Multi-session Classes
Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ – An Epilogue and a Prologue
Hegel for Radicals concludes the current series with a nine-week course co-hosted by Alex Steinberg and Matthew Strauss. We are reading the Introduction and Preliminary Concepts from Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, sometimes called “The Shorter Logic.” This material can stand alone as an Introduction to Hegel’s magnum opus, The Science of Logic. But for those who have already studied the Science of Logic with us this can serve as completion of the Circle of the dialectic.
Marx Miniseries: The ‘Resultate’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Capital Studies Group presents a miniseries on the chapter Marx omitted from published editions of Capital. Titled "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" and often referred to by the German 'Resultate', this long chapter can be read as a bridge between volumes 1 and 2 of Capital.
Reading Gramsci for Today’s Movements
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn ongoing study group on the Prison Notebooks and other works of Antonio Gramsci. We explore Gramsci's themes and concepts, including state-civil society relations, historical bloc, hegemony, spontaneity, strategy and tactic, and language. We follow Gramsci’s philological method, addressing such areas as linguistics, cinema, critical theory, literature, journalism, comics, animation, plastic arts, mass media and Machiavellian political studies.
Celebrating 75 Years of Palestinian Literature – Final Series
Three weekly sessions on Thursdays at 7 pm US ET, Starting January 9 The MEP’s months-long reading of Palestinian literature concludes in January with a reading of the recently issued memoir My Palestine: An Impossible Exile by Mohammad Tarbush. This highly praised memoir written by a man born during the Nakba and who died after ... Read more
Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn open-ended reading group on Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life - a major manifesto of humanist Marxism and a clarion call for revolutionary praxis through sustained critique of daily living. “Lefebvre pushed philosophy out into the streets,” the critic McKenzie Wark has written; his work has influenced fields as diverse as sociology, cultural studies, architecture and urban planning, as well as movements including the Situationist International and the activists of May 1968.
Literature of Burundi – A poorly reported conflict
Thursdays in February, Starting February 6, at 7:00 pm US ET In February, the Literature Reading Group will leave countries with extensive literature translated into English for Burundi, an East African nation considered the poorest country in the world. Burundi has had only two novels translated into English. Both novels take as a backdrop the country’s ... Read more
Reading Science Fiction Politically: In Ascension
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. This fall, we continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
‘Citizen Marx’ with author Bruno Leipold
Recording available on YouTubeWhat better time than the present moment to revisit Karl Marx’s commitment to the democratic republic as a necessary (if not sufficient) step on the path to human freedom? Author Bruno Leipold presents his recently published 'Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought.'
Marx’s Capital Volume 1: A Short Course for Today
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsHave you always wanted to study Marx’s Capital, Vol 1, and hesitated because of the time commitment to read the entire volume from start to finish? Join us for a 12-week study group covering key sections of the book.
Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song: Speculative Fiction for Today
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. We continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
Karl Marx and Republicanism: Reading ‘Citizen Marx’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhat better time than the present moment to revisit Karl Marx’s commitment to the democratic republic as a necessary (if not sufficient) step on the path to human freedom? Over five weekly meetings we will read and discuss Bruno Leipold’s recently published Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought.
Exploring the Literature of Afro-Surrealism
Thursdays, 7-9 pm ET, beginning April 24 This spring, the MEP Literature Reading Group takes up novels loosely grouped as "Afro-Surrealism." Borrowing from use by Amiri Baraka in the 1970s, D. Scot Miller encouraged use of the term through his 2009 essay, “Afrosurreal Manifesto." Writers and artists in the African diaspora have now reclaimed the ... Read more
Darkest Los Angeles
Institute for the Radical Imagination NY, United StatesDennis Broe leads a group reading of his five Los Angeles novels set in the film-noir period of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The contradictions we will unearth in that postwar period, the period of crime films that visually documented this seedy reality, have never been resolved, only continually papered over, and so they resound today.
Adam Smith and ‘The Wealth of Nations’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAdam Smith deals with such issues as the so-called labor-theory of value, the equalization of the rate of profit, and the determination of commodity prices in important ways that anticipate Marx or require the corrections Marx provides. So, in this group, we will dive headlong into Smith's opus, The Wealth of Nations.
Hegel for Radicals: The Phenomenology of Spirit
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsOver 16 Saturdays, beginning March 8, we will read and discuss one of the most influential books of all time, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This massive retelling of humanity defies traditional divisions between history, philosophy, comedy, and tragedy.