Reading Groups

Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” is a seminal text that in just a few steps dismantles the very idea that any form of legitimate violence can exist, or that means can be separated from ends so that a just end can make a wrong means just.  For that alone, this would be a great text, […]

Our June and July 2022 reading group of David Graeber’s text ‘There Never Was a West: Or, Democracy Emerges from the Spaces in Between.’  Please refer to the links below to access all the events that form this reading group. This reading group is facilitated by Vassily Pigounides and Simona Ferlini. Part 1 Part 2 and […]

Reading Group of 13 January, 2022 – Political Treatise, Chap. 1 to 5 by Baruch Spinoza. Facilitator for this session: Simona Ferlini. Here are Simona’s notes: I suggested to read the first V chapters of S’s TP for two reasons: 1. Because I think that this work is useful to better understand the tenth chapter […]

Reading Group of 9 September, 2021 – ‘Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions’ by Baruch Spinoza (text available here). Facilitator for this session: Simona Ferlini.

Here is the text: https://davidgraeber.org/papers/culture-as-creative-refusal/ facilitation by Steven Bachelor and Vassily Pigounides Keywords: culture, heroic societies, Madagascar, Mauss, schizmogenesis

Possible discussion questions: Chapter 11. The two David’s title this chapter “Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood.” What might a more “mature” understanding of humanity look like? How might we consider human history in ways that avoid teleologies?2. Why is it that people, especially since the Enlightenment, have struggled to imagine the possibility of reinventing themselves? What is […]

5-08-2021 a reading group: ‘Going in and out of each other’s bodies’ by Maurice Bloch, Here is the text facilitated by Steven and Vassily

17 June, 2021 – Stephen Snelders, author of the The Devil’s Anarchy (available here).  We’re continuing our series of lectures and discussion with Dutch historian Stephen Snelders, who’s going to introduce his work on pirates. There are three texts on the reading list for this session, which can be found here. Stephen Snelders is a historian of drugs, colonial medicines, […]

13 May, 2021 – ‘Communist Proteins: Lenin’s Skin, Astrobiology, and the Origin of Life’ (available here). Facilitator(s) for this session: Alexei Yurchak (the author). Link to the video.