Progressive Geographies

David Harvey interview with Jeremy Scahill on The Intercept

Adam Kotsko, Political Theology: A Reading List

Some Facebook friends have asked me about my personal “canon” of political theology, and I decided it would make a good idea for a blog post. This list, like any attempt at a canon, does not simply reflect the state of a field but aims to change it. It is about what political theology is and also about what it could and should be. While some of my choices are presumably obvious, others reflect my conviction that political theology must grapple with questions of economics, race, gender, and sexuality, that our contemporary neoliberal order is an order of political theology, that political theology is a genealogical discipline, and that the root of political theology is not the homology between politics and theology but the problem that motivates both — in political terms, the problem of legitimacy, and in theological terms, the problem of evil. In other words, this could be taken as a reading list to understand the style of political theology I practice in The Prince of This World and Neoliberalism’s Demons. But more broadly, it is an attempt to group together a body of works that can be productively read with and against each other.

We are delighted to be able to announce that the Gregynog Ideas Lab VII will take place from 8 – 13 July 2018 in Newtown, Wales, UK. Set up in 2012, the Gregynog Ideas Lab is a unique opportunity for graduate students and academics working in international politics from a range of critical, postcolonial, feminist, post-structural and psychoanalytic traditions to re-examine their own work and meet new people in an open space for thinking and generating new ideas. It offers guest professor seminars, round table discussions, methodology workshops and one-to-one tutorials with the guest professors. For more information, please see the documents attached.

Provisionally, our guest professors for 2018 are: Andrew Davison (Vassar), Jenny Edkins (Aberystwyth), Himadeep Muppidi (Vassar), Erzsebet Strausz (Warwick), Rob Walker (Victoria) and Andreja Zevnik (Manchester). More on Guest Professors to follow soon.

There is a reduced rate for bookings received before 20 February 2018.

For more information about the Ideas Lab, visit our blog at http://gregynog.blogspot.co.uk/ , join our Facebook group at  https://www.facebook.com/groups/675435315871900/  or email us on gregynogideaslab@gmail.com  .

In December, Angela Davis delivered the annual Nicos Poulantzas Memorial Lecture at the Nicos Poulantzas Institute in Athens.

In the talk, Davis recounts the historical background to the development of the anti-racist, Marxist feminisms she calls “abolition feminism,” and unpacks some of their political and intellectual implications. Watch a full video of her presentation below.

Forms of Living book series with Fordham University Press

Edited by Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University, and Todd E. Meyers, New York University-Shanghai

In the introduction to Knowledge of Life, Georges Canguilhem writes that knowledge and life do not assume a hierarchical order, one preceding or constituting the other. Instead, Canguilhem argues that knowledge and life come to rest upon one another, even in moments when one seems to unmake or undo the other. Life is imbued with thought, entangled with it, and in the end, undiminished by it. Life–its subjects, forms, peoples, and geographies (both real and imagined, and regardless of scale)–can no longer (if ever) be thought of as singular.

In the tightly woven lattice of knowledge and life is found a common conceptual space for anthropology, history, biology, philosophy, art, and medicine. The Forms of Living series seeks to provide an outlet for theoretically and methodologically rigorous writing theorized and articulated through various disciplines, frames, and attempts. Thus the series promotes translations of important works in languages other than English, organizes edited volumes serving as introductions to scholars not well known to Anglo-American audiences, and delivers original and provocative writing from renowned scholars as well as first-time authors. By connecting works that may not otherwise be read alongside one another, Forms of Living eavesdrops on conversations already occurring between scholars, and begins new conversations on what is at stake between knowledge and life and the forms each takes.