Thompson (E.P.) Archives - Public Seminar

Field Notes on “Sentencing the Present”

Diagnosing what is false without ceding what is beautiful

June 18, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin and Benjamin P. Davis

This is a final reflection by the curators of the seminar series “Sentencing the Present,” which was republished in full last week as “An Archive of a Crisis.” Because readers have asked us about the process and production of “Sentencing the Present,” when Public Seminar asked us to write a “post-mortem” ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 11, 2020 • by Lindsay Atnip, Benjamin Bernard, Audrey Borowski, Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Ayça Çubukçu, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Stephanie Degooyer, Christina Heatherton, Shannon Hoff, Bonnie Honig, Stephen Hopgood, Siddhant Issar, Joy James, Martin Jay, Susan Kang, Mark Kingwell, David Lloyd, Vincent Lloyd, Mac Loftin, John Lysaker, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Lissa McCullough, Zein Murib, Yasemin Sari, Mohammad Salama, Sarah Schulman, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Martin Shuster, Dara Z. Strolovitch, Enzo Traverso, Moira Weigel and Rocío Zambrana

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in ...

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 4, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Shannon Hoff, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Zein Murib, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Rocío Zambrana

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Three

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 22, 2020 • by Lindsay Atnip, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Christina Heatherton, David Lloyd, Mac Loftin and John Lysaker

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in a ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Two

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 14, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Ayça Çubukçu, Benjamin P. Davis, Stephen Hopgood, Siddhant Issar, Martin Jay, Lissa McCullough and Mohammad Salama

This seminar is part of an ongoing series. Read part one of "Sentencing the Present" here. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

May 7, 2020 • by Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Benjamin P. Davis, Bonnie Honig, Joy James, Mark Kingwell, Vincent Lloyd, Sarah Schulman, Dara Z. Strolovitch and Enzo Traverso

In light of Marx’s 1843 conception of critical thought, how does your perspective contribute to “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age”? In a time of social breakdown and uncertainty, we find that critique comes almost too easily. Hence we also take inspiration from the historian E. ...

Race

Top 10 List of Best American Historical Writing

January 20, 2014 • by Eli Zaretsky

Recently the net has seen various ten best lists of works in American history. I’d like to propose one of my own, but first I want to explain my rationale. American historical writing was transformed in the 1960s by two things: the realization that slavery and racism were the foundations ...

Uncategorized

Accelerationism

November 18, 2013 • by McKenzie Wark

There’s a lively debate going on about ‘accelerationism’. As Reza Negarastani has suggested, it might be a way in which big picture speculative thought about historical circumstances has returned after the decline of Marxism. It began with the somewhat hallucinated texts of Nick Land, which saw capitalism as a sort ...