In sorrow, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute, in cooperation with the journal Telos, announces a series of events and publications designed to explore the place of critical theory in the response within the American university to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
From the start of this war, theory was present. It was present in sublimated ways, as widespread presuppositions and “narratives,” infused with charismatic authority by a popularized “postcolonial” jargon. It was present in kinetic, emotionally charged, intellectually unsophisticated responses in “mass” demonstrations, public statements by groups and institutions, and individual social media campaigns. Yet above all, it was manifest in considered, open, intentional ways, within our universities. The American college campus, the traditional home of critical theory—which emerged in the twentieth century most powerfully as a response to fascism and Nazism—has become a nodal point for the dramatic unfolding of a morally and politically deficient discourse about a present-day Kristallnacht.
What can this state of affairs tell us about American higher education? What does it reveal about the fate of “theory” itself, in concrete, practical, and abstract theoretical terms? How does the ritual deployment of certain theoretical vocabularies in response to the attacks help obscure the interests and power of the New Class of managers, information workers, social engineers, and therapeutic organizers, against which Telos has launched a sustained critique since 1968? What does it signify that many members of this powerful strata have learned to conceive of justice and injustice in terms of reified castes in a hierarchy of victimhood, such that racial, ethnic, national, religious, sexual, or gender identity are largely equated with individual moral culpability or innocence? How have theories critical of symbolic violence turned into justifications for actual violence? And how is this justification of actual violence “by any means necessary” emancipated from any ethical constraints? How do macro-level geopolitical concerns provide a larger context for understanding the place of critical theory in the response to October 7?
To explore these and related issues, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute will host an online conference on January 12–13, 2024, and an in-person conference in the late spring, organized by Prof. Gabriel Noah Brahm. Essays developed from these conferences will form the basis for a special issue of Telos, which we also hope to make freely available digitally under the terms of open access. To propose a presentation, or to support our work, please send an inquiry with a curriculum vitae to brahm@telosinstitute.net. We are interested in contributions that engage with the debates, perspectives, and broad intellectual tradition developed in Telos. To subscribe to Telos, visit the Telos Press store.
Details about how to register for the digital conference, and the dates of the subsequent in-person event, will be announced in coming weeks on the Telos website, through the Institute’s email list, and on the journal and institute social media accounts.
