“I Love You” (in Theory)

Blake Smith

“I love you!” Barthes said really means “Love me!”

The Living Faith of the Dead

Kyle Edward Williams

Tradition is stalked by the uncertain possibility of either faithfulness or infidelity, handing down or handing over.

The Monster Discloses Himself

Phil Christman

There is a world within the world, and that world is not, as it is for the Marxist, a metaphor. It’s where the lizard people meet.

From Frankfurt to Fox

Malloy Owen

There is the looming sense that critical theory is somehow near the center of the crisis of our time.

Current Issue Current Issue: By Theory Possessed

By Theory Possessed

How can we meet the bewitchments of theory?


Of Continuing Interest

A selection of articles from the archives

The Cinema of Inadvertence, or Why I Like Bad Movies

Phil Christman

We bad-movie watchers have our own anticriteria, the sorts of badness we prefer.

Learning from Plants

Amy Wright

Michael Marder approaches question of ethics and ontology through a reflection on plant life, hoping to move metaphysics beyond the bounds of the human toward what he calls “vegetal existentiality.” 

The Relatability Paradox

Phoebe Maltz Bovy

What could be more relatable than for your work life and private life to have merged into one?

Escaping the Matrix

Wilfred M. McClay

Membership without inquiry is bland and unthinking traditionalism; inquiry without membership is little more than captiousness or kibitzing.