Catechism for Revolutionary Philosophy

Instructor: Reza Negarestani Date & Time: November 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, December 6th, 13th, 20th, January 10th 10:00-12:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: In this Eight-Session Seminar, we shall entertain a profound puzzle, not only regarding the nature of time but also concerning radical constitutional transformation and revolutionary subjectivity—that is, the crisis of social and political leadership in the contemporary West. This represents an infinite dilemma, a forking blade, a criterion raised against the vagaries of the Self/Subjectivity and the oppressions of those who have succumbed to these vagaries throughout history. This culminates in the rise of the contemporary Western political landscape, echoing a bygone colonialism, a Europe that, even before fulfilling its dream to annex the globe, was already conquered by forces of the other.

The central puzzle we will address is this: Which came first, the decentralized society or the crisis of transformative leadership? This Seminar does not indulge in approaches originating from either the canonical left or the right. The primary focus is to construct and hone a framework, a blueprint for a leader, a revolutionary subject, an open-source self that can unite and mobilize without succumbing to the pathologies of selfhood and the forms of collectivity built upon. These pathologies include not only messianic or effective altruist pretensions but also those born of individual and social traumas. Hysterias post-leadership crises won’t help us much.

The aim of this Seminar is to casually formulate a set of criteria for a leader, a true philosophical human being, who can be an open-source, democratically constructible, and fully reflective self—a self that may consist of no one but nevertheless stands up to the end of its life and its time. In other words, this is leadership as the mobilization of time-infinite practical reasons: leadership as the way of galvanizing self-determination and the progression of all humankind, leadership that has never been so rare to emerge and never so in dire need.

Such philosophical human beings, these potential leaders, signify what it is to adopt a set of practical reasonings and indeed a concrete self-consciousness that does not bottom out in the here and now—i.e., a movement that does not die down before the next generations join it. Hence, the catechism here is only a set of bracketing questions regarding the nature of who is a true leader and who is hysterically over- or neo-reactionary concerning the possibilities of leadership, the possibility of leadership notwithstanding. In other words, the open nature of leadership is that which challenges both the well-worn orthodoxies advanced in the name of oppression and exaggerations about a messianic AI-god yet to come.

Accordingly, in each Session, we will work in the spirit of critique, research, and lab work on particular leaders or revolutionary philosophical human beings, mainly originating from Iranian history. These names are mere prototypes—with shortcomings of their own—to be synthesized and reconstructed with care and criticism by all participants according to their specific contexts of social and historical consciousness, background, and struggle: Ali Mohammad Shirazi (Baab), Tahereh Qurrat al-Ayn, Mirza Kuchak Khan, Yeprem Khan and his daughter, Astghik, Bijan Jazani, Ali Shariati, Akbar Goodarzi, and Meena Keshwar Kamal. 

IMAGE: Jen Aitken, Siah Armajani, 2020.

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