The Publisher and the Public; Rachel Carson and Queer Love
An essay by Alexandra Grant; an event with Lida Maxwell; also February's "Ask The Philosopher"
Dear all,
Tomorrow is the final event in our winter series, with political theorist Lida Maxwell discussing her new book on the environmental thinker Rachel Carson. I just spent an hour listening to Lida being interviewed on this radio show and found what she had to say really beautiful and uplifting, so I am especially excited for tomorrow’s conversation!
Our event series will be back on 24th March with a series that will include a second round of Audrey Borowski’s hugely popular “AI and the Digital” events; more “Philosopher and the News” events with Alexis Papazoglou, and other events on, to name a few, restlessness, choice, Karl Marx, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Your Sunday Read
“The Publisher and the Public”
An essay by Alexandra Grant
In this essay, artist Alexandra Grant reflects on the nature of publishing in relation to the shaping of the public sphere. Looking to the US context, Grant notes the importance of policing the publishing world in order to facilitate control of public discourse by a slim minority, before looking to thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler to better understand both the public sphere and the responsibilities of publishers within it. You can read Alexandra’s essay here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK/8pm CET
“Rachel Carson, Queer Love, and Environmental Politics”
Lida Maxwell in conversation with with Isabelle Laurenzi
After the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us, legendary environmental thinker Rachel Carson settled in Southport, Maine. The married couple Dorothy and Stanley Freeman had a cottage nearby, and the trio quickly became friends. Their extensive and evocative correspondence shows that Dorothy and Rachel did something more: they fell in love. In this event, Lida Maxwell will explore how their love unsettled their heteronormative ideas of bourgeois life, and how this enabled Carson to develop an increasingly critical view of capitalism’s dangerous and loveless exhaustion of both nonhuman nature and human lives alike.
As Maxwell will argue, it was this evolution that set the scene for Carson’s masterpiece, Silent Spring, the legacy of which is to offer us a path toward a more loving use of nature and a transformative political desire that should inform our approach to contemporary environmental crises. You can find out more and register here.
Event Recording
You can watch the recording of Avram Alpert and Alexis Papazoglou’s discussion of “A Politics of Belonging” here:
Ask The Philosopher
This month’s “Ask The Philosopher” will be hosted by me, with Dan Taylor, Peter West, and Andie Cook as special guests. You can register here. As with all our groups, priority access goes to our Patreon members.
Ending
The Philosopher is unfunded and relies on your support to keep doing the work we do. Through becoming a supporter via Patreon, you can get all our print/digital issues sent to you, enjoy priority access and discounted rates for our groups/classes, join philosophical discussions with our editorial team, and more. The income we generate via Patreon helps us to keep our events series free and to pay our contributors. You can find out more and become a member here.
Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Anthony Morgan
Managing Editor