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In his recent French Theory lecture series, also available on the Internet in MP3-format, media theorist Alex Galloway starts his introduction on October 25 with a parallel to Karl Marx. Galloway reminds how Marx is often described as a product of the intellectual debates in Europe of his time, three to be exact:British political economy, German idealism and French socialism. Galloway's parallel continues with the Europe of today, its intellectual debates stemming to a large extent from three distinctive directions of German media theory,Italian political theory, and French philosophy. Whereas Galloway continues in his lecture series outlining the last of these three – French philosophy and its current trends, through figures such as Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, and Quentien Meillassoux – we can continue to elaborate on the parallel or the comparison with a further idea. Cognisant of the history of humanities as critical theory of the twentieth century, Marx's synthesis of these three forces –and, one might add, the synthesis of Marx together with Nietzsche and Freud –cannot be underestimated, and if one wants to quantify it as is so often necessary in the culture of digital economy, just count the amount of undergraduate and graduate courses directly or indirectly linking up with Marxist or post-Marxist philosophy.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230371934_5

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