Gary Genosko, Samir Gandesha, and Kristina Marcellus

A Crucible of Critical Interdisciplinarity: The Toronto

Telos Group

In the past decade and a half, the journal Telos has attained a certain level of notoriety for having engaged in a not unsympathetic debate with some of the leading figures of the European New Right, for tarrying with an extremely conservative form of popu- lism which pits decentralized, so-called "organic" communities against the monolithic power of the New Managerial Class that resulted from the New Deal, and for advocat- ing a brand of federalism not unlike that of the clearly xenophobic Italian Liga Norda and for rehabilitating the political theory of Carl Schmitt who was instrumental in drafting the Nazi Nuremburg Laws. In themselves, such positionings would be contro- versial enough; however, this is especially true in the case of a journal that has played an unrivalled role not only introducing critical theory, and to a lesser extent, French post-structuralism to a North American audience, but also in seeking, on this basis, to provide a sustained analysis and critique of American society.

Telos was originally founded as an oppositional grouping of graduate students within what it took to be an overwhelmingly empty and conformist discipline of philosophy. Taking its inspiration from the later Husserl, in particular 7%e Crisis of European Sci- ences (1970), and subsequently from more "materialist" sources such as Herbert Mar- cuse, Telos sought to return philosophy, which at the time was dominated by a rather dreary form of linguistic analysis, to the socially and historically mediated "things themselves." After publishing the first couple of issues, Telos began to worry that it was beginning to succumb to the very forces that it sought to protest against, the insti- tution of the university as a locus of Fordist production relations, with the inevitable

pull of professional legitimation and incorporation. It thus changed direction rather rapidly, distinguishing itself by translating, introducing and extensively discussing some of the most important figures of so-called continental philosophy and social sci- ence. For instance, the first and second comings of Jean Baudrillard (1975; 1981) in English translation were courtesy of Telos Press and editorial board member Mark Poster, who had been a key figure in the journal's Californian cadre since 1973, and Charles Levin, member of the short-lived Montrtal Telos Group. Such a change of direction corresponded to a radicalization of the anti-war and students' movements in the US and, of course, the events in Paris. From this point onwards, at least until the 1980s, the editorial direction of Telos, despite its shifts of emphasis, can be described as seeking to understand the relation between philosophy and the social sciences, on the one side, and the economic, social and political structure of the so-called "advanced industrialized societies, the US in particular, on the other.

Our interest in this paper is, however, in a particular period of the journal-the late 1970s to the early 1980s-and the emergence of a group editorial organization that began in Toronto. Our task is to find frameworks in which to explain the exemplarity of the Toronto Telos Group within the context of the journal's history and editorial practices but also in terms of favourable institutional settings in Toronto during the period. Moreover, we want to discover how Toronto might be situated within the vision articulated through editor Paul Piccone's "artificial negativity thesis" that was widely discussed in the journal during this period.

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8 Toronto Telos 0 - 2 The Toronto Telos Group (TTG) was the first of six editorial groups that emerged

around the philosophy journal Telos, edited since its inception at SUNY-Buffalo in 1968 by Paul Piccone. Toronto Telos was also the longest standing of the editorial groups, appearing for the first time on the masthead in Telos 22 (Winter 1974-75) and henceforth for most of the remainder of the decade until Telos 38 W~nter 1978-79) and for the final time three issues later in Telos 41 (Fall 1979). But even then, while no longer constituted as the TTG and listed as such, its production of the reviews contin- ued under the direction of coordinating editor John Fekete, with the assistance of many 'former' TTG members, for several more years until Fall 1981 (Telos 49) before petering out. Over the course of some twenty-five issues Toronto Telos members pro- vided a staple of the journal's back pages, the Short Journal Reviews. Unlike other longstanding groups such as St. Louis Telos, which spanned some 16 issues from Telos 25 (Fall 1975) through Telos 41 (Fall 1979), members of the Toronto contingent had a regular presence in the pages of the journal and occupied key positions on the pro- duction staff and editorial associate posts. During a year spent in Toronto on a teach- ing contract (1974-75), Piccone himselfwas listed as a member of the Toronto group. During this period (and for some years later), the journal was produced in St. Louis, and members of the production team, composed mostly of graduate students at York University, would make the long drive to St. Louis, with Piccone and managing editor Patricia nmmons, to produce it. The energy, enthusiasm and collective sense of the project's urgency that marked these junkets cannot be understated.

The group structure of Telos is, from the perspective of a sociology of critical institu- tions, quite complex and, at times, in terms of numbers, sprawling: Toronto and St. Louis stand out both for their longevity, as well as for Piccone's own connections with both cities; the Kansas Group emerged in Winter 1976-77 (Telos 30) and disbanded in Winter 1980-81 (Telos 46); the Texas Group, among whose members was listed a per- sonality, "The Lone Ranger," was a mere blip in Winter 1976-77 (Telos 30); in the Summer 1980 (Telos 44), the second Canadian Telos group appeared in Montreal, but it was short-lived and lasted for only four issues until Spring 1981 (Telos 47); Berkeley formed a group in Spring 1981, but it did not stick, although Telos associates in Cali- fornia were numerous, well-positioned, but widespread; finally, Carbondale picked up briefly where the TTG had left off and produced the Short Journal Reviews in Sum- mer 1982 (Telos 52). By 1982-83, there were no more Telos groups listed on the mast- head. The reason for the collapse of the journal's group structure is beyond the goals of this paper, but was linked to Piccone's definitive shift away from academia (although, as suggested above, Telos had from the start an ambivalent relation to the academy), his relocation in New York (where he has remained), and his conservative shift in political interests. This fundamental change in politics would not fully find expression until later in the mid-eighties. This merely presages a more widespread phenomenon on the Left today. However, we should also give some consideration to the fact that while certain issues alienated some long-standing associates, there remain to the present those such as the Russells Uacoby and Berman), as well as Tim Luke, who have been around for at least a couple of decades and seen the editorial policy go through these twists and turns and have, nonetheless, stuck with it. But it -I was not only, of course, a political u-turn that changed the journal's editorial composi- 8 tion. For despite the complexity and heterogeneity of the group structure of the jour- 6

w nal, each group with its own intrinsic references, organizational and working - principles, and the opportunities that regular Telos conferences provided for inter- 3

group communication, Piccone exercised final editorial authority over the work that would appear in print. Piccone's editorial power obviously shares some similarities with that of Max Horkheirner's administrative power in the Znstitut fur Sorialfor- shung. Whether, in this sense, Piccone modelled either his editorial style after Horkhe- imer or even thought of Telos as an American version of the fabled Zeitschrift fur Sorlalforschung remains, at this point, an open question.

Some of the former members of the TTG are still in Toronto (Brian Singer and Steve Levine at York; Janet Lum at Ryerson; Wodek Szemberg at TV Ontario) or nearby Uohn Fekete and Andrew Wernick at Trent). Other former members have become well- known, even notorious, figures in political theory and intellectual history in the UK and US Uohn Keane at Westminster; Rick Wolin at CUNY, respectively). What interests us here is first, the question of the value of the practice of reviewing reviews and, sec- ond, the conditions that gave rise to and sustained the Toronto Group.

Fellow Travelers

In 1978, Telos editorial associate Dick Howard published a review of the challenges facing Paul Thibaud (1978) as he assumed responsibility for the French journal Esprit. Howard notes with interest a regular feature of this journal, a section titled "Journal h plusieurs void' which consisted of some 20-30 pages of shorts essays, opinions, and comments on topical matters. What impressed Howard was the "movement character" of this section, which was akin to a lively editorial meeting: "this style of writing engages the reader as participant in a way that edifying or scientific prose can never approach" (1978: 144). Indeed, the fact that all editorial members would take part in the "menial tasks" of production contributed to Esprit's self-image as an "engaged community" of "fraternal and self-sacrificing" members in the Catholic intellectual tra- dition; additionally, the "Internal Bulletin" circulated among editors assisted both in informing and enlivening debate. The irony of this line of comparison would be thrown into relief by snide remarks by Piccone on the historic organ Isba and the eventual breakdown of Telos once it became ensconced in its New York digs:

. . . there were no breaks within the editorial board until well after the New York move was completed. Reminiscent of a similar sequence of events within Iskra when Lenin's Bolsheviks and Plekhanov's Mensheviks parted ways on the basis of "irreconcilable differences" concerning proof-reading or such-like momentous questions of office management, the Habermasians eventually left the editorial board in 1987 because of earth-shaking issues of

d this type. (1988:25) : 0 - Thibaud added a new, occasional feature, a "reviews of reviews" that Howard also

praised, making reference to a feature devoted to a special issue of Les Temps Mod- m e s and attention paid to new journals and important foreign journals. The parallels with practices at Telos are striking. The Short Journal Reviews provided by the Toronto Telos Group had been a staple of Telos since 1974-75 although they were never focussed on single or even multiple issues of one journal and, instead, grazed rather widely. This in itself would become a topic for internal Telos debate. More generally, the self-image of Telos rested from the very beginning of the publication on special, most often not very flattering attention being paid to other new journals, especially those staffed by other graduate students (the early issues were produced in the Department of Philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo by graduate students).

The valorized characteristics of a "journal movement" such as those mentioned by Howard above were subject, especially in the pages of Telos and on the rostrums and in the business meetings of its conferences, to a certain degree of wooden predictabil- ity, on the one hand, and volatility, on the other-a predictable volatility, if you will. A comparison with wrestling is not out of order. Long-time book review editor Paul Breines (1988:39) did just that: "the late 60s and early 70s saw a series of annual occa- sions known as Telos conferences, some of which might be thought of as philosophi- cal harbingers of the more recent and far more popular phenomenon known as 'Wrestlemania'."

Three examples are in order. The first concerns the internal, editorial processing of a line of communication with the readership, letters to the editor, and the second touches directly on the Short Journal Reviews and internal processes that ultimately would leak into external relations. The third finds a 'fellow traveler' after the fact in calendar years, but one that nonetheless had a keen interest in reviewing reviews- Toronto's border/lines magazine.

Occasionally, Telos would publish a Letters section. One such letter writer, a certain Steve Light, wrote complaining of the incommensurability of the Telosian effort to "stimulate a critical intelligentsia" at the expense of the Frankfurt School and others. The author of this letter complained that "the letter is printed in such an altered and distorted form that I must dissociate myself from it entirely.. . . After authorizing a final copy, I opened up Telos 33 to find a completely fabricated version of my let- ter"(1972:167-8). As far as Letters to any Editor are concerned, editorial policy typi- cally reserves the right to edit, shorten and in the minds of many writers, thereby distort their contributions. The response of managing editor Patricia Tummons was not without its humour, insofar as she referred to herself as "HATCHET-WOMAN" and explained: "It was this editor's intent merely to make that point a bit sharper by removing much of the bombast in which it was buried. The original letter will remain in the Telos archives and, if or when history decides to judge, I'm sure I will be vindi- cated" (1972:263). This blast and counterblast style is a variation on high-handed edi- torializing that many members of the lTG have commented upon. Such "external polemics," as "outside" communications (Piccone and Perry Anderson's pitched bat- -I tles, for example) were known in the journal, are no more or less volatile than the $ "internal polemics" that animated Telos conferences and internal newsletters; hence, 5

0 our second example. -

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At the Antioch Telos conference, hosted by the Kansas Group in 1978, the internal polemics between members of the journal's groups is well-rehearsed, familiar, yet mediated through the intimate distance of their theoretical and sometimes national affiliations/origins. Almost everybody is characterized in this manner: John Keane is a "Habermaniac"; Andrew Arato is the "aspiring Ilie Nastase of the Tdos group" [Roma- nian tennis player, ranked Number 1 in the early seventies and notorious bad boy]; Trent professor of English and Cultural Studies John Fekete defends the honour of the Canadians. The confrontations are called a game of "ritual ping-pong" (Kansas Telos Group 1978: 188-92).

But it was Piccone's critical reflection during the business meeting on the Telos prac- tice of reviewing revues that interests us much more, though this, too, forms part of the rehearsal of family feuds:

Finally, Piccone criticized the short journal review section as being objectivis- tic and lacking critical perspective, and suggested that it be drastically 'spiked' or completely eliminated. Those at the meeting viewed this section as a valuable service to the readers, and opted for the former approach. (Kansas Telos Group 1978: 190)

If the Short Journal Reviews provided by the TTG could be saved by simple appeal to the lustre of reader services, perhaps, then, machinations about the journal's reader- ship were not so self-flagellatory, a typical characterization used by Piccone of Telos meetings.

It is important to note that the practice of reviewing revues in Telos only appeared with the constitution of Toronto Telos. Singer underlined this point in response to questions about the model for this practice, which he did not provide, but neverthe- less reflected on: "It didn't really happen until there was a Telos group constituted." The practice was produced by the group and allowed for the group's reproduction: "we were looking for things that would help the group cohere. There was a certain amount of enthusiasm (2001). . . ."

At least one former TTG member and current TVO producer, Wodek Szemberg (2001), recalled the Piccone call to "spike": "The only thing I remember [about the Short Journal Reviews] is Paul insisting that they had to be damning, clear and concise and very angry." There is only modest evidence that they were written with anger. For this reason, perhaps, they are not memorable. Singer admits to not having looked at them since they were written. Szemberg thought that the practice of writing such reviews was the result of "a sort of desire for a Hegelian sweep, we're on top of you, you're not on top of us. We know what you are up to." Singer follows up this point regarding what might be called the surveillance function of the reviews:

The Telos style which we all imbibed from Piccone was rather high handed and certain of us withdrew and rejected that. I don't think any of us did what he tended to do, which was always to place oneself on the cusp of that Hegelian moment when everything would become revealed and the totality would become transparent. I think the original purpose basically was situating our- selves and also providing sources for other people in terms of which articles might be of interest et cetera et cetera, and to do it in a fairly broad sense. You know, both to cover journals that people would feel like they had to know about anyway, like the New Left Review or the Monthly Review or those kinds of things, but also journals that people wouldn't know about and possibly wouldn't even read because they were in foreign languages. (2001)

The Short Journal Reviews displayed from the outset an extraordinary international and multilingual outlook, covering publications in Italian, French, German, Hungar- ian, etc. It was not until the winter issue of 197677 that the journal commentaries were initialled by 'ITG members and contributors, which were not identical (contribu- tors were listed after the members and sometimes were members of other Telos groups and the editorial board). Some articles in the mix received special attention owing to personal connections (a "future member" of the group such as Andrew Wer- nick writing in Catalyst on Durkheim; 23 Spring 1975), superstars of the American Left get royal treatment (Paul Sweezy and Monthly Review), and attention is duly paid to the editorial statements of new journals and how they havehave not fulfilled them (i.e., Quest and The Second Wave in Telos 22 and 23). By the summer and fall of 1975, the reviews had become, on the whole, slightly less fact-minded, one-line summaries

of articles and more engaging (a good example being a review of an issue of Radical Science some two pages long and full of carefully argued, lively, and critical observa- tions marking a radical contrast with the other summaries; Telos 24 Summer 1975). In the summer issue of 1975 (Telos 24), Fekete is introduced to the group by Piccone and joins it, assuming an editorial associate post two issues later. In Telos 30, 1976- 77, Fekete would appear as the editor of the Short Journal Reviews. This is also the moment when Telos groups proliferate as we see the emergence of the other groups. By the Fall issue of 1975 (Telos 25) the lTG gets a mailing address at York (240 Vanier College, the general office for some 20 years of the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought). For the first few issues, the TTG remained quite stable, losing and gaining only a few members: Ben Agger appears only once; Steve Levine drops out in summer of 1976 as does Nick Xenos; but in 1976 (Telos 27) a new wave enters the scene, including Wernick, Dorothy Gehrke, Georgia Warnke, and Nancy Wood. By the Winter of 1976-77, Fekete has found a position in Enghsh at Trent and, as compiler/ editor of the Short Journal Reviews, moves operations accordingly. This shift from York to Trent is accompanied by the dutiful initialling of the published reviews and a failed effort to introduce "Short Article Reviews." In the Fall of 1977 the members of lTG proper and those contributing reviews to the Short Journal Reviews began to diverge, and from 1979 through 1981, the 'ITG's work was undertaken by Fekete and those who contributed reviews, many former 'ITG members but no longer constituted as a group on the masthead.

