Chicago Platypus chapters at The School of the Art Institue of Chicago, University of Chicago, Loyola University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago
“A Black Man Speaks of Marx”: The Sartre-Fanon Dialogue of the 1940s and 50s
In the years immediately following World War II French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon turned their attention to racism, anti-semitism and anti-black racism. Both men were engaged with both. Neither wrote from identity, but rather both sought to link their reflections to Marxism, to its failure and possible reconstitution.
Audio for Which Way Forward for Sexual Liberation
Last Monday, November 8, Platypus New York hosted a forum on sex, politics, and freedom entitled Which Way Forward for Sexual Liberation? An audio recording of the event is available here. Event information: With roots in earlier radical traditions, movements that sought to radically redefine the relationship of sex, politics, and freedom erupted onto the [...]
PR Issue 29 Online
The November 2010 issue of the Platypus Review is now available online. The Marxist Hypothesis Chris Cutrone Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have promoted the idea of the “Communist Hypothesis,” the “pure Idea of equality” that has been a counterpoint to civilization since its beginning. Chris Cutrone offers a different idea: a “Marxist Hypothesis” that [...]
A Discussion with Tim Wohlforth
Join us for an interview and discussion with Tim Wohlforth. This follow-up event to the “Rethinking the New Left” panel at the University of Chicago will allow for a broader and more intimate conversation with an important, former leader within American Trotskyism. Mr. Wohlforth began his political career during McCarthyism as a youth member of [...]
Rethinking The New Left
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH 6:00 PM INTERNATIONAL HOUSE ASSEMBLY HALL 1414 EAST 59TH STREET SPEAKERS: Mark Rudd Alan Spector Osha Neumann Tim Wohlforth MODERATOR: Spencer A. Leonard The memory of the 1960s, which has long kindled contestation and debate on the means and ends of freedom politics, is rapidly fading into the political unconscious. The election of [...]
An Incomplete Project? Art and Politics After Postmodernism
Postmodernism challenged the institutionalized modernism of the mid-20th century, offering more radical forms of social discontents and cultural practice. It meant unmasking the values of progress as involving ideologies of the political status-quo, the problems of which were manifest to a new generation in the 1960s. But, more recently, postmodernism itself has begun to age, [...]
Capitalism and Gay Identity–A Teach-in at the University of Chicago
Join Platypus for a teach-in and group discussion on the historical character of sexual identity and the character of freedom that capitalism presents. Thursday, October 21 at 6pm Harper Library, University of Chicago, 1116 E. 59th St. Suggested Reading: John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity” RSVP for the event on Facebook
Socialism, Feminism and the New Left: a teach-in at UIC
Socialism, feminism and the New Left Juliet Mitchell and the recovery of Marxism A teach-in hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society “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 [...]
WHAT IS LEFT, AND WHERE TO BEGIN?
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 [...]