Events, Events, Events!; Lost in Ideology; Violence, Race, and Disappearance
A full suite of events running until late June; Jason Blakely on ideology; and David Theo Goldberg on vanishing racialised bodies
Dear all,
I hope it’s been a relaxing week for you all. We have a few exciting announcements for you this Sunday. The poster for our digital spring event series has been finalized! It features 25 events in total (!) until June 24th. Take a look— there’s surely something for everyone:
Also, Helena Rosenblatt, the historian of liberalism, is convening what promises to be a really fascinating conference in memory of the work of Jack Diggins, the distinguished intellectual historian. It will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City on April 4-5, but you can also join online. Poster with full registration details is here:
Your Sunday Read
“Ideology”: An essay by Jason Blakely
There is a nearly universal tendency at this point in time to perceive one’s own political stances as rational, and those of others as obviously illogical or downright delusional. In this essay, political scientist Jason Blakely urges laypeople and intellectuals alike to work on clarifying the (notoriously confusing and messy) idea of ideology itself.
For Blakely, ideology ought to be first and foremost a species of meaning-making, with multiple ideological “maps” coming up against each other each marked by dramatically different points of interest. This leads us to the present-day predicament in which individuals of every imaginable political stripe confidently declare: “I have a theory – but you? You have an ideology!” Blakely looks to anthropology and hermeneutics to help us navigate this fraught terrain. As he notes, “hermeneutics takes the first-person experience of ideology seriously, while not simply accepting ideology’s own voice uncritically”. You can access the article here.
Jason also has an exciting new book out on this topic. He will be discussing it with Oliver Traldi in one of our events on Tuesday 7th May (see above).
Monday Event: 12pm PT/3pm ET/7pm UK
Vanishing Racialised Bodies: Renowned critical race theorist David Theo Goldberg in conversation with Brad Evans and Chantal Meza
N.B. This event begins at 12pm PT/3pm ET due to daylight saving time
This event marks the final installment in the “State of Disappearance” mini-series, which asks urgent questions related to violence, human vanishing, ideological complicity, and what it means to be human in the 21st century.
The conversation will attend to the history of racial persecution and vanishing of bodies in the present. You can find out more and register here.
Lastly, here is a link to the recording of our latest event, “The Art of Thinking Together.”
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely start of Spring.
Andie Cook
Editorial Assistant