Toronto-based bordwllines also made a habit of reviewing periodicals. Between issues -I 1 and 28 (19841993), the 'Junctures' section of the magazine was missing in only two $ issues (12 and 13). Like Telos' short journal reviews, border/lines "Junctures" supplied 6

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readers with subscription and publication information for the journals reviewed, as -

well as an author (unlike the early Telos reviews) and often included more than one 7

review per section. Because border/lines did not review any given journal twice, only two authors have multiple 'Junctures' to their credit-the late Ioan Davies with four (issues 1, 3, 4, 5 plus one co-authored with York University-based Topia editor Jody Berland in issue 1) and York colleague Barbara Godard with two (issues 2,16).

The reviews themselves tended not only to be much lengthier on average than those found in Telos but also often reviewed a collection of journals on a given theme. Rob- ert Gaucher tackled publications produced in Canadian prisons by prisoners (border/ Nnes 19: 1990), particularly as they represent the climate inside Canadian correctional facilities ("prison literature" was a great interest of Ioan Davies (1990) who taught in this area for many years at York). Other examples include Davies' reading of Granta and South African media studies journal Critical Arts "The Language that Discon- nects" (bordwllines 4 1985-86), Alan O'Connor's "Cultural Studies Magazines - Brief Annotations" (border/lines 6 1986-7, and Don Alexander's "The Floodgates of Anar- chy: Some Highlights From The Anarchist Press" (border/lines 17 1989-90). Over the course of its history the dimensions of border/lines slowly shrank in size from 11 x 17.5" to a manageable 8.5 x 11" and some of the earlier "Junctures" are largely repro- ductions of journal covers with accompanying text. Clearly, the pictorial space avail- able in a b/l spread was once a whopping 17 x 21" and it required design solutions beyond those of a small print journal like Telos.

International issues are examined by Paola Bono (1989) in her "Italian Feminist Jour- nals: An Overview" (borderflines 16), which is immediately followed by Godard's (1989) "Writing Women: Feminist Periodicals". This juxtaposition of international with Canadian material enabled border/Zines to remain inclusionary without compromis- ing the politically situated nature of the magazine. Joe Galbo, now at University of New Brunswick-St John, addresses North American Jewish concerns through Tikkun

In its overall politics Tikkun wants to retrieve the political territory ceded to the Right [. . .] Recognizing the appeal of conservative values to a large part of the American population, Tikkun now wants to steal the Right's rhetorical thunder (border/lines 15, 1981 : 13)

Galbo's piece also reviews a conference held by the editors of the magazine that dealt broadly with the reconstitution of American Jewish liberalism. The (con)juncture of publication and conference/event, while part of the Telos reviewing ethos, tended to wane as the journal developed, as the focus became more on the journal's own self- generation of debate and reflection on its own projects, especially annual group- sponsored conferences. There were exceptions, of course, especially in the case of international conferences like those covered by St. Louis Group member John Alt (with Frank Hearn 1980) on the "The Cortland Conference on Narcissism" (TeZos 44) and Toronto Group member Richard Wolin's (1982) review of the Benjamin Congress in Frankfurt (Telos 53). Indeed, bordedines reviewed international conferences as well, such as the London Foucault gathering in 1994 that "reinterred Foucault's old

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8 bones (Mike and Nicholas Gane [1994], b/l34-35)." Foucault's "original" death was

6 covered in the first issue (Welland 1984:5 1). 0 - 8 Other "Junctures" were reviews, or rather eulogies, for periodicals whose publication

had ceased. If Telos sought to bury alive certain other journals-especially graduate student projects-then bordeflines may be said to have presided over a series of wakes, some more robust than others. Robin Metcalfe provided an examination of the role of The Body Politic in the creation of a "gay culture" in Canada and abroad: "The pre-eminent gay theoretical journal of the English-speaking world, ZBP was Canada's contribution to the international movement." (border/Iines 7/8:1987) Metcalfe notes that although the journal was vital to the gay and lesbian rights movement, especially in its hometown of Toronto, by depending on volunteers, "ZBP may have delayed the development of a Canadian periodical industry that could support gay writers eco- nomically," thus keeping pace with other countries such as Australia and Sweden. Car- leton University based political scientist William Walters administered last rites to M a d m Today, reporting from on site: "TODAY; Marxism . . . . (1992 :24-25).

Still other issues of borderllines contained reviews of periodicals, but those in the form of events. Late Toronto writer Daniel Jones, for example, reviewed both the Tor- onto Small Press Book Fair of 1987 and some of the wares for sale ("Buy This Maga- zine", border/Iines 9/10: 1987-8). John Rodden in "Cultural Studies and the Culture of Academe" (border/lines 20/21:1990-91) reported on the Cultural Studies Now and In the Future conference held in early April of 1990. border/Iines 23-known as the "Native issuev---contained within its "Junctures" section both the Declaration of Quito

and Winona LaDuke's response toheview of the conference that produced it, We Are Still Here: The 500 Years Celebration" (1991-92).

Perhaps the most compelling, though by no means an exception to the usual political and social awareness demonstrated in ''Junctures," are those pieces focusing on con- flicts on an international scale. For example, Godard (1985) tackled Quebec (border/ lines 2) through a discussion of the presentation and analysis of Quebec writing in three journals, ranging from UniversitC de MontrCal's Etudesfran~aise to Yale French Studies. Recently, Godard commented with regard to the practice of reviewing revues in borderllines: "I note (with hindsight) that the kind of writing in University of Tor- onto Quarterly's 'Letters in Canada' is of a similar genre. And I wrote the 'Translation' essay for tl7Q from 1985-6 to 1988-9. So I was familiar with this model"(2002).

Although both border/Iines and Telos attempted to cross international boundaries with their periodical reviews, Telos succeeded to the extent that it broke language bar- riers and provided a sort of bluffers version of the journals' contents. The fact that Telos was largely a graduate student journal in both production and readership may account for the brevity and sequentiality of revie-ne sentence per article may have been just enough to provide a primer of the journals for graduate student read- ers. border/Iines, on the other hand, while also associated with York University grad programs, was also linked to arts constituencies as well as other specific contacts in various social movements (environmentalism and small publishing). It provided a more critical analysis of the available material, as is suggested by the length and com- parative nature of many of the "Junctures" pieces.

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It is also apparent that while Telos provided a wide variety of journals for cursory -

examination, this presentation lacked the situatedness of border/Iines reviews, which 9

not only places the subject matter under review in a particular social and political cli- mate and milieu, but also makes a practice of ensuring that this climate and environ- ment are illustrative of the origins of the magazine--Canada (or what the country looked like from Toronto). Telos lacked this orientation due to the peculiar nature of the American production and problematic of the journal vis-a-vis the Canadian sourc- ing of the Short Journal Reviews. Border/Iines was certainly not immune from this dis- tance and translation of theory for a select audience of graduate students and professors (the first 'Junctures' took aim at precisely this issue [Berland and Davies 19841 in the essays published in Arthur Kroker's Canadian Journal of Political and Social meory). Despite its unstable editorial assemblages, the untimely passing of sev- eral key contributors (Alex Wilson, Daniel Jones), and weakening ties with local polit- ical constituencies, the earnestness with which the journal sought to serve them (for instance, with special issues often edited by one-issue-only guest editors and editorial assistants hired with government funding under provincially and/or federally spon- sored work experience programs) rarely waned.

Piccone's Toronto

Analysis of the journal's readership presents a complex set of issues that elicit intense responses. Among these is found the issue of the quality of unsolicited manuscripts which Piccone, in his summary of the St. Louis Conference of December 1976, lamented: "why is it that the overwhelming majority of pieces that we receive for con- sideration is out and out junk.. . (1977: 178)?" He has never abandoned this stance and repeats it today with regard to the past ten years. It was thought to be unadvisable to end the practice of accepting unsolicited manuscripts since it would not only exacer- bate an otherwise delicate condition of a theory journal's political relevance (in hon- est moments acknowledged as "intolerable isolation") in general but necessitate an extended internal structure primarily through the multiplication of active, contribut- ing Telos groups: "such a move [discontinue calling for unsolicited manuscripts] . . . could be seriously entertained only when and if there are a great deal more Telos groups operating all over the place" (Piccone 1977:179-80). This is more than the ruse of a condition that applies only if what was external became internal. As an idea, Piccone notes, it is very attractive. And it would not be long before the journal took precisely this route and some of the informal groupings took more permanent forms and existing leading groups such as Toronto took their place on the masthead. The answer to the question-who were Telos' readers, anyway?-is relatively simple: the readers slowly became the editors and writers in its self-constitution as a critical insti- tution.

Piccone's explanation of the groups that would mediate between the journal and a phantom "pre-given audience" in the public sphere (which was in the process of dis- appearing) is a fascinating piece of sociological speculation. It is perhaps one of the

lo oldest and most enduring issues with which Telos tried to wrestle, and Piccone admits as much in pointing out that it arose in the first Telos conference in 1970 at University of Waterloo. Piccone explained the matter in these terms, which are worth quoting at length:

The formation of such groups requires a great deal of energy and personal effort - generally more than even the most committed editors are willing or able to invest. It virtually requires that there be a pre-existing infra-structure of friendships and social relations among the people involved, the close proximity of all members of the group, a specific task to achieve, and a great deal of patience. In large cities such as Boston, where there is already a con- siderable cultural life and the normal pattern of anonymity can only be bro- ken through a lot of work, it has been difficult to form a Telos group. Further- more, in New York, where there is no room large enough to accommodate any two given egos without resulting in a three-way split, the project has never gone past the formation of study groups whose life-span seldom exceeds a month to five weeks. It was possible to form a group in Toronto only because the people there already shared a great deal, happened to con- gregate in the same general areas, and turned out to be personally compati- ble (for the most part). It may be possible to form groups in Kansas, Los Angeles, and Texas, if the theoretical and psychological winds blow in the

right direction in the near future, but as things are now, it seems premature to re-organize the journal around the Telos groups. (1977:180)

