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.
"Gregory calls into question the idea that 'stable political identities' are necessary to the cohesion of 'identity knowledge' fields such as queer studies."
New in review, Patrick Kindig on Chase Gregory's As If!: Queer Criticism Across Difference: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/patrick_kind...
New in review, Patrick Kindig on Chase Gregory's As If!: Queer Criticism Across Difference: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/patrick_kind...
January 31, 2026 at 12:15 AM
"Gregory calls into question the idea that 'stable political identities' are necessary to the cohesion of 'identity knowledge' fields such as queer studies."
New in review, Patrick Kindig on Chase Gregory's As If!: Queer Criticism Across Difference: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/patrick_kind...
New in review, Patrick Kindig on Chase Gregory's As If!: Queer Criticism Across Difference: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/patrick_kind...
"It is as powerful a statement of the inadequacies of traditional painting to render contemporary experience as this century has yet produced."
From our new issue, read Saul Nelson's "Manet and Neoliberalism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Saul Nelson's "Manet and Neoliberalism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 27, 2026 at 12:08 AM
"It is as powerful a statement of the inadequacies of traditional painting to render contemporary experience as this century has yet produced."
From our new issue, read Saul Nelson's "Manet and Neoliberalism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Saul Nelson's "Manet and Neoliberalism": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Endless first-person writing had the effect of creating . . . the continual hum of mental presence and sensory awareness that would soon be designated as consciousness."
From our new issue, read Esther Yu's "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Esther Yu's "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 24, 2026 at 12:18 AM
"Endless first-person writing had the effect of creating . . . the continual hum of mental presence and sensory awareness that would soon be designated as consciousness."
From our new issue, read Esther Yu's "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Esther Yu's "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"The collection of corporations, startups, and nonprofits that make up the titular complex have captured not only the markets but the means of value transaction."
Cole Sansom on Alessandra Mularoni and Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cybernetic Circulation Complex: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/cole_sansom_...
Cole Sansom on Alessandra Mularoni and Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cybernetic Circulation Complex: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/cole_sansom_...
January 23, 2026 at 12:57 AM
"The collection of corporations, startups, and nonprofits that make up the titular complex have captured not only the markets but the means of value transaction."
Cole Sansom on Alessandra Mularoni and Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cybernetic Circulation Complex: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/cole_sansom_...
Cole Sansom on Alessandra Mularoni and Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cybernetic Circulation Complex: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/cole_sansom_...
"The first efforts to create planetary experiments in the mid-nineteenth century focused on the dynamics of phenomena that themselves encompassed the planet."
Read "The Planetary Experiment" by Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Read "The Planetary Experiment" by Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 20, 2026 at 11:48 PM
"The first efforts to create planetary experiments in the mid-nineteenth century focused on the dynamics of phenomena that themselves encompassed the planet."
Read "The Planetary Experiment" by Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Read "The Planetary Experiment" by Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Both Baker and Crow emphasize the timeliness of a reassessment of Marat for current times. Yet they differ radically as to what that timeliness consists in."
Colin Jones on Jean-Paul Marat by Keith Michael Baker and Thomas Crow's Murder in the Rue Marat: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/colin_jones_...
Colin Jones on Jean-Paul Marat by Keith Michael Baker and Thomas Crow's Murder in the Rue Marat: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/colin_jones_...
January 16, 2026 at 11:23 PM
"Both Baker and Crow emphasize the timeliness of a reassessment of Marat for current times. Yet they differ radically as to what that timeliness consists in."
Colin Jones on Jean-Paul Marat by Keith Michael Baker and Thomas Crow's Murder in the Rue Marat: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/colin_jones_...
Colin Jones on Jean-Paul Marat by Keith Michael Baker and Thomas Crow's Murder in the Rue Marat: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/colin_jones_...
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AI’s better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
January 8, 2026 at 11:59 PM
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AI’s better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 9, 2026 at 11:07 PM
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
Interesting @criticalinquiry.bsky.social piece on the "planetary experiment" from the 19th century Magnetic Crusade through the Trinity test to the 21c digital twin. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 14, 2026 at 7:20 PM
Interesting @criticalinquiry.bsky.social piece on the "planetary experiment" from the 19th century Magnetic Crusade through the Trinity test to the 21c digital twin. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"It is a performance of supremacy (flesh over metal) ready and able to be coined into acts of racial supremacy (white over Black)."
From our new issue, read Christopher Grobe's "Botface": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Christopher Grobe's "Botface": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 13, 2026 at 12:36 AM
"It is a performance of supremacy (flesh over metal) ready and able to be coined into acts of racial supremacy (white over Black)."
From our new issue, read Christopher Grobe's "Botface": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Christopher Grobe's "Botface": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza
Nouri Gana More than three decades ago, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, Douglas Crimp wrote a well-known essay against melancholia and moralism for October, which he edited from 1977 to 1990. I write this brief essay in defense of both melancholia and moralism in the wake of Gaza. Whereas during the AIDS crisis the outpouring of conventional moral rhetoric about homosexuality amounted to the vilification of the victims of the epidemic, a good dose of scrupulous moralizing in the wake of the gruesome Israeli atrocities in Gaza (through worldwide vocal condemnations of genocide as a moral abomination; vowed commitments to the inherent entitlement of every human being to life, liberty and equality as unalienable rights; vociferous denunciations of brazen dehumanization practices as the profoundest expression of moral depravity; and bold demands that any breach of international law by the law of the jungle be subject to criminal prosecution and severe punishment) would go a long way in awakening the hampered or hibernating conscience of regional and world leaders to the justness of the Palestinian cause.
critinq.wordpress.com
January 9, 2026 at 9:26 PM
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 9, 2026 at 11:07 PM
"How did the imaginary transmogrify from an individual into a collective category?"
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our new issue, read Yves Winter's "What Is an Imaginary?": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza
Nouri Gana More than three decades ago, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, Douglas Crimp wrote a well-known essay against melancholia and moralism for October, which he edited from 1977 to 1990. I write this brief essay in defense of both melancholia and moralism in the wake of Gaza. Whereas during the AIDS crisis the outpouring of conventional moral rhetoric about homosexuality amounted to the vilification of the victims of the epidemic, a good dose of scrupulous moralizing in the wake of the gruesome Israeli atrocities in Gaza (through worldwide vocal condemnations of genocide as a moral abomination; vowed commitments to the inherent entitlement of every human being to life, liberty and equality as unalienable rights; vociferous denunciations of brazen dehumanization practices as the profoundest expression of moral depravity; and bold demands that any breach of international law by the law of the jungle be subject to criminal prosecution and severe punishment) would go a long way in awakening the hampered or hibernating conscience of regional and world leaders to the justness of the Palestinian cause.
critinq.wordpress.com
January 9, 2026 at 9:26 PM
"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
For CRITICAL INQUIRY,
I reviewed @leifw.bsky.social’s very important LANGUAGE MACHINES. Also, unless someone tells me different, I’m going to lay claim to the first F bomb in CI’s history.
I reviewed @leifw.bsky.social’s very important LANGUAGE MACHINES. Also, unless someone tells me different, I’m going to lay claim to the first F bomb in CI’s history.
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AI’s better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
January 9, 2026 at 1:55 AM
For CRITICAL INQUIRY,
I reviewed @leifw.bsky.social’s very important LANGUAGE MACHINES. Also, unless someone tells me different, I’m going to lay claim to the first F bomb in CI’s history.
I reviewed @leifw.bsky.social’s very important LANGUAGE MACHINES. Also, unless someone tells me different, I’m going to lay claim to the first F bomb in CI’s history.
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
Winter 2026 issue is here! Featuring essays by Yves Winter, Christopher Grobe, Esther Yu, Saul Nelson, Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, James I. Porter, Michael Dango, and Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
January 8, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Winter 2026 issue is here! Featuring essays by Yves Winter, Christopher Grobe, Esther Yu, Saul Nelson, Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, James I. Porter, Michael Dango, and Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
Join us at the MLA for a roundtable discussion on journal publishing. Led by MLN managing editor
@victoriajane.bsky.social with Laurence Roth, editor of Modern Language Studies and Hank Scotch, managing editor of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social
@modernlanguage.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social
@victoriajane.bsky.social with Laurence Roth, editor of Modern Language Studies and Hank Scotch, managing editor of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social
@modernlanguage.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social
January 7, 2026 at 1:47 PM
Join us at the MLA for a roundtable discussion on journal publishing. Led by MLN managing editor
@victoriajane.bsky.social with Laurence Roth, editor of Modern Language Studies and Hank Scotch, managing editor of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social
@modernlanguage.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social
@victoriajane.bsky.social with Laurence Roth, editor of Modern Language Studies and Hank Scotch, managing editor of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social
@modernlanguage.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AI’s better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
January 8, 2026 at 11:59 PM
"Cultural AI is called out in the subtitle not as a plea to attend to AI’s better half but because culture has been detached from cognition for too long."
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
New in review, Matthew Kirschenbaum on Leif Weatherby's Language Machines: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...
Winter 2026 issue is here! Featuring essays by Yves Winter, Christopher Grobe, Esther Yu, Saul Nelson, Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, James I. Porter, Michael Dango, and Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
January 8, 2026 at 9:59 PM
Winter 2026 issue is here! Featuring essays by Yves Winter, Christopher Grobe, Esther Yu, Saul Nelson, Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld, James I. Porter, Michael Dango, and Robert Mitchell, Orit Halpern, and Henning Schmidgen.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/...
"Heebie‐jeebies also implies a kind of premonition or haunting: the 'apprehension' that intuits an invasive presence. This dis‐ease itself claims the body."
From our Spring 2002 issue, read Brent Hayes Edwards's "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our Spring 2002 issue, read Brent Hayes Edwards's "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
January 6, 2026 at 12:47 AM
"Heebie‐jeebies also implies a kind of premonition or haunting: the 'apprehension' that intuits an invasive presence. This dis‐ease itself claims the body."
From our Spring 2002 issue, read Brent Hayes Edwards's "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From our Spring 2002 issue, read Brent Hayes Edwards's "Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
Looking for a quick holiday read, snuggle up and enjoy Lawrence Buell's glowing review of Amitav Ghosh's Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire and the Environment.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
December 23, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Looking for a quick holiday read, snuggle up and enjoy Lawrence Buell's glowing review of Amitav Ghosh's Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire and the Environment.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"The film rehearses the ways in which capitalism continually offers up examples of sudden rises and falls, of the animation of things and the deanimation of humans."
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
December 20, 2025 at 12:22 AM
"The film rehearses the ways in which capitalism continually offers up examples of sudden rises and falls, of the animation of things and the deanimation of humans."
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Looking for a quick holiday read, snuggle up and enjoy Lawrence Buell's glowing review of Amitav Ghosh's Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire and the Environment.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
December 23, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Looking for a quick holiday read, snuggle up and enjoy Lawrence Buell's glowing review of Amitav Ghosh's Wild Fictions: Essays on Literature, Empire and the Environment.
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lawrence_bue...
Reposted by Critical Inquiry
"No historian that I know of has described with greater precision or sensory detail the lifeworld of communism."
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
December 18, 2025 at 11:52 PM
"No historian that I know of has described with greater precision or sensory detail the lifeworld of communism."
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
"The film rehearses the ways in which capitalism continually offers up examples of sudden rises and falls, of the animation of things and the deanimation of humans."
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
December 20, 2025 at 12:22 AM
"The film rehearses the ways in which capitalism continually offers up examples of sudden rises and falls, of the animation of things and the deanimation of humans."
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
From Winter 2006, read Bill Brown's "Reification, Reanimation, and the American Uncanny": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
"No historian that I know of has described with greater precision or sensory detail the lifeworld of communism."
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
December 18, 2025 at 11:52 PM
"No historian that I know of has described with greater precision or sensory detail the lifeworld of communism."
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...
New in review, Andrew Pendakis reviews Karl Schlögel's The Soviet Century: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrew_penda...