Critical Theory Archives - Public Seminar

Philosophy

When I Was One-Dimensional

How Herbert Marcuse’s text changed my life

July 20, 2022 • by James Miller

"For their sincere reception," Cavell concludes, some life-altering texts require "the shock of conversion." Reading Marcuse, I had felt that shock, with pleasure. Few experiences are quite as rapturous as the conviction that one has embarked on a splendid new life with the firmest of good convictions: as Plato long ...

Theory & Practice

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. ...

Feature

Rousseau and Critical Theory

An excerpt from Alessandro Ferrara’s latest book

November 8, 2017 • by Alessandro Ferrara

Among the modern philosophers who have shaped the world we inhabit, Rousseau is the one to whom we owe the idea that identity can be a source of normativity (moral and political) and that an identity's potential for playing such a role rests on its capacity for being authentic. The idea ...

Feature

Reading Adorno on Fascism in the Age of Trump

A New School roundtable

October 7, 2017 • by Lucas Ballestín

In an era marked by the rise of a paradoxically international right-wing populism, and in the midst of ethno-nationalist tumult in the United States, this roundtable reflects on the legacy and contemporary utility of “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” Might Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists still have something ...

Feature

Adorno’s Freud in the Age of Trump

Part 1

October 2, 2017 • by Vladimir Pinheiro Safatle

Let us recall Freud's fundamental thesis in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. In this text, Freud presents a general proposition about the process of constitution of collective identities. It is enunciated as follows: "such a primary mass is an amount (Anzahl) of individuals who have placed a single ...

Education

Durkheim’s Enduring Relevance

Sociology offers a solution to the problems raised by Critical Theory

February 7, 2017 • by Nicola Marcucci

Émile Durkheim and the Durkheimian school also allow us to rethink the tension between the modern social sciences, and morality and politics. However, Durkheim’s analysis of this tension is, in some respects, divergent from the one put forward by Critical Theory. Sociology, according to Durkheim, is neither about supplementing the ...

Feature

The Business of Being Made

March 8, 2016 • by Ali Shames-Dawson

Two weeks ago The New School’s Ferenczi Center hosted Katie Gentile and a panel of contributors to celebrate the launch of a new book and a new series. The book, The Business of Being Made: The Temporalities of Reproductive Technologies in Psychoanalysis and Culture, is the first to critically analyze ...