on Academia.
My comrade Pavel Kabát and I am working on the conference proceedings for our Žižek conference last November in Prague, hopefully it will appear at Bloomsbury next year.
I applied to the Lacan conference in Gent, Belgium this September. My proposal was rejected, but I will still write the paper as it will form the basis of a PhD chapter as well: “Contradictions of Universality. Why Not-All is Not Primary” – My reconstruction of Lacan’s formulas of sexuation from its context in the foundational crisis of logic and mathematics, using it as a basis for my critique of Lorenzo Chiesa’s reading of them. Hope to have it finished by the end of the year, will submit it to either Angelaki or Y.
A paper (“A Program for Lacanian Ontology: Ten Problems and the Need for a Lacanian Logic”) I wrote end of last year seems to confirm some of my theses on real contradictions: it was both published and not published. Currently it’s on the journal’s website (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), but without the PDF. Trying to reach any of the people involved for several months now.
I am planning on publishing a book on the New Right end of this year, a collection of old and new articles I wrote on the matter. This will, due to the very specific context of most of its themes, largely be in German, but I plan to include an English guest chapter by the Prague-based collective Kolektiv Distorze and an English reply to it.
As we’re already almost there, now the German stuff, which – due to the unfortunate necessity of earning money – makes up most of my philosophical and journalistic-political work right now:
My main work of the last months: I published quite some, sometimes more, sometimes less interesting, articles in different outlets over the last months that you can on my Torial as always: https://www.torial.com/nico.graack (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)
At this year’s Hegel Congress in Rome (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) I will form a panel with my colleagues from the Prager Gruppe*. We will be speaking, from different angles, on Non-Reason that Hegel encounters in different forms throughout his system: the platypus and similar monsters of incoherent determinations. I for my part will speak on the Pöbel and its place as a logical category, building up to Pavel Kabát’s contribution on the digital Pöbel you’ll encounter in the comment sections of this vast land of the internet. I will try my best to counter the orthodox Adornites we have in the group: “Die Wiederkehr des Pöbels. Von revolutionären Schnabeltieren”
Then there is, at least for me, huge news: I finally started a project with my friend Norman Marquardt that’s been slowly brewing in our minds for years – Der Speicherstand (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), the attempt to found a meaningful feuilleton for gaming culture. For now there will be an essay a month, perhaps a couple of interviews etc., and then we’ll see how this evolves. We already saved ourselves the corresponding Twitch account…
I most likely forgot some things, but that’s life. There will be a break to all projects in August, so I’ll get back to you in September – I already have shit tons of ideas for different sections of this blog (“Quote of the Week”: Shitposting on a random target’s speech once a week; “Tales of a Nothing”: English translations of sections my first book that was stemming out of my many hitchhiking tours through Europe and the obscure Hippieesk drug-tainted (non-)places I lived in; …).
So long,
Nico
Date
14/07/2026