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Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 4.

30 January, 2025 / 20:00

This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. We will discuss Chapter Two: The Language of the Marketplace in Rabelais. These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month. Please follow these steps to subscribe to […]

Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 3.

26 December, 2024 / 20:00

This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. We will discuss chapter One: Rabelais in the History of Laughter:on mediaeval humour: pp. 96-103; on obscenity: pp.109-110; Rabelais and revolution: p. 119; on seriousness: pp. 122-124; on the belly: pp. 126-127; on the historicity of jokes: pp. 134-136; Rabelais’s […]

"There Was Never a West": Greg Yudin in conversation with Mirko Canevaro

05 December, 2024 / 20:00

The third discussion of Graeber’s essay “There Never Was a West”: A conversation between Greg Yudin and Mirko Canevaro, in the frame of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…”. The third meeting of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…” reading group, the last one of 2024, will be a conversation between sociologist Greg Yudin and […]

Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. Session 2.

28 November, 2024 / 20:00

This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. We will discuss chapter One: Rabelais in the History of Laughter:on Rabelais: pp. 59-61; on laughter: pp. 66-73; on the ‘feast of fools’: pp. 74-75; pp. 78-82; on parody: pp. 87-95. These meetings are limited in number. The group is […]

"There Was Never a West": dicsussion with Marcus Rediker

07 November, 2024 / 20:00

The second discussion of David Graeber’s essay “There Never Was a West”, led and moderated by Marcus Rediker, in the frame of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…” reading group. In this session, we will be joined by Marcus Rediker, a historian, writer, teacher, and activist. Register here. View the full program of “The Ultimate Hidden […]

Talk with Peter Sahlins about his book "Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France."

31 October, 2024 / 19:00

On the 31st October, we host a meeting with the author Peter Sahlins about Mikhail Bakhtin’s book, Rabelais as well as about David Graeber’s new book, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. Peter Sahlins is the author of, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France, which tells the history of the The […]

Reading Group: Mikhail Bakhtin’s book Rabelais. With Peter Sahlins.

31 October, 2024 / 20:00

This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. We will discuss: introduction: pp.1-12; on collectivity and the body: pp. 18-23; on the grotesque and the mask: pp. 39-40. Since the meeting will be held on October 31st, which is Halloween, we invite everyone to dress up for the occasion […]

reading group on Material Temporalities

08 October, 2024

The Soviet Temporalities Room is opening its autumn season with a reading group on Material Temporalities. Our first session is on Tuesday, October 8, at 4pm BST, curated byJulie Deschepper. We will discuss a volume that Julie has just co-edited, titled Time and Material Culture. Rethinking Soviet Temporalities (July 2024). The volume offers an exploration into the temporalities of Soviet […]

Enshittification; Was There Ever an Old, Good Internet? / Cory Doctorow

03 October, 2024 / 20:00

In this session of “The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…” reading group ( OCTOBER 3 / 2024, 8 pm GMT), we will be joined by Cory Doctorow and discuss Enshittification. Enshittification: Was There Ever an Old, Good Internet?It sure feels like the internet used to be good. What made it good? Was it better people? Better […]

"I Didn't Understand How Widespread Rape Was. Then the Penny Dropped": discussion with Dyan Neary Sep 2, 2024 08:00 PM (GTM)

02 September, 2024 / 20:00

As part of The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World is … reading group DGI organising a series of talks. On September 2nd, we will meet to discuss David Graeber’s essay I Didn’t Understand How Widespread Rape Was. Then the Penny Dropped. We will be joined by Dyan Neary, a writer, journalist, academic and documentary […]

Events list

‘Culture as Creative Refusal’ by David Graeber

19 August, 2021

With David Graeber’s latest book (co-written by David Wengrow), The Dawn of Everything, coming out in October this year, we thought it might be a good idea to dedicate the next reading group to ‘Culture as Creative Refusal,’ which develops as one of the key points of the book. Link to the text. See you […]

The Dawn of Everything Reading Group: Chapter 1

18 August, 2021 / 20:00

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action. Possible discussion questions: Chapter 11. The two […]

‘Going In and Out of each other’s Bodies’ by Maurice Bloch

05 August, 2021

Following on from our last session which reflected on David Graeber’s text on the ‘Monastic Self,’ our next session on 5th August will be a discussion of Maurice Bloch’s paper on ‘Going In and Out of Each Other’s Bodies.’ (Please don’t get too excited because we’re only referring to neuronal connection here.) Links to Bloch’s […]

Notes: 27.05.2021 Assembly

27 May, 2021

Dear all,  here is a video from our yesterday’s Assembly I am eternally grateful to the students of the Critical Studies Department, Andris Brinkmanis, Zasha Colah and Archive Milano, who will be curating the Museum of Care for the next two or three months.Our programmer, Oleg Kostishin, is sharing access with them so they can run […]

‘Communist Proteins’ with Alexei Yurchak

13 May, 2021 / 20:00

A special group this week, as we will be welcoming Alexei Yurchak, who will present his essay ‘Communist Proteins: Lenin’s Skin, Astrobiology, and the Origin of Life.’ Here is the link to text. Alexei Yurchak is a Professor of Anthropology at Berkeley. He is the author of Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: […]

Notes: 22.04.2021 Assembly

22 April, 2021

Museum of Care projects, a new proposal for how to curate Museum of Care. Some thoughts about it here. 00:19:05 Mark : John, I’m not seeing the pdf in chat. Tx00:19:19 Mark : *link00:20:16 Yash Lad: I downloaded it on my laptop and and shared again — @Mark can you see it?00:24:36 John Fass: file […]