Revolution—as a political, critical, and aesthetic idea—has emerged as one of the most urgent preoccupations of the present cultural moment. From North Africa, to the Middle East, to Wall Street, to the White House, we are grappling with the notion of seismic upheaval, with eruptions in the social, moral, and intellectual landscape.
Revolution, however, not only refers to a forcible overthrow of a government or social system but also carries the connotation of a dramatic and wide–reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people's ideas about it.
What forms does revolution take in our current political/cultural milieu? How is it achieved? In what sense is it reflected or predicted in critical theory, philosophy, literature, art, historical perspective?
This year, the Baker–Nord Humanities Center embraces a broad interpretation of revolution, and it thematic programming will explore these questions and contexts, opening up an interdisciplinary discussion about the nature, dimension, and multiple meanings of revolution.
For example, we are interested not just in recent political uprisings per se, but in the technological and intellectual shifts that enabled them. The so–called Arab Spring relied heavily on new forms of communication, Twitter and Facebook, to organize and mobilize its ideology and action, and in doing so, draws our attention to contemporary shifts in the nature of communication—to the relationship between social and textual change, the history (and future?) of the printed word. More broadly, it raises queries about how change is initiated and motivated. We might think, as Anthony Appiah's latest book invites us to do, about How Moral Revolutions Happen. Turning to critical theory, recent writing on the idea of The Event has begun to explore the ways in which drastic shifts in ideology allow for an opening in the dominant perceptual and political system in any given moment.
Over a series of lectures, panel discussions, performances, and round–tables, we will grapple with these and related issues in a broadly humanistic, stimulating, and provocative exchange of ideas.
Revolution is about to happen. Join us.
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