Our Sociology Research Forum hosts Professor Gary Genosko (Ontario Tech University) for a talk titled, “How to Read a Journal: Telos and the Formation of Critical Theory in Canada.”
This presentation reflects on a recently completed long-term project about the political philosophy journal Telos, an independently owned and operated major journal on Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School. The task was to devise a mixed methodology that would guide the investigation of the editorial organization and activities of the city-based editorial “groups”, the role of translations, short book and journal reviews, conferences, and the crucial role played by graduate students in the production of the journal from its outset in 1968 into the 1970s before its turn to the Right in the 1980s. For instance, how does a group like Toronto Telos, which has a clear “vocation” in the writing of a lengthy section called Short Journal Reviews, work out its internal relations? The task, then, was to examine the relative degrees of openness and fluidity of the journal’s organizational structures, identifying impasses as well as means of opening ‘blinkers’ either by means of commands from above, or by pressures from below. To do so, intellectual networks were examined through long interviews with former Telosians.
More about Professor Gary Genosko:
Professor Gary Genosko received his PhD in Social & Political Thought from York University in 1992 and is currently Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University in Toronto, and a former Canada Research Chair in Technoculture. His most recent books include, (with Kristina Marcellus), Back Issues: The Formation of Critical and Cultural Theory in Canada; The Reinvention of Social Practices: Essays on Félix Guattari; and Critical Semiotics: Theory, from Information to Affect.