Online Reading Group

On Collective Critique –

Starting as a space to foster community and discussion among IPCS members and friends, our Reading Groups continue in 2021 with in-person and online formats.

In line with IPCS’ aim to address the challenges of the present, our reading group works through influential and contemporary texts on postcolonialism, settler colonialism, and decoloniality, together with other work essaying critical and creative approaches to theory, knowledge and politics. Guest convenors contribute to this project, bringing vital perspectives and experience to our sessions throughout the year.

Online Reading Group: On Collective Critique

Rather than affirming critique as an individual pursuit, how might we pursue collective critique?

If it wasn’t obvious before, in 2020 it became evident that some forms of critique pose no threat: it can safely be said that no one took to the streets because they read Agamben and Žižek’s back-and-forth.

Yet if the crisis of COVID points to a crisis of critique, perhaps it was always going to end the same way. With scholars and writers falling into the trap of asking whether critique entrenches existing structures or enacts some kind of difficult to grasp incremental change. The intractability of this problem should direct us back to the question that leads to it. But these authors went one further, apparently foiling the paradox: they went and published articles about it!

For the second half of 2021, in the online iteration of the IPCS reading group, we will, thankfully, not be reading any such articles! Rather, we will return to that leading question and address it. Rather than reaffirming critique as an individual pursuit, we will ask, how might we pursue collective forms of critique?

This Reading Group Initiative will have us meeting monthly, with our first session on Tuesday 7 September. We welcome all, but ask for a brief expression of interest highlighting your de/postcolonial concerns and collective aspirations (no more than a paragraph!).

Please write to Muhib Nabulsi or Carlos Morreo to join.

Program

Beyond our first session there is no decided upon reading list: a yet-to-exist we will decide on these things together. Until then, we remain within these lines, waiting to be more than one.

Session 4 – Tuesday 14 December

Session 3 – Tuesday 16 November

Session 2 – Tuesday 12 October

• la paperson’s A Third University is Possible (2017)
  • ‘Introduction’ (xiii-xxv)
  • ‘A Third University Exists within the First’ (33-53)
  • ‘You, a Scyborg’ (54-70)
• Yugantar Film Collective, Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali (Tobacco Embers), 20 mins.

Session 1 – Tuesday 7 September

• Stefano Harney & Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions, 2013.
  • Chapter 2: The University and the Undercommons
  • Chapter 5: Planning and Policy
• Bryan Mukandi & Chelsea Bond (2019) ‘Good in the Hood’ or ‘Burn It Down’? Reconciling Black Presence in the Academy, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 40:2, 254-268.

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