Theory Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

An ethical and aesthetic defense of Indigenous sovereignty

December 9, 2020 • by Benjamin P. Davis

It has become fashionable for some academics at some universities in North America to place at the end of their email signatures a nod to the Indigenous land that their institutions now occupy. Some concerned faculty write a statement of their own. Others—I think this is a better option—compose their statements ...

Theses for Theory in a Time of Crisis

In a world shifting more quickly than we can consider, analysis is more important than ever

March 30, 2020 • by Benjamin P. Davis and Jonathon Catlin

Catastrophe is not “to come,” but here and now. Before the current pandemic, our way of life was already killing life on earth. State selections of who shall live and who shall die already produced medical shortages. “That things are ‘status quo’ is the catastrophe. It is not an ever-present possibility ...

Gray is Beautiful, Part 1

On the Social Condition and Fractured Society in Donald Trump’s America

March 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

This is the first part of a three-part post, originally drafted as a lecture, drawn from my published and unpublished writings over the past decade, to be presented to Democracy Seminar participants in Gdansk, Warsaw, Budapest, and Berlin (to a group of Turkish exiles). Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ...