ABOUT READING AS PRODUCTION OF DEBATE

online reading group coordinated by Noa Treister

29th of October, 2021 – 11th of December 2021

Accumulation is one of the crucial aspects of Marx’s analysis of the Capitalist system. Rosa Luxemburg was one of the key figures that initiated a debate on the subject that followed the publication of her The Accumulation of Capital. Reading The Accumulation of Capital – An Anti-critique which was Luxemburg’s answer to her critiques, we will be able to follow the entire debate on this question to consider how to hold a political debate that includes both method and praxis.

Bibliography:

Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital – An Anti-critique , 1913

REALISM AND REALITY IN WORKERS’ ENVIRONMENT

online reading group coordinated by Noa Treister

18th of September, 2021 – 17th of October 2021

What is realism, especially today in a world of so called post-truth and how Lukacs’s insistence on the historical novel and on realism is embedded in our reading today of both the novel and reality? How to and who should portray the world of “essential workers” in the time of COVID-19? How does art differ from journalism? On the other hand a question that ensues is how much the reader/viewer is allowed to intervene in the text? Contrary to common sense it is actually the hermetic texts that live much for the reader’s/viewer’s work and develop their imagination i.e. their freedom, therefore allowing them to interpret themselves through the work. Which leads to the question who is the addressee of the work? And how does the work address them? All this we will follow with Lukacs.

Bibliography:

Georg Lukacs, History and Class Conscience, 1968

ON ADULT EDUCATION

online reading group coordinated by Noa Treister

10th of July – 28th of August, 2021

Paulo Freire had a substantial influence on social and community art in questioning the border between life and art, for instance in defining the teacher as an artist. For him literacy was not a technical impediment or a way of self-advancement but a threshold of participation. Literacy does not only mean reading the alphabet but a way of thinking about our mode of participation and about what the gatekeepers social groups install to limit participation or the practices they provide to allow inclusion. We will examine group reading as a method of inclusion.

Bibliography:

Freire, P., Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, Continuum, 1970

ON READING AS A SOCIAL RELATION

online reading group coordinated by Noa Treister

3 – 6 of June, 2021

The debate between Jean Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot started in the 80’s around the question of the constitution of a community in the exchange surrounding Nancy’s The Inoperative Community and Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community, and recently a belated answer in Nancy’s The Disavowed Community surround the question of reading and the subject. Following these texts we will be asking who is the subject that reads and how is reading always already together. This has extreme relevance to artists and scholars that find themselves frequently outside the conventional professional gathering places like galleries, museums or universities and are craving dialog and a sense of community.

Bibliography:

Jean Luc Nancy, La Communauté désœuvrée (The Inoperative Community/ Comunitatea absentă)
Maurice Blanchot, La Communauté inavouable (The Unavowable Community/ Comunitatea de nemărturisit)
Jean Luc Nancy, Communauté désavouée (The disavowed community / Comunitatea dezavuată)