Critical Inquiry

Critical Inquiry Theory Journal
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu
http://critinq.wordpress.com

"Vergara looks to Nicolas de Condorcet’s designs for a representative assembly accountable to a network of local primary...
12/12/2025

"Vergara looks to Nicolas de Condorcet’s designs for a representative assembly accountable to a network of local primary assemblies, Rosa Luxemburg’s and Hannah Arendt’s engagement with council democracy, and John McCormick's and Lawrence Hamilton’s proposals for reviving the plebeian tribunate."

New in review, Mikkel Flohr on Camila Vergara's Systemic Corruption: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/mikkel_flohr_reviews_systemic_corruption/

"To draw the line here between knowledge and belief is in part to impose a set of frames: professional versus amateur ju...
12/10/2025

"To draw the line here between knowledge and belief is in part to impose a set of frames: professional versus amateur judgments; intuition versus research (but research, as any student of drug company protocols or think tank politics can attest, is not itself a neutral category); present versus past."

From our Summer 2006 issue, read Marjorie Garber's "Loaded Words": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/508084

"This temporal asymmetry is Vallor’s most original and consequential claim, and it is here that the book produces its st...
12/05/2025

"This temporal asymmetry is Vallor’s most original and consequential claim, and it is here that the book produces its strongest philosophical work. Her distinction between recursive prediction and imaginative projection resonates with continental accounts of projection and care, insisting that ethical life requires practices that resist the gravitational pull of predictive systems."

New in review, Jaehoon Lee on Shannon Vallor's The AI Mirror: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jaehoon_lee_reviews_the_ai_mirror/

"Plato’s problem is not far from that of the Pentateuch, and his solutions are in some ways similar, albeit more extreme...
12/01/2025

"Plato’s problem is not far from that of the Pentateuch, and his solutions are in some ways similar, albeit more extreme. Whereas in Leviticus self‐love is promoted as the source of political love (remember Lev. 19:18: 'you must love your neighbor as yourself'), in the Laws self‐love is downplayed as the enemy of politics."

From our Spring 2007 issue, read David Nirenberg's "The Politics of Love and Its Enemies": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/513528

"The climate crisis reveals the sudden coming together—the enjambment, if you will—of the usually separated syntactic or...
11/24/2025

"The climate crisis reveals the sudden coming together—the enjambment, if you will—of the usually separated syntactic orders of recorded and deep histories of the human kind, of species history and the history of the earth systems, revealing the deep connections through which the planet’s carbon cycle and life interact with each other."

From our Autumn 2014 issue, read Dipesh Chakrabarty's "Climate and Capital: On Conjoined Histories": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/678154

"Palti’s study lays out the main theoretical lines and methodological tools of NIH, not merely critiquing or exposing th...
11/21/2025

"Palti’s study lays out the main theoretical lines and methodological tools of NIH, not merely critiquing or exposing the contradictions, inconsistencies, and aporias within their writings, but also seeking to reconstruct the conceptual universe that made possible the emergence of the Cambridge School, German Begriffsgeschichte, and French intellectual history."

New in review, Senida Poenariu reviews Elías J. Palti's Intellectual History and the Problem of Conceptual Change: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/senida_poenariu_reviews_intellectual_history_and_the_problem_of_conceptual_change/

"The implication of fate in Arendt’s judgment of Eichmann seems to be that an individual must take responsibility not on...
11/18/2025

"The implication of fate in Arendt’s judgment of Eichmann seems to be that an individual must take responsibility not only for his or her individual actions, but, more fundamentally, for the state in which his or her individuality will either thrive in justice or wilt in moral dependency."

From our Autumn 2003 issue, read Benjamin Robinson's "The Specialist on the Eichmann Precedent": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/380807

"At the same time, the original term, rhapsody, in its epic context (a poem stitched together from various elements) doe...
11/14/2025

"At the same time, the original term, rhapsody, in its epic context (a poem stitched together from various elements) does not comprehend fully the monstrosity of the riddling, postepic verse practiced by the Sphinx."

From our Winter 2008 issue, read Daniel Tiffany's "Rhapsodic Measures": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/529085

"Combining Western theories with the approaches of Boris Eikhenbaum and Yuri Tynianov, The Handbook grapples with the fa...
11/14/2025

"Combining Western theories with the approaches of Boris Eikhenbaum and Yuri Tynianov, The Handbook grapples with the fact that the study of the Soviet underground requires new methodologies, terminologies, and conceptualizations specific to its idiosyncratic contexts."

New in review, Olga V. Solovieva on The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture, ed. Mark Lipovetsky, Maria Engström, Tomáš Glanc, Ilja Kukuj, and Klavdia Smola: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/olga_v_solovieva_reviews_the_oxford_handbook_of_soviet_underground_culture/

Winter 2026 issue is coming soon! (With front cover image courtesy of Salman Toor)
11/12/2025

Winter 2026 issue is coming soon! (With front cover image courtesy of Salman Toor)

"As an actor he developed in range, resourcefulness, and mastery, but as he got better, his films got worse. The problem...
11/11/2025

"As an actor he developed in range, resourcefulness, and mastery, but as he got better, his films got worse. The problem was that he had no taste; in fact, he was antitaste, and he seemed to purposely take on wayward projects."

From our Autumn 2010 issue, read Keri Walsh's "Why Does Mickey Rourke Give Pleasure?": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/656471

"The kind of discursive monumentalizing the book performs is critical and reflective rather than self-aggrandizing, memo...
11/07/2025

"The kind of discursive monumentalizing the book performs is critical and reflective rather than self-aggrandizing, memorializing a defunct yet still painfully resonant phase of capitalism."

New in review, Jacobé Huet on Claire Zimmerman's Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jacobe_huet_reviews_albert_kahn_inc/

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