Astra Taylor's Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions [5-week Reading Group, $150 suggested]

Instructor: Madden | Thursdays July 28-August 25 | 7:30-9:00 PM ET

Astra Taylor is an organizer who is currently pushing the Biden administration to abolish student loan payments, arguing that 10k in cancellation is wildly insufficient, and seeking true transformation of the education system. Taylor is a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors. She’s also a documentary filmmaker, an advisor at the socialist feminist magazine Lux, and the author of essays and books: most recently, Remake the World: Reflections and Rebellions (2021).

Taylor has a knack for combining journalism with theory. Remake the World is characterized by both breadth and depth of analysis, but her work is also very accessible. She says, “I think we need to have discipline, we need to have strategy, we need to have a deep critique of capitalism, but that doesn’t mean we are just telling people ‘these are your marching orders.’” Her work “brings people along on the intellectual journey,” so they can find their own relationship to organizing and activism. In this group, we’ll use Taylor as a guide to talk about education, organizing, debt, democracy, climate catastrophe, automation, technology, capitalism, socialism, etymology, and listening as a political act!

During our class meetings, we will also watch short excerpts from 3 of Taylor's films: Examined Life: Philosophy in the Streets (2010), What is Democracy? (2019), and You Are Not a Loan (2021).

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