Life and Narrative; Thinking Together; A New Politics of Freedom; Arendt on Love and Disobedience
An essay by Hannah H. Kim; digital events with Sonali Chakravarti, Aziz Rana, Jefferson Cowie; a London event with Lyndsey Stonebridge and Samantha Rose Hill
Dear all,
It feels good to be hosting in-person events again. Admittedly, only in London for now. But it’s a start after a few years of online-only events. Here is the flyer we made for our spring 2020 series which never happened for obvious reasons:
Anyway, we are now hosting events again and hope you can join us. This week, we confirmed a really exciting event next month featuring Lyndsey Stonebridge and Samantha Rose Hill discussing “Hannah Arendt’s Lessons on Love and Disobedience”. Tickets are going to sell out quickly, so grab one while you can. More on this, and much more, below…
Your Sunday Read
“Life as a ‘Non-standard’ Narrative” by Hannah H. Kim. There’s something natural about understanding ourselves as main characters, at least in stories that are our lives. Some philosophers even argue that thinking of our lives as narratives helps us understand and direct our lives. In this essay, Hannah H. Kim rejects what she calls the Life-as-Narrative View of personal identity, focusing instead on non-standard storytelling forms with meandering plots, luck/coincidence or lack of central character. By questioning the default story form, Kim questions the default views on what kinds of lives we’ve been trained to find satisfying. You can read Hannah’s essay here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK
Thinking Together as Deliberation
Sonali Chakravarti and Philip Lindsay with Jana Bacevic
How do collectives think together? In this opening event for the “How to Think Together” series, we reflect on thinking together as deliberation. Sonali Chakravarti and Philip Lindsay will discuss forms of ‘thinking together’ in collectives from juries to citizen assemblies, and the lessons and challenges for political futures. How do collectives resolve disagreements? What can this teach us about the nature of thinking? You can find out more and register here.
Tuesday Event: 7pm ET/11am (Wed.) AET
A New Politics of Freedom
Aziz Rana in conversation with Jefferson Cowie
Co-hosted with Boston Review!
Freedom has a dual legacy. On the one hand, it evokes struggles associated with the left, from abolition and anticolonialism to women’s and queer liberation. On the other hand, it has long been a watchword of the right, from neoliberals to white nationalists.
In Boston Review’s new issue “Reclaiming Freedom”, Aziz Rana leads a forum on the path to a different politics of freedom. In the United States, he argues, reactionary meanings of freedom at home have been emboldened by U.S. imperial power abroad. But their hold isn’t absolute: we can break it by building new forms of collective agency and self-rule. In this conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and forum respondent Jefferson Cowie, Rana discusses what freedom means and how to win it for all. You can find out more and register 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
The violent unease of today’s world would have been all too familiar to Hannah Arendt. Tyranny, occupation, disenchantment, post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, racism, mass migration, the banality of evil: she had lived through them all.
Born in the first decade of the last century, Arendt escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one of the world’s most influential – and controversial – public intellectuals. She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and, above all, about freedom. Questioning – thinking – was her first defence against tyranny. In place of the forces of darkness and insanity, she pitched a politics of plurality, spontaneity and defiance. Loving the world, Arendt taught, meant finding the courage to protect it.
This event brings together two of the world’s leading Arendt scholars, Lyndsey Stonebridge and Samantha Rose Hill, to discuss Arendt’s life and work and its urgent dialogue with our troubled present. Stonebridge and Hill will call on us to think our way, as Hannah Arendt did – unflinchingly, lovingly and defiantly – through our own unpredictable times. You can find out more and buy tickets here.
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Editor