Authorship and Authority; Madness and Economic Reason;
An essay by Moritz Gansen, Hannah Wallenfels and Lilja Walliser; an event with Nima Bassiri and Marco Ramos
Dear all,
First, a big thanks to all of you who generously donated to my “Run for Refugees” fundraising thing. Many of you did it anonymously, so I cannot thank you personally. As I write this, ‘tis the night before the big race. I am loading up with carbs, putting my feet up, and am generally “in the zone”. If I don’t feel so spry tomorrow, I guess I’ll just walk it.
In other news, our pal Ciaran Cummins is a London-based philosopher with a particular interest in public philosophy. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on the work of public philosophy practitioners and others carrying out related activities. As part of the book’s research, he is looking to run a monthly in-person reading group in London to discuss all things public philosophical. If you may be interested in joining, drop Ciaran an email at: c.d.p.cummins@gmail.com
Finally, things are coming together beautifully for our forthcoming print issue. It will be on the topic of “Punishment” and we hope to publish it at the end of next month. Big thanks to Maryam Aghdami, our editorial assistant, who has been overseeing this issue with great skill.
Your Sunday Read
“Authorship(s)” by Moritz Gansen, Hannah Wallenfels and Lilja Walliser
This essay was a really fantastic contribution to the final installment of our 2022 “New Basics” series. The authors start from Roland Barthes and his idea of “the death of the author” before exploring the links between authorship and authority, the history of collective writing in philosophy (whether acknowledged or not…), and the shifting nature of authorship in the age of Wikipedia and other online spaces where certain forms of authorship and the entailed structures of power had apparently been rendered obsolete. You can read their essay here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK
“Madness, Psychiatry, and Economic Reason”
Nima Bassiri in conversation with Marco Ramos
A conversation on the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness.
In this event, critical theorist and historian of science Nima Bassiri will look to the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought to show how this relationship rendered the most common forms of social valuation – moral value, medical value, and economic value – equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed – and even revered. You can find out more and register here.
Recording of Leder/Aho conversation
For those of who missed Monday’s conversation between Drew Leder and Kevin Aho on “Illness, Ageing, Death, and All That”, you can watch the recording here.
Event on Thursday February 22nd at Conway Hall, London
Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience
Lyndsey Stonebridge in conversation with Samantha Rose Hill
Tickets are almost sold out for our in-person event in London in a couple of weeks, so snap one up now - or tell your friend to! Buy your ticket here.
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Editor