1/13 | In Search of a Method

Professors Amy Allen and Bernard E. Harcourt

introduce and discuss

 “Critical Reading: In Search of a Method“

with Étienne Balibar, Lydia Goehr, Axel Honneth, Joshua Simon, Nadia Urbinati, and Columbia University colleagues

at Columbia University, Jerome Greene Annex

September 11, 2019

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In Critique 13/13, we turn to 13 critical texts—ranging from Althusser, Beauvoir, Foucault, and Freire, to Adorno, Arendt, Sartre, Lorde, and Said.

In our first session with Professor Amy Allen on Wednesday, September 11, 2019, we will address the question: How can we use these texts critically? What can we do with them? How can we put them to work?

The ambition of the seminar series, Critique 13/13, is to ply these 13 critical texts to our political projects today. To put them back to work. Not to historicize them, nor even to read them in their context—or to rehash old debates about them. But instead, to read them with fresh eyes and militant desire, in order to put them to work in our political struggles today.

Our first seminar with Amy Allen will explore that style of reading: plying critical texts to our current contemporary political condition and struggles.

In order to do so, we will read and discuss four texts at Critique 1/13:

  • Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 76-100. New York, Pantheon Books, 1984.
  • Paul Veyne, “Foucault revolutionizes history,” in Arnold Ira Davidson (ed.), Foucault and His Interlocutors. University of Chicago Press. pp. 146-82 (1997)
  • Amy Allen, “’Psychoanalysis and Ethnology’ Revisited: Foucualt’s Historicization of History,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 55, Spindel Supplement, 2017:31-46.
  • Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Illusion of Influence: On Foucault, Nietzsche, and a Fundamental Misunderstanding” (May 24, 2019). Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-627 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393827

These texts are available in the Resources page for Critique 1/13. We look forward to seeing you at Columbia, in the Jerome Greene Annex at 6:10pm.

Welcome to Critique 13/13!