Critical Inquiry

"These two tendencies—the classificatory gaze and the resistance to classification—are not neatly opposed. This makes the 1600s particularly interesting as an example of these two competing tendencies pulling in different directions, particularly as the tension is plainly visible within the organization of floral still lifes."

From our new issue, read Tung-Hui Hu's "Grids and Bags: Two Ways to Summarize People": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/742475

"A hybrid subjectivity is emerging on the horizon of the twenty-first century." Read Franco “Bifo” Berardi's "The Bitter Cup" on the CI blog.

https://critinq.wordpress.com/2026/09/03/the-bitter-cup-notes-about-artificial-intelligence-and-natural-stupidity/

"Magarik argues persuasively that, far from disclaiming fictionality in the Bible, Protestant commentators saw unreliable narration as central to spiritual accommodation, in which the fallible perspectives of prophets such as Moses mediated biblical truth in a form intelligible to human readers."

New in review, Eve Houghton on Raphael Magarik's Fictions of God: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/eve_houghton_reviews_fictions_of_god/

Autumn issue is out now!

Featuring essays by Violet Spurlock, Tung-Hui Hu, Jessica Sherrill, Grace Lavery, Garrett Stewart, George Baker, Martha Schwendener, and Vilém Flusser

Critical Inquiry A journal of Art, Culture and Politics, Published by the University of Chicago

"This essay argues that the cultural logic that connects obviousness, tacit knowledge, and intellectual property extends far beyond the delimited realm of modern patent law and that literary criticism has reproduced a similar conceptual nexus in constructing informal, extralegal forms of intellectual property for certain distinctive authors whose ideas, styles, and methods purportedly represent more than 'ordinary creativity.'"

From our new issue, read Violet Spurlock's "An Anatomy of Obviousness": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/742478

"Fascism begins in the desire that the unwanted other not be, that the self might get to choose with whom it is in social relation, and it is this desire that underwrites everything from the pyre made from Magnus Hirschfeld’s research, flawed as it was, to the cancellation of Bud Light for having a trans spokesperson to the ashen ground of Auschwitz."

From our new issue, read Emily McAvan's "Off the Clock": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/741136

"Crucially, estrangement and distance are here not conceived as the opposites of empathy but as among its constitutive conