Critical Theory and the New Right
Join the Institute for Public Knowledge and the Global New Right Working Group for a lecture by Matthew Handelman, with an introduction by Leif Weatherby, on November 2nd at 5:30 pm. This event will be in a hybrid format. The Zoom link can be found here.
Matthew Handelman is an Associate Professor of German and a member of the Core Faculty in the Digital Humanities at MSU. His research interests include German-Jewish literature and philosophy in the early twentieth century, the intersections of science, mathematics and culture in German-speaking countries, as well as the digital humanities and the history of technology. His first book, The Mathematical Imagination: On the Origin and Promise of Critical Theory appeared with Fordham University Press in 2019. It explores the underdeveloped possibilities of mathematics for critical theory, focusing on how mathematics helped Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer navigate the intellectual crises facing German Jews during the Weimar Republic. He is currently working on a second book about the concept of technology in the Frankfurt School. Matthew has published on these topics, as well as others, in international journals such as Critical Inquiry, Monatshefte, The Germanic Review, Scientia Poetica and The Leo Baeck Yearbook.
Leif Weatherby‘s research focuses on digital technology, political economy, and German Romanticism and Idealism. Trained as a comparatist, he is particularly interested in theories of technology that involve both its economic and meaning-making dimensions. His book, Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx (Fordham, 2016) argues that Romanticism developed a philosophy of technology centered on the neologism “organ.” His current book project treats the cybernetics movement asphilosophy, and has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt association. He is the founder of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU. At the IPK, he co-organizes the Working Group on the Global New Right with Maya Vinokour.