Serfs Up

Is too-late capitalism evolving a new mode of production? A new mode of accumulation? Or just a new political and ideological dispensation of the main forces and relations that have defined modernity? InterCcECT is thrilled to host very special guest Professor Matt Seybold, Director of the Center for Mark Twain Studies and host of The American Vandal , for a miniseminar reckoning with the surging neofeudalism hypothesis.

We’ll read excerpts from Jodi Dean’s Capital’s Grave; Yannis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism, and Seybold’s incisive essays “Against Technofeudal Education” and “The Technofeudal Text.”

Join us Wednesday 3 December, 5:30pm at UIC (University Hall, 601 S Morgan, 20th floor, Room 2028). RSVP for PDFs.

While in Chicago Dr. Seybold will also participate in Theory at the Bargaining Table, a conversation with Professor Dominique Baker and the Committee on Political Education of UIC United Faculty, about how to strategize faculty power in technofeudal times. Thursday 4 December, 3pm, UIC Daley Library room 1-470.

on our Chicago calendar:

Strangers to Ourselves: An Introduction to Freud

Power and Personality in Contemporary Capitalism

Authoritarian Imaginaries

Language Machines

got theory winter goals, theory new year’s resolutions? contact us to propose events!

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What’s Funny About Student Debt?

For only the second time in our fourteen years, InterCcECT hosts an event centered on the novel’s unique faculty for theorizing capitalism. The Payback is a comic critique of contemporary life, a red-hot indictment of offloading social maintenance costs onto individual students, and a rousing entry in the heist genre canon.

The Payback

InterCcECT is extremely excited to welcome novelist Kashana Cauley to Chicago, courtesy of the UIC English Department and the UIC Institute for the Humanities, as well as Simon&Schuster. She’ll be in conversation with bona fide scholar of heists Anna Kornbluh, and fellow in The Debt Collective, Professor Jason Wozniak. We’ll read the novel alongside selections from Dr. Wozniak’s co-authored book Lend and Rule: Fighting the Shadow Financialization of Public Universities.

Join us Wednesday 29 October, 4pm, at the Institute, 1007 W Harrison Street (Blue Line: UIC).

Free copies of the novel are available to UIC students via the English Major Club. Signed copies will be for sale on site thanks to Madison St Books.

For the Lend and Rule reading, contact us.

As always, InterCcECT is an open circle welcoming proposals for events. Miniseminar? Work-in-Progress? Field Trip? Book Tour in Chicago? Get in touch!

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dialectics do not rest

Even after a long, intense, Hot Adorno Summer, we still can’t let go. Hang on to Hegel with a session on Adorno’s Three Studies. We’ll tackle the third study, Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel, for Thursday September 25th, at 4pm. Lincoln Park Public Library Large Meeting Room (1150 W Fullerton Ave).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF.

The year’s slate is open! As theory nerds confront back-to-school, be in touch with proposals for events. InterCcECT hosts mini-seminars, field trips, book talks, works-in-progress sessions, and reading groups, as well as hitherto unimagined formats. Contact us to propose events.

On our calendar:

Oct 29: What’s Funny About Student Debt? A conversation with novelist Kashana Cauley about her excellent new book The Payback, with Anna Kornbluh and Jason Wozniak of The Debt Collective

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Hot Adorno Summer cools down

It’s been a long hot humid haul, and the cool kids triumphantly conclude on Wednesday, 13 August, 4pm, in full festivity at Moody’s. Finish the book!

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or to launch fall projects.

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Hot Adorno Summer sweatin’ to the oldies

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the penultimate session on Adorno (reading Part Three, Section 2 — “World-Spirit and Natural History”), Thursday, 31 July, 4pm, at Moody’s again (libraries full alas).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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Hot Adorno Summer sweats it out

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Structure of the Third Antinomy through the end), Wednesday, 16 July, 4pm, Chicago Public Library Lincoln Park location (our old standby, but in the “small meeting room” this time).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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Hot Adorno Summer endures

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Models but just through “Contemplation” ), Tuesday, 1 July, 4pm, Moody’s Pub, 5910 N Broadway. (NOTE this is not a library session due to unavailability all over, but Moody’s tends to be quiet outdoors.)

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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Hot Adorno Summer continues

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading part two: negative dialectics, concepts and categories), Wednesday, 18 June, 4pm, Lincoln Belmont Public Library meeting room. PLEASE NOTE due to Juneteenth this session is NOT on a Thursday, and due to availability it is NOT at the regular LP library location.

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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Hot Adorno Summer continues

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading part one: relationship to ontology), Thursday 5 June, 4pm, Lincoln Park Public Library large meeting room.

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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Hot Adorno Summer

The times call for Negative Dialectics. Join InterCcECT as we embark on an intensified summer project of Adorno. We’ll aim to meet every two weeks, for as long as we can stand it. Summer schedule remains open for your proposals for alternate/ additional events too.

First session: read the Introduction (pages 1-60, or as deep as you get).

Thursday 22 May, 4pm, Sheffield’s Beer Garden (outside).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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