Critical Inquiry
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criticalinquiry.bsky.social
Critical Inquiry
@criticalinquiry.bsky.social
Founded in 1974, Critical Inquiry is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the best critical thought in the arts and humanities.
"The performance of voicelessness intensifies in Rourke's own films. In each he plays a character who seems at first more like a patchwork of fetishes than a human being."

From Autumn 2010, read Keri Walsh's "Why Does Mickey Rourke Give Pleasure?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
November 11, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"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 Zimmerman's Albert Kahn Inc. criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jacobe_huet_...
November 7, 2025 at 10:59 PM
"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 Zimmerman's Albert Kahn Inc. criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jacobe_huet_...
November 7, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Benjamin conceptualized his thinking-in-images as the epistemological principle of modernity."

From our Winter 2015 issue, read Sigrid Weigel's "The Flash of Knowledge and the Temporality of Images": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 31, 2025 at 11:00 PM
"Amos makes her lyrical you, also blurrily the me of those lyrics, register simultaneously as the special, singled-out you (potentially any of us) in the darkened crowd."

From our Summer 2013 issue, read Nick Salvato's "Cringe Criticism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
November 4, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"And that’s what makes AI so scary, why . . . we fear it so: what was once a brushed-metal cyborg now manifests as workplace and state bureaucracies of containment and control."

Matthew Kirschenbaum on Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer's Why We Fear AI: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
October 30, 2025 at 10:41 PM
"Benjamin conceptualized his thinking-in-images as the epistemological principle of modernity."

From our Winter 2015 issue, read Sigrid Weigel's "The Flash of Knowledge and the Temporality of Images": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 31, 2025 at 11:00 PM
"And that’s what makes AI so scary, why . . . we fear it so: what was once a brushed-metal cyborg now manifests as workplace and state bureaucracies of containment and control."

Matthew Kirschenbaum on Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer's Why We Fear AI: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
October 30, 2025 at 10:41 PM
"Psycho marks the emergence of the modern horror film’s generic privileging of sensation and affect over deep modes of classical spectatorial absorption."

From our Summer 2017 issue, read James J. Hodge's "Digital Psycho": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 28, 2025 at 12:59 AM
"Instead of romanticizing hardship or dramatizing her life, Brucia presents Swenson as a writer defined by resilience and intelligence."

New in review, Lucky Issar on Margaret A. Brucia's The Key to Everything, from @princetonupress.bsky.social: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lucky_issar_...
October 24, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"He does not do legitimation. He takes license. He takes license based on his personal exceptionalism: 'Only I can do it.' Trump is the law."

From our new issue, read Brian Massumi's "Some Points about Contemporary Fascism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 21, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"What grammars of interaction guide our daily behavior? Who set these rules, how do they become visible, and what are the costs of defection?"

From our new issue, read Wendy Anne Lee's "Hate, Consent, Play": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM
"He does not do legitimation. He takes license. He takes license based on his personal exceptionalism: 'Only I can do it.' Trump is the law."

From our new issue, read Brian Massumi's "Some Points about Contemporary Fascism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 21, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"What distinguishes Suther’s Hegel is how embodied this most absolute of German Idealisms appears: rational and conceptual all the way down—yet thoroughly biological."

New in review, Christopher Gortmaker on Jensen Suther's True Materialism: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/christopher_...
October 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Why, however, must visual reality correspond to actually existing and physically embodied entities and materials?"

From our new issue, read Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan's "The Navigable Image": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 14, 2025 at 12:01 AM
"What grammars of interaction guide our daily behavior? Who set these rules, how do they become visible, and what are the costs of defection?"

From our new issue, read Wendy Anne Lee's "Hate, Consent, Play": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM
"What distinguishes Suther’s Hegel is how embodied this most absolute of German Idealisms appears: rational and conceptual all the way down—yet thoroughly biological."

New in review, Christopher Gortmaker on Jensen Suther's True Materialism: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/christopher_...
October 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"He . . . gained his corporate experience with plantation business predicated upon expropriation of inhabited American lands"
From our new issue, Jennifer Rae Greeson's "Thomas Hobbes, the Virginia Company, and the Invention of Corporate Sovereignty": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 10, 2025 at 11:37 PM
"Why, however, must visual reality correspond to actually existing and physically embodied entities and materials?"

From our new issue, read Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan's "The Navigable Image": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 14, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"As Holland points out in his impressive excavation of the archives, Derrida did not want to sacrifice or stain his own experience as a cinematic spectator."

New in review, Erin Graff Zivin on Timothy Holland's The Traces of Jacques Derrida’s Cinema: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/erin_graff_z...
October 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
"He . . . gained his corporate experience with plantation business predicated upon expropriation of inhabited American lands"
From our new issue, Jennifer Rae Greeson's "Thomas Hobbes, the Virginia Company, and the Invention of Corporate Sovereignty": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 10, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Cavendish espouses a materialist universe but habitually ponders, hypothesizes, and imagines how individual creatures might escape finite embodiment."

From our new issue, read Anne M. Thell's "'I Am Restless to Live, As Nature Doth'": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM
"As Holland points out in his impressive excavation of the archives, Derrida did not want to sacrifice or stain his own experience as a cinematic spectator."

New in review, Erin Graff Zivin on Timothy Holland's The Traces of Jacques Derrida’s Cinema: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/erin_graff_z...
October 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Jacobson promotes an unsettled perspective on the relationship between the film text and its mode of production."

New in review, Parker Stenseth on Brian Jacobson's The Cinema of Extractions, from @columbiaup.bsky.social: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/parker_stens...
October 3, 2025 at 9:54 PM
"Cavendish espouses a materialist universe but habitually ponders, hypothesizes, and imagines how individual creatures might escape finite embodiment."

From our new issue, read Anne M. Thell's "'I Am Restless to Live, As Nature Doth'": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
October 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM