Saturday and Sunday: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 112 S. Michigan Ave.
The Platypus Affiliated Society is proud to announce its second annual international convention, What is Left, and where to begin? Platypus has organized four days of activities. Starting on Wednesday May 26th with a film screening at University of Chicago’s Woodlawn Collaborative and Thursday with theater and poetry performances at Decima Musa in Pilsen. On Friday May 28th, the Platypus Affiliated Society will convene for the panel discussion on The Question of Imperialism in the 20th Century at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). On Saturday May 29th, Platypus will host a selective series of workshops and panel discussions at SAIC (112 S. Michigan Ave.) Activities will focus on political and cultural issues that have shaped the Left historically and today. Sunday May 30th, Platypus members will be leading a series of talks on The Platypus Experience: Perspectives from three generations and The origins of today’s Left in the 1970s New Left. Saturday and Sunday spaces are limited and require registration. Click here to register.
General
Platypus presents:
Tuesday, May 18th 8:00 PM
5710 S. Woodlawn
Featuring a presentation by Chris Cutrone on Juliet Mitchell’s “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)
Join us for dinner and discussion
“Socialism will be a process of change, of becoming. A fixed image of the future is in the worst sense ahistorical. . . . As Marx wrote: ‘What is progress if not the absolute elaboration of humanity’s creative dispositions . . . unmeasured by any previously established yardstick[,] an end in itself . . . the absolute movement of becoming?’ . . . The liberation of women under socialism will [be] . . . a human achievement, in the long passage from Nature to Culture which is the definition of history and society.”
– Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell’s groundbreaking essay, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966), brilliantly anticipated the feminist critique of Marxian socialism. But Mitchell found feminism, too to be lacking. Far from dismissing Marxism as a retrograde, patriarchal theory, Mitchell embarked on an effort to reconstruct Marxism as a philosophy of freedom that could orient political activists’ efforts to overturn male dominance and establish the equality of the sexes. Unfortunately, feminism after Mitchell’s essay failed to heed her call to attend critically to history to help get a better grasp and clarity about the pursuit of gender and sexual liberation, and abandoned the utopian possibilities of socialism in favor of the politics of established social identities. Join us to reconsider the paths not taken out of 1960s radicalism, and work towards reformulating a theory of sexual freedom that answers the needs of the present.
Reading:
Juliet Mitchell Women: The Longest Revolution (1966)
General
The Platypus Affiliated Society at Woodlawn Collaborative present…
When:Saturday, May 8 1:30pm – 3:00pm.
Where: Woodlawn Collaborative 6400 S. Kimbark Ave., John Knox Hall.
The German Marxist critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) is known, along with his friend and mentor Walter Benjamin, for the critique of mid-20th century art and culture. What is less well understood is the specific character of Adorno’s Marxism, how his political perspective related to his philosophical concerns. This workshop will address several aspects of Adorno’s Marxism that relate to his critique of Leftist politics, in both periods of his early and late life, in the Old Left (1920s-40s) and New Left (1960s), and how Adorno remains relevant to issues and problems of Leftist politics today.
Recommended background readings:
Max Horkheimer, “The Little Man and the Philosophy of Freedom” (1926)
Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944)
Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969)
Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)
General