First of all, let's put Piccone's Toronto sojourn in context. Piccone came to Toronto on "leave" from the Sociology department at Washington University in St. Louis, which was also the home base for Telos. In what was described by former lTG member Brian Singer in unambiguous terms as Piccone's "political murder" or, less dramatically by Piccone himself, as a matter of the department being "slated for extinction" (which would come to pass later in the decade), which made him a victim of its closure, Pic- cone tested the waters in Toronto where he took a year long contract in Sociology at University of Toronto. Coming to Toronto in the 197475 academic year meant, as he recalled it, moving in the orbit of Irving Zeitlin and C. B. Macpherson. Piccone's Tor- onto year also corresponded with the formation of Toronto Telos and the early gradu- ate careers of Master's candidates at Toronto and TTG members Brian Singer (York) and Janet Lum (Ryerson), who first worked as Piccone's assistants, a task that was focused primarily on the journal. In fact, Paul Piccone is listed among the contributors to the Short Journal Reviews of the TTG in Telos 22 (Winter 197475). Piccone's iden- tification with Toronto Telos was so strong that he is listed as a member of the group in three issues that span 197475. Piccone admits that he then understood little about Toronto; that nationalism in Canada remained a mystery; that he didn't have a take on Trudeau. His presence in Toronto sociology circles attracted the interest of John O'Neill at York, who recalls Piccone's apartment above the old Tip Top Tailors at Spa- dina and College and, more colourfully, his failed job interviews there and elsewhere (2001). In a word, Piccone was impossible to "defend."

The formation of TTG predates by two years at least Piccone's expression of his "artifi- cial negativity" thesis in 1977 even though the theoretical way is cleared for its appear- ance after 1976 with Piccone's belief in the bankruptcy of critical theory and Marxism. But it is worthwhile applying the schematic terms of this Hegelian thesis onto the question of the conditions that made the formation of Toronto Telos possible because it helps to pose the question: why Toronto? For Toronto was, we want to suggest, more than just a contract.

Briefly, summarizing Piccone, the thesis turns on the reintegration of two kinds of negativity originally excluded from the positivity of consumer society and its mori- bund political sphere (post-New Deal America) into a partial synthesis. If the negativ- ity is successfully excluded yet cannot express itself (if autonomous conflictual elements are wiped out and need to be artificially reconstituted from above by the state), then positivity is not overcome and involution and crisis result; but if negativity is freely expressed and gradually reintegrated, having been at first wiped out but then simulated as sponsored internal opposition, only the removal of unnecessary repres- sive mechanisms, Piccone argues, would allow for such new and free means of expres- sion; the resulting synthesis prevents the Marxian revolutionary moment and allows the bureaucracy to fine-tune itself (1988:18-19). Yet, the forms of subjectification available for such opposition ("the narcissistic personality" diagnosed by Christopher Lasch [1979]) and the social structures required for its sustenance were too feeble. So, the state assumed the task of reconstituting the kinds of individuality it had histor-

ically erased, usurping the Left's goal of just such a project of freedom, thereby inter- nalizing opposition and neutralizing meaningful left-right splits, without erasing completely internal divisions which take new forms beyond traditional capitalist-pro- letarian splits.

What made the formation of Toronto Telos possible in Piccone's memory was, at least on the surface, the pre-existing social and affective infrastructure among certain grad- uate students in the social sciences at the universities of Toronto and York, the man- ageable neighbourhoods of the once affordable, pre-gentrified, downtown, and the fact that the group had a specific task to perform, that is, the production of the Short Journal Reviews which reflected the reading, interests, and language skills, of each of the members. But less obviously, Toronto lacked a "considerable cultural life," like Boston; one did not need to stage manage monstrous, New York-sized intellectual egos, and it wasn't, like major American cities, to use Piccone's Marcusean words, "destroyed by one-dimensionality." That would come later in the 1980s during a period of unchecked development under the mayorship of Art Eggleton. In short, Tor- onto had the flavour of those "lingering pre-capitalist formations" where radical theo- rists could realize the production of a more or less spontaneous "organic negativity," an autonomous critical opposition resisting rationalistic bureaucratic apparatuses. Generally, Toronto permitted the development of a "free space" in which radical the- ory could foment and express its oppositional theses; yet it was a partially subsidized space in the extended public sector of the public education system. The need for con- flictual balances was never as acute in Toronto because of the less dynamic and less

-I

$ advanced characteristic of Canadian capitalism (we know it passively through ideas as 5 the branch plant mentality). The task of carving "free spaces" was hoisted upon theo- 0) - rists like those in TTG in the face of consumer society's numb "harmonizing plural- l 2 ismn-and in Canada, perhaps state sponsored heritage-difference-that absorbs

antagonistic alienation and otherness and reproduces it from above as planned, regu- latory "artificial negativity" and "re-onedimensionalizes" organic opposition when it fails to contribute to new social conditions that would see the development of an emancipatory subjectivity from the ruins of serial sameness.

According to the thesis, then, without artificial negativity capitalism goes crazy; with organic negativity, it permits spaces for critique yet, as Fekete once astutely observed of it and Telos as a critical institution: "there may now be space for criticism, but either critics have nothing to say or there is no one to listen" (1981-82:167), the audience having been acculturated by the triumphant culture industries rather than by other agencies. The culture industries in Canada were in "competition" with federal broad- casting services with their commercial-free nationalist promotional messages and sup- port systems of grants; so Canadian cultural content, even when it emanated from alternative sources, especially in media and publishing, was a policy construct (or on the way to becoming an effect of policy; border/lines could not have survived without arts council funding).

Telos found itself adrift in the ruins of the New Left as its major intellectuals were can- onized and thus disarmed by integration into the university. As this Hegelian dialectic went about its business, both the New Left and Telos, despite the latter's distance from

the former, were saddled with a "subjectless perspective on events" (Piccone 1988: 18) as the agency of emancipatory subjectification fled the scene into the carpeted offices of academic departments (loss of particularity and the emergence of clientelism, the rights and economic demands of the tenured), which included a good many of Telos's members. But the terms of the thesis were underdeveloped in Canada. It is not even clear that the conditions were present for the dialectic to get under way since the neg- ativity excluded by the positivity of the welfare state, urban undercapitalization, and the vicissitudes of state culture, with advertising expenditures bigger than the private sector, meant that negativity, even of the organic type, was never truly conflictual (per- haps it was of the "repressive desublimatory" type diagnosed by Marcuse [1964], which turns out to be a good description of not very edlfylng graduate studies, espe- cially when they offer plenty of ways, in theory, to get off: this makes radical thinkers a bit like the legendary literary hotheads, alcoholics and nubiles to whom Marcuse pointed for examples of wild and obscene but perfectly harmless types). Thus the reassertion of the negative had nowhere to go after biting the hand that fed it except, perhaps, to bite its own hand. The need for reconstituting the kinds of individuality and particularity the state had historically erased, as in post-New Deal America, the subsequent lifting of repressive mechanisms that had destroyed Communism, were primarily directed to other groups in Canada, anyway, particularly First Nations peo- ples, but also gays and lesbians (constructed as security threats and subject to the "fruit detecting machines" of paranoid Ottawa civil servants).

This throws us back into the crisis of the audience for radical theory journals such as Telos. The extended family of Telos constituted an audience for itself Why? Because the journal's negativity enjoyed a relaxed socio-institutional latitude in which to grow. The fact that this audience was academic (but pre-professional) troubled Piccone because of his contempt for mainstream social-political-philosophical thought, and he likened academics to unreflective apologists for the totally administered society, less well off than Kafka's Gregor Samsa because at least "he was troubled by his strange metamorphosis" (1999: 140).

Szemberg has remarked of Piccone's artificial negativity thesis that "the thing about artificial negativity that's interesting is that it was in part Paul Piccone saying I'm going to remain faithful despite the fact that the conditions for salvation are not present and might never be present" (2001). Piccone remained faithful to himself and his search for particularity eventually found its conservative political justifications. From the van- tage point of 1981-82, Fekete pointed out that this "dilemma" of the late 1970s-Pic- conean anti-Marxism and the largely "Marxist inspiration" of most of those who wrote for the journal during that period--couldn't be easily resolved and seemed to have been exacerbated at almost every turn, beginning with those that brought Piccone to Toronto in the first place (his search for a new position away from the gathering storm clouds of Washington University), and his failure to stick at U of T. Fekete elaborates:

On the one hand, in terms of Telos' own thesis, while the progressive ration- alizing sectors of American society may be ready to make space for artificial or even organic negativity, the more backward, traditional sectors are not. In this context, the editor of the journal has been fired from his professional

job for his critical work with some kind of a movement character, and the journal has been to some extent destabilized, though it has held on and resisted takeover bids. One notes in passing that a series of critical and quasi- critical institutions, i.e., journals and universities, may be sharply stratified and in conflict with one another in their disposition of power. On the other hand, new spaces for criticism, the professionalization of critical discourse, and the new academic respectability of Marxism have also brought respect for Telos in other quarters and new attention to it as an established forum of international dialogue. Along with this come expectations of a new 'respecta- bility' which may equally destabilize the journal and its unregimented critical character. (1982 : 167-8)

At each turn a hazard and another opportunity to exacerbate the dilemmas of Telos and its editor. Singer, Lum, and Szemberg all acknowledge that an association with Telos was not a springboard to employment. The visibility it provided was "controver- sial" and "had a cachet of intellectual terror about it" (Singer 2001). Part of the terror is Piccone's own style-his "[Tony] Soprano approach to editing" (Lum 2001). Pic- cone was recently asked about whom were his enemies to which he replied: "Every- one" (2001). For better and for worse Telos would never become television.

Still, Telos thrived in Toronto through its editorial group, which realized the ambition of cultivating a "free space" that gave it the means for self-expression. What better sit-

+ uation for graduate students than to have their notes on required readings-keeping

3 up with the journals-published in an international forum? The affective richness of 6 the social lives of key graduate students, the city's urban undercapitalization, and the 0 - modest tuition that made their lives liveable were also critical. The group's meetings l4 at the Clinton Tavern at Clinton and Bloor Streets are crucial to this sociality and to its

memory. And so are the road trips down to St. Louis from Toronto to furiously pro- duce the journal, with managing editor Patricia 'Ibmmons at the typewriter, over a four-day weekend, even over Christmas and New Year's in some instances.

If University of Toronto provided an opening for Piccone's exploration of this process, it was York's fledgling Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought that proved to be an institutional setting, of sorts, in which it could be, at least informally, elaborated. Toronto Telos was actually formed at York. "The reason," Singer explained, "I moved to the SPT programme was to help form a Telos group" (2001). This was in 1975-76. Of course, not all TTG members were in SFT at York, for exam- ple, John Keane was in Political Science at Toronto and Ray Morrow, while at York, was in Sociology. Szemberg was already there in SFT since he was among the group that entered the programme in its first year (1973), only six months after having emigrated from Sweden.

What did SPT and York provide to Telos and the fledgling TTG? If we explore the archi- tectural metaphors used by former members to address this issue we find an interest- ing parallel: SFT graduate students, rather than the programme as such in the form, for instance, of support provided directly from its first director Brayton Polka, pro- vided either a roof (Singer) or a floor (Lum); either way, there was some institutional

insulation for a project that was otherwise exposed on all sides. It is only at this point that we can begin to appreciate the vital paradox of the institutionalization of Telos's interdisciplinary project and renegade spirit. The roof or floor were without walls, without direct support and protection from the institutional winds and storms that would occasionally gather and blow.

The Paradoxes of Telos

For Piccone, institutionalization in the academy meant a fatal artificiality. On the occa- sion of Telos's twentieth anniversary he wrote: "after a phase of preliminary self-defini- tion, most professedly radical outlooks gradually degenerate into commonplaces. Institutional conformism subsequently re-absorbs them, and intellectual rigor mortis inexorably follows . . . Inauthentic existence is inevitable" (Piccone 19883). This may have been Telos' fate, but not the exact cause of it. On the same occasion Robert D'Amico criticized the functionalized Hegelianism of Piccone's artificial negativity the- sis and the journal's carefully cultivated marginality: "Even those who were skeptical that 'artificial negativity' raised functionalism to the level of a metaphysical principle were never 'affirmative' about any social or cultural movement; 'affirmation', for most of the editors, was a theoretical fazapas" (1988:34). The social movements provided feedback to the managerial state, D'Amico underlined, and the Picconean thesis opened a "free space" for critical reflection "precisely by freeing it from the immediate demand to be politically relevant." Outsider status (even if having found it, in Toronto a

no less, risked political irrelevance) was a condition of organic negativity. Piccone con- tinues:

$ 6 w -

Unsympathetic critics may argue that Telos would not have been an excep- 15

tion to this general rule, had it not been for the fact that it never succeeded in finding any 'respectable' institutional location. Along this line of reason- ing, what probably spared the journal from normal academic corruption was the fact that it never had the opportunity to succumb to it. Thus . . . Telos . . . "lives on because the moment to realize it was missed." (1988)

Piccone had this to say on being a self-established and supporting institution:

It's a good deal of freedom, but you don't always see the foundations.. . Members of Toronto Telos were going to graduate school, and of course when they graduated, they spread al l over the place. This one is a publisher in New York, then one works for ?1: etc. Some of them are academics, like Brian Singer. In this kind of situation, it's extremely lucky that we became an institution without state support.(2001)

Telos lives on paradoxes: it is an American journal whose internaVexternal structura- tion first appeared in Toronto, a place at best on the margins (cultural and economic) of the terms of the Picconean thesis; a journal whose flirtation with institutionaliza- tion and the dubious perks of "clientelism, nepotism and run-of-the-mill biases" never happened. A journal that found a roof or a floor but no walls in an interdisciplinary

programme that valorized the in-between and produced it as a margin. Nothing suc- ceeds like failure. Telos remained outside largely because of the outsider status of its editor, Paul Piccone. The problem was, of course, that nothing fails, especially politi- cally, like this kind of success. For Piccone had to admit that the marginality to which he held as a condition of radical critical reflection put the journal "not really that much outside the mainstream it had always spumed," mostly due to the fact that "mainstream thinking" eventually become an oxymoron, so any negation of it became suspect (1988:19). The survival of Telos as "self-instituting" project, to borrow Fekete's phrase, does not mean that it escaped from one-dimensionality. Piccone proudly points out that the post-St. Louis move to New York via a largely forgotten Toronto sojourn (there is nary a mention of Toronto in Piccone's published accounts of the journals' history, even though in conversation he remembers his first visit there as a fifteen-year-old from Rochester and felt that it was then 20 years out of date) made Telos "probably the first journal ever to literally have its new headquarters phys- ically built by its editors in the heart of Manhattann--on 12th Street in the East Village, to be precise (Piccone 1988:24). The roof, floor and walls that Telos eventually acquired in the same place at the same time would be the result of its editors' sweat and construction/renovation skills. where a shooting gallery was Telos would be.

Toronto the free? For Telos perhaps the unkindest paradox of all was freedom-insti- tutional support, but without walls; respite in the north from the deteriorating situa- tion in St. Louis; conviviality at the Clinton Tavern; the bonding of the editorial road

4 trips; the group structure whose transversality was limited by the strong editorial arm

$ of Piccone; the enduring problem of the journal's political relevance as an outside 5 voice that of its own admission watched the means for the constitution of opposition 0) - fade away. It is worth phrasing this paradox in terms of Husserl's Crisis. The group l6 structure of Telos was an answer to the community of philosophers whose theorizing

and critique of cultural goals would constitute a "new sort of praxis." The journal's groups, conferences, internal and external polemics, its publishing programs and translations, were evidence that the philosophical life was being lived within a vibrant "cultural configuration" that grew rapidly during the 1970s and included many rising stars. But it could not solve the fundamental problem of the late Husserl-that a theo- retical vocation grounded in phenomenological analysis of meaning giving acts would result in a new sort of praxis (Habermas 1971). No amount of freedom, and theoreti- cal supplementation of Marxist or pragmaticist inspiration, would solve this paradox.

The authors wish to acknowledge Paul Piccone (New York, Telos Press), Brian Singer (York), Janet Lum (Ryerson), Wodek Szemberg (N Ontario), john O'Neill (York), and Mark Poster (UCal-lrvine), without whose participation and cooperation this research paper could not have been written. The research for this paper was funded by a SSHRC Stan- dard Research Grant.

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