CRITICAL THEORY: THE MONTREAL REVIEW SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM EDITION

Critical Theory Now: A Special Edition of The Montréal ReviewGuest-edited by Martin ShusterFor a century, critical theory has been a contested inheritance - claimed, disputed, and increasingly cast as a bogeyman by the regressive forces it was built to diagnose. In the United States today, it is routinely invoked as shorthand for everything the resurgent forces of authoritarianism and fascism claim to oppose.This special edition of The Montréal Review gathers a set of essays that take critical theory seriously as a living practice rather than a settled doctrine. Some pieces confront the crises of the moment head-on: the rise of neo-fascism and authoritarianism, the persistence of settler colonialism. Others turn a critical eye on subjects that seem merely ordinary - teaching, artificial intelligence, contemporary subjectivity, borders - and find in them the same stakes.What unites the collection is not a shared doctrine, and not even a shared form - several essays are formally experimental. It is a shared orientation toward the present: to understand the world as it actually is, and in that same act, to open it toward change - toward more fruitful, more just ways of organizing the world and our life within it.