25.02.2026 19:05 β
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"Abstraction is a metaphor, not a style; the connection of one abstract work to another is by family resemblance, in Wittgenstein's sense."
From our Spring 2013 issue, read Charles Bernstein's "Disfiguring Abstraction": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Panofsky's worry about Heidegger is a concern about the risks of what he interprets as an underlying lack of interest in constraints."
From our Spring 2012 issue, read JaΕ Elsner and Katharina Lorenz's "The Genesis of Iconology": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Joyce Suechun Cheng discovers the movementβs iconography of 'masks,' which act as a kind of carapace, alternately protecting and disclosing the surrealist subject."
New in review, Jacob Stewart-Halevy on Joyce Suechun Cheng's The Persistence of Masks: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jacob_stewar...
Spring 2026 issue is coming soon!
17.02.2026 21:38 β π 11 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
"The suicide weapon can be ruthless and terrifying. It can be callously exploited by older men who have no intention of doing the killing themselves. It can be used by anyone, anywhere."
From our Autumn 2008 issue, read Ian Hacking's "The Suicide Weapon": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Spring 2026 issue is coming soon!
17.02.2026 21:38 β π 11 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
"Streaming music from mood-based and activity-based playlists whittles down the anxiety of excessive choice and retains the element of music discovery."
From our Summer 2015 issue, read Paul Allen Anderson's "Neo-Muzak and the Business of Mood": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"This book . . . asks how the invisible immanence of whiteness is '"recognised or misrecognised"' and how it shapes social and political power."
Adin E. Lears on Wan-Chuan Kao's White before whiteness in the late Middle Ages: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/adin_e_lears...
"I am interested in the analytic limitations of forming categories through peer imitation or why algorithmic collection makes for poor theory."
From our new issue, read Michael Dango's "Taxonomic Criticism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"We have two kinds of evidently deep and consistent Jewish identification in Auerbachβs self-presentation: religious (whether or not Auerbach was observant) and cultural or ethnic."
From our new issue, James I. Porter's "When Is Philology Made Jewish?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Emerling approaches the task of the historiographer as being identical with a charge of fidelity to the event."
New in review, Kyle Sossamon on Jae Emerling's Transmissibility: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/kyle_sossamo...
Very, very grateful to ππ³πͺπ΅πͺπ€π’π ππ―π²πΆπͺπ³πΊ for giving me space to sing the praises of Chase Gregory's ππ΄ ππ§!, a much-needed book about the limits of identity-based scholarship:
31.01.2026 13:16 β π 9 π 3 π¬ 0 π 0
"Suppose a technique of criticism that allows the critic to cast the work of art as one possibility among many. Suppose Picassoβs variations as a model for literary criticism."
From our new issue, read Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld's "Supposing . . .": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Gregory calls into question the idea that 'stable political identities' are necessary to the cohesion of 'identity knowledge' fields such as queer studies."
New in review, Patrick Kindig on Chase Gregory's As If!: Queer Criticism Across Difference: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/patrick_kind...
"It is as powerful a statement of the inadequacies of traditional painting to render contemporary experience as this century has yet produced."
From our new issue, read Saul Nelson's "Manet and Neoliberalism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Endless first-person writing had the effect of creating . . . the continual hum of mental presence and sensory awareness that would soon be designated as consciousness."
From our new issue, read Esther Yu's "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"The collection of corporations, startups, and nonprofits that make up the titular complex have captured not only the markets but the means of value transaction."
Cole Sansom on Alessandra Mularoni and Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cybernetic Circulation Complex: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/cole_sansom_...
"The first efforts to create planetary experiments in the mid-nineteenth century focused on the dynamics of phenomena that themselves encompassed the planet."
Read "The Planetary Experiment" by Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Both Baker and Crow emphasize the timeliness of a reassessment of Marat for current times. Yet they differ radically as to what that timeliness consists in."
Colin Jones on Jean-Paul Marat by Keith Michael Baker and Thomas Crow's Murder in the Rue Marat: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/colin_jones_...
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AIβs better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Interesting @criticalinquiry.bsky.social piece on the "planetary experiment" from the 19th century Magnetic Crusade through the Trinity test to the 21c digital twin. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
14.01.2026 19:20 β π 21 π 4 π¬ 0 π 0
"It is a performance of supremacy (flesh over metal) ready and able to be coined into acts of racial supremacy (white over Black)."
From our new issue, read Christopher Grobe's "Botface": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
09.01.2026 21:26 β π 4 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
09.01.2026 21:26 β π 4 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
For CRITICAL INQUIRY,
I reviewed @leifw.bsky.socialβs very important LANGUAGE MACHINES. Also, unless someone tells me different, Iβm going to lay claim to the first F bomb in CIβs history.
Painting of man behind bar, holding half of a lemon staring forward with his reflection and the reflection of the patron and others in background.
Winter 2026 issue is here! Featuring essays by Yves Winter, Christopher Grobe, Esther Yu, Saul Nelson, Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, James I. Porter, Michael Dango, and Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
Description of MLA panel 440: Academic Journals in an Age of Insecurity
Join us at the MLA for a roundtable discussion on journal publishing. Led by MLN managing editor
@victoriajane.bsky.social with Laurence Roth, editor of Modern Language Studies and Hank Scotch, managing editor of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social
@modernlanguage.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social