Reckoning with October 7: Israel, Hamas, and the Problem of Critical Theory
A TPPI Conference
November 8–9, 2024
New York City
 The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute welcomes paper proposals for a conference that reckons with the response, both within higher education at large and especially from the precincts of critical theory, to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The conference will cap a year of webinars, podcasts, blog posts, and publications about the topic, and will form the basis of a special memorial issue of the journal Telos. Full papers intended for that special issue will also be considered at this time.
Beginning in the immediate, politicized aftermath of the Hamas atrocities, theory has been present—in ways that should give us pause. It was present in sublimated ways, as widespread presuppositions and “narratives” infused with charismatic authority by a popularized postcolonial jargon. It was there in kinetic, emotionally charged, intellectually unsophisticated responses, in “mass” demonstrations, public statements by groups and institutions, and individual social media campaigns. It was there in “intersectional” ideology. Yet above all, it was manifest in considered, open, intentional ways within universities, as well as among educated elites taught and credentialed by them. The 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 cognitively, morally, and politically deficient discourse about a present-day Kristallnacht.
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By Michael Saenger · Friday, February 2, 2024 For me, the first indication I had that something was wrong on October 7 was scrolling through my Facebook feed. A childhood friend posted “My heart is in the East.” I knew something terrible had happened. Was happening.
And then, it turned out that we were not so safe over here. Within days—within hours, actually—the antisemitic impulses that had been hiding in American culture started to come out in the open. That wave hit the Modern Language Association, where it was framed as progressive.
First, the boundaries of the debate about Israel moved. Before October, there was pressure to scorn Israel through boycotts, and to portray Israel as a colonial or apartheid state.
What was a debate turned into a denunciation. October 7, for some, rapidly became background noise to what they see as a need for an immediate ceasefire. Israel’s actions could easily be understood as self-defense, but there are some who contend that those actions can only be understood as an act of vengeance.
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By The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute · Wednesday, January 10, 2024 The first webinar in our yearlong series reckoning with the response to October 7 is available here. Panelists included Cary Nelson, Abe Silberstein, and Manuela Consonni. Their conversation was moderated by Israel initiative director Gabriel Noah Brahm. Eighty audience members heard their illuminating conversation, which provided a model of respectful engagement amidst disagreement, and many stayed for another hour for a casual, after-panel discussion.
The next webinar in the Israel webinar series will take place on Wednesday, February 7, at noon ET.
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By Telos Press · Monday, October 30, 2023 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?
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By David Pan · Wednesday, October 18, 2023 Telos 204 (Fall 2023): Quandaries of Race and Gender Theory is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
 Old-style leftists have puzzled over how today’s left-liberals have abandoned traditional left-wing goals such as reducing class inequality and improving working-class standards of living. A key reason lies with the shifting of the politics of class. As Paul Piccone and Fred Siegel argued over thirty years ago in these pages, the problem of class is no longer a question of capitalists against workers. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of U.S. adults own stock, and such capitalist ownership, while a good way to increase wealth, is no longer the preserve of the ruling class and does not by itself confer much power. Rather, the ruling class that exercises real power consists not of owners but primarily of a bureaucratic class of managers in corporations, government, non-profits, universities, and the media. In spite of this shift, theories developed over a century ago continue to shape current leftist perspectives. Dominated by a socialist perspective, left-wing social policy fails to recognize and address the new contours of class division. As a result, it continues to employ a framework that is based on an anti-capitalist and anti-market agenda that tries to manipulate outcomes to promote socialist goals, precisely the methods of a managerial class.
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By João Pedro Cachopo · Monday, March 27, 2023 It happened on May 11, 1997. After a defeat, a victory, and three draws, Deep Blue, programmed by IBM, would eventually win the sixth and decisive game of the historic chess match against Garry Kasparov. The Russian chess player, incredulous and upset, did not take the defeat well. In fact, given the machine’s behavior during the game, he protested: some of its moves seemed to indicate human intervention.
Today, more than twenty-five years later, the most amazing thing is that Kasparov thought it possible to continue to beat a computer that was already capable of analyzing one hundred million moves per second at that time. Nevertheless, it is ironic that his defeat was later speculated to be due to the fact that Kasparov had interpreted a move resulting from a software bug as strategic. According to Nate Silver, who tells the anecdote in The Signal and the Noise, it was that move, enigmatic in its aims, that fatally distracted the chess player.
The controversy surrounding Artificial Intelligence is back. However, it is no longer just due to its ability to calculate that the machine, in the era of “big data” and “deep learning,” threatens to surpass human intelligence. Take the case of OpenAI. With Dall-E and ChatGPT, the uses of Artificial Intelligence invade the domains of creation and knowledge. In the former case, a program capable of creating images in the style of this or that artist, enlarging their masterpieces, and crossbreeding their styles. In the latter case, a program capable of producing text by gathering, synthesizing, and cross-referencing information in informal conversations with the user. Disbelief and unease are spreading. Human pride is wounded. Was Kasparov’s defeat not enough? Do they now want to dethrone Vermeer, Beethoven, Kant?
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