April 22, 2026 · 1:38 PM

giving form to modernity

Did the style of modern painting emerge to celebrate the wonders of nineteenth century Paris, or to critique industrial urbanization, consumer culture, and false gods of progress? If Modernism was this duality, what would leaving it for another paradigm of artistic production require?

Join InterCcECT for a reading session on TJ Clark’s classic work The Painting of Modern Life, along with his updated short essay “The Painting of Postmodern Life.” Along the way we’ll take stock of Chicago’s contemporary urban aesthetic opportunities by partnering with a new social infrastructure, The Pub – a print-only newspaper anchoring a community third space. Subscribe and submit to print; check out their events page for a range of good things!

Wednesday 27 May 4pm

The Pub 2150 W Armitage Ave (Blue Line: Western)

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDFs. (We’re using the Revised Second Edition; read the Preface, Introduction, and Chapter One.)

now welcoming summer proposals! on our calendar:

InterCcECT on Lacan’s Seminar 4, with special guest Professor Chris Breu, 29 June

Alyssa Battistoni 4 May, U Chicago 3CT, 4pm

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March 19, 2026 · 12:36 PM

what is an imaginary?

“Imaginary” has become a ubiquitous noun in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades. Even the law professors are in on the lingo. What is signified by the substantive, what kind of analysis does it enable, what kind of ideologies might it encode? A new essay by Yves Winter, “What is an Imaginary?” schematizes these questions.

Join us for discussion – and come ready to propose summer theory ambitions!

Tuesday 14 April, 4pm Lincoln Park Public Library “study room” 1150 W Fullerton Red, Brown, Purple Lines: Fullerton (The library has a parking lot.)

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF

on our calendar: InterCcECT seminar on Lacan’s Seminar 4, with special guest Professor Chris Breu, 29 June “Lenin With Du Bois: Theorizing the Revolutionary Counter-Mood” Jonathan Flatley, 15 April UIC English (2028 University Hall), 3pm “Free Gifts” Alyssa Battistoni 4 May, U Chicago 3CT, 4pm

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February 16, 2026 · 12:42 PM

aesthetics of an antiaesthetic age

In collaboration with the new Chicago branch of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, InterCcECT welcomes you to a moderated discussion on immoderate SLOP.

From the bulldozing of the White House to the rise of ICE Barbie, the visual regime of contemporary American fascism merges violent delight in destruction with nouveau riche vulgarity, middle class mediocrity, and internet meme culture. Despite incessant callbacks to the 1930s and continued deployment of classic fascist themes, contemporary fascism distinguishes itself from its historical predecessors by its speed, virulence, sites of production, and mode of distribution. Hyper-capitalized, decentralized, and algorithmically determined, the big beautiful slop machine and its army of broligarchs, podcasters, tradwife influencers, and internet trolls are rewriting the fascist rulebook, rewiring the libidinal economy of the present, and stacking the deck for capital.

How does the aesthetic regime of contemporary fascism function? What marks the specificity of fascism 2.0 and what does it reveal about the transformations of American and global political life in the age of polycrisis? How does the technical apparatus of postmodern capitalism influence the production, circulation, and consumption of fascist aesthetics? And what, under these conditions, would it mean to resist by “politicizing aesthetics” as Walter Benjamin once enjoined us to?

Anna Kornbluh and Kate Wagner, moderated by BISR Chicago faculty Audrey Nicolaides.

Join us Saturday 28 February, 3-5pm

Twelve Ten Gallery
1104 West Thorndale Avenue
Chicago, IL 60660

This event is co-presented by the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and Twelve Ten Gallery and is free to attend. $10 suggested donation. Complimentary refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP.

ON OUR CALENDAR:

(with apologies for the unfortunate unusual winter gap, and in anticipation of more InterCcECT mainline events in spring)

16 Feb Extraction: Thea Riofrancos in conversation with Gabe Winant

19 Feb Performing Chance: The Art of Alison Knowles

15 April Lenin with DuBois: Theorizing A Revolutionary Countermood

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November 2, 2025 · 7:25 PM

Serfs Up

Is too-late capitalism evolving a new mode of production? A new mode of accumulation? Or just a new political and ideological dispensation of the main forces and relations that have defined modernity? InterCcECT is thrilled to host very special guest Professor Matt Seybold, Director of the Center for Mark Twain Studies and host of The American Vandal , for a miniseminar reckoning with the surging neofeudalism hypothesis.

We’ll read excerpts from Jodi Dean’s Capital’s Grave; Yannis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism, and Seybold’s incisive essays “Against Technofeudal Education” and “The Technofeudal Text.”

Join us Wednesday 3 December, 5:30pm at UIC (University Hall, 601 S Morgan, 20th floor, Room 2028). RSVP for PDFs.

While in Chicago Dr. Seybold will also participate in Theory at the Bargaining Table, a conversation with Professor Dominique Baker and the Committee on Political Education of UIC United Faculty, about how to strategize faculty power in technofeudal times. Thursday 4 December, 3pm, UIC Daley Library room 1-470.

on our Chicago calendar:

Strangers to Ourselves: An Introduction to Freud

Power and Personality in Contemporary Capitalism

Authoritarian Imaginaries

Language Machines

got theory winter goals, theory new year’s resolutions? contact us to propose events!

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September 26, 2025 · 1:34 PM

What’s Funny About Student Debt?

For only the second time in our fourteen years, InterCcECT hosts an event centered on the novel’s unique faculty for theorizing capitalism. The Payback is a comic critique of contemporary life, a red-hot indictment of offloading social maintenance costs onto individual students, and a rousing entry in the heist genre canon.

The Payback

InterCcECT is extremely excited to welcome novelist Kashana Cauley to Chicago, courtesy of the UIC English Department and the UIC Institute for the Humanities, as well as Simon&Schuster. She’ll be in conversation with bona fide scholar of heists Anna Kornbluh, and fellow in The Debt Collective, Professor Jason Wozniak. We’ll read the novel alongside selections from Dr. Wozniak’s co-authored book Lend and Rule: Fighting the Shadow Financialization of Public Universities.

Join us Wednesday 29 October, 4pm, at the Institute, 1007 W Harrison Street (Blue Line: UIC).

Free copies of the novel are available to UIC students via the English Major Club. Signed copies will be for sale on site thanks to Madison St Books.

For the Lend and Rule reading, contact us.

As always, InterCcECT is an open circle welcoming proposals for events. Miniseminar? Work-in-Progress? Field Trip? Book Tour in Chicago? Get in touch!

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August 19, 2025 · 10:35 PM

dialectics do not rest

Even after a long, intense, Hot Adorno Summer, we still can’t let go. Hang on to Hegel with a session on Adorno’s Three Studies. We’ll tackle the third study, Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel, for Thursday September 25th, at 4pm. Lincoln Park Public Library Large Meeting Room (1150 W Fullerton Ave).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF.

The year’s slate is open! As theory nerds confront back-to-school, be in touch with proposals for events. InterCcECT hosts mini-seminars, field trips, book talks, works-in-progress sessions, and reading groups, as well as hitherto unimagined formats. Contact us to propose events.

On our calendar:

Oct 29: What’s Funny About Student Debt? A conversation with novelist Kashana Cauley about her excellent new book The Payback, with Anna Kornbluh and Jason Wozniak of The Debt Collective

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August 1, 2025 · 1:03 PM

Hot Adorno Summer cools down

It’s been a long hot humid haul, and the cool kids triumphantly conclude on Wednesday, 13 August, 4pm, in full festivity at Moody’s. Finish the book!

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or to launch fall projects.

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July 18, 2025 · 1:32 PM

Hot Adorno Summer sweatin’ to the oldies

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the penultimate session on Adorno (reading Part Three, Section 2 — “World-Spirit and Natural History”), Thursday, 31 July, 4pm, at Moody’s again (libraries full alas).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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July 2, 2025 · 5:48 PM

Hot Adorno Summer sweats it out

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Structure of the Third Antinomy through the end), Wednesday, 16 July, 4pm, Chicago Public Library Lincoln Park location (our old standby, but in the “small meeting room” this time).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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June 19, 2025 · 3:12 PM

Hot Adorno Summer endures

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Models but just through “Contemplation” ), Tuesday, 1 July, 4pm, Moody’s Pub, 5910 N Broadway. (NOTE this is not a library session due to unavailability all over, but Moody’s tends to be quiet outdoors.)

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

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