"On errands of life, these letters speed to death."
Reading Is Critical
Reading is critical, in both senses of the word. Crucial, of course, insofar as it is a cornerstone of communication, a primary means by which we receive information. But it is also an active form of resistance, a tactic in the struggle against ignorance, misinformation, and manipulation. To read is to become knowledgeable; to become knowledgeable is to become powerful. We invite visiting authors, booksellers, and members of our community to submit "Critical Reading" lists featuring books that are, in these senses, “critical.” Submit yours by emailing events@semcoop.com, and check each post for details on related events!
February 7th, 2017
From Colin:
I come back to books about delight and its relation to perception, perception and its relation to doing, doing and its relation to time and place. "To do two things at once is to do neither," writes Publilius Syrus in the first century BCE. How might we in 2017 evert an all-present assumption of more and denial of less in our everyday lives as we stand, as James Breslin writes in Mark Rothko: A Biography, before "an unknown space where life appears on the verge of either a new start or a disintegration"?
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February 5th, 2017
From Marie Hicks, author of Programmed Inequality. Catch her Thu. 2/9 6pm at the Co-op!
Behind the popular narratives of bluster, boy geniuses, and hero-entrepreneurs lie stories about the people and events who made computing what it is today: an enormously powerful and dangerous tool embedded within a web of complex social and economic relations. This history allows us to see computing for the bundle of contradictions it really is, rather than simply viewing it as a triumphant example of technological “progress.”
- Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly - Shetterly, who grew up among the women in her book, rewrites the history of NASA...
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February 4th, 2017
Muriel writes: This book studies the power of ideology in order to analyze and understand a critical historical moment. Reading it changed completely how I thought about the mechanism of oppression and more generally, of history.
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February 3rd, 2017
From Kevin: Now is a time to rethink borders...national borders, political borders, the borders between us and the "other," and the borders of our tolerances, morality, and ideologies.
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February 2nd, 2017
From bookseller Conor:
I've had a ton of people ask what we recommend for this time. One I go back to personally a lot is Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" as a way of stopping to collect my thoughts and recognize the necessity of thinking (and reading) critically, especially when it seems like all recent events appear as "one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage" (Thesis IX). Given the historical circumstances under which this text was written, fleeing fascist governments across Europe in 1940 with a briefcase full of what would be his final notes before taking his own life, Benjamin's essay is remarkably clairvoyant:
"Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly comes to a stop in a constellation saturated with tensions, it gives that constellation a shock, by which...
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February 1st, 2017
“Reading and critical thinking are dangerous, indeed subversive, in an unjust society.” (Carl Sagan, University of Chicago AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PHD’60)
Reading is critical, in both senses of the word. Crucial, of course, insofar as it is a cornerstone of communication, a primary means by which we receive information. But it is also an active form of resistance, a tactic in the struggle against ignorance, misinformation, and manipulation. To read is to become knowledgeable; to become knowledgeable is to become powerful.
This month, we will share reading lists and recommendations that are, in these senses, “critical.” We invite you to share yours as well. Post on Instagram, Twitter, or...
Posted in: Reading Is Critical