[SydPhil] Reading Group on Debt - Critical Antiquities Network

[Tristan Bradshaw]

Dear all,

The Critical Antiquities Network is happy to announce a series of four reading groups on the topic “Transformative Action in the Face of Debt.” Debt in our financialised times appears to be one of the great forces working on the contemporary subject's actions and imagination, one that stands in the way of genuine social and economic transformation. In these reading groups, we want to approach the current system of debt and finance in our world by both familiarising ourselves with the best contemporary work on it and then defamiliarising it from the perspective of debt's configurations and uses in alternative worlds, including but not limited to classical Greek and Roman worlds. We hope these sessions will allow participants to see the Critical Antiquities (CA) approach in action on a subject fundamental for understanding our present predicament and especially its possibilities. CA is an approach that seeks to disclose alternative forms of life that are available and desirable in the present.

The reading groups are open to anyone and everyone, in whatever location, vocation, and life stage. Expertise in ancient worlds is not required. Our desire is to involve researchers who are further away from Classics and Ancient History, the discipline CA has predominantly spoken to so far. We aim for a wider and deeper interdisciplinary reach because the CA agenda needs people who can develop a rigorous understanding of the present, a necessary counterpart to using antiquities as standpoints for critique. We hope that these reading groups will give participants greater literacy and confidence in areas of CA with which they may be less familiar. For Classicists, this may be current scholarship on capitalistic debt; for political economists, ancient social and political forms of debt and their contexts.

These meetings will be open forums for discussion and ask participants to read ~100 pages of material by way of preparation. Readings will include excerpts from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years and Adkins, Cooper, and Konings’ The Asset Economy. We will also invite participants to contribute to our crowd-sourced bibliography over the course of the meetings.

Format will be both online and in person; the in-person workshops will circulate between the University of Sydney (Tuesday, March 18), the University of Wollongong (Tuesday, April 1), the Australian National University (Tuesday, April 15), and the University of New South Wales (Tuesday, May 6).

We will circulate a registration link shortly but for now we wish to discover the time that will facilitate maximal participation among those who wish to participate. For now, please fill out this very short survey to indicate your preferred meeting time: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/JP5eCE8wmrt65kNAyTNfZT7xpjL?domain=forms.office.com. Please complete it ASAP to ease the organising process.

These reading groups will culminate in the inaugural Can Assembly on “Transformative Action in the Face of Debt” on June 13 at the University of Wollongong. More details to come.

The Critical Antiquities Network was founded in 2020 and has hosted many workshops for thinkers working at the intersection of ancient world study and critical theory. We are now developing the Network's activities in different directions, including a studio for encouraging the work of PhD and early career scholars. We have nearly finished renovating criticalantiquities.org and the new site will detail all of the changes.

All best,

Tristan Bradshaw, Ben Brown, Tom Geue (CAN co-directors)

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