Welcome to the Greater Toronto Area Reading Group

Email us to be added to the 2024 summer online reading group: TorontoPlatypus1917@protonmail.com

Review the 2024 summer syllabus here here.

Upcoming Readings

Summer 2024 Readings: The Right for the Left

(• required / + recommended readings)

Week 1 | June 8, 2024

• • Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1908/19)

Priority readings: Letter to Daniel Halevy; Chapters 2, 4, 5 (complete); final section of Chapter 6 (section IV); final section of Chapter 7 (section V); Appendix III: In Defense of Lenin

• + Sorel, "The decomposition of Marxism" [pp. 211-254] (1908)

Week 2 | June 15, 2024

• • Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1932) including + "The age of neutralizations and depoliticizations" (1929)
• + Schmitt, "Political theology" Chapter 3 of Political Theology (1922/34)
• + Schmitt, Chapters 3-6 of Dictatorship (1921)
• + Schmitt, "Dictatorship in Marxist thought" Chapter 3 of The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923/26)

Week 3 | June 22, 2024

• • James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (1941)

Week 4 | June 29, 2024

• • Burnham, The Machiavellians (1943)

Week 5 | July 6, 2024

• • Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (1963)

Week 6 | July 13, 2024

• • Arendt, On Violence (1969)
• + Arendt, selections from Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/58): Prefaces to First and Second Enlarged Editions; Part Two: Imperialism Chapters 5 and 9; Part Three: Totalitarianism Chapters 10-14 (including Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution)

Week 7 | July 20, 2024

• • Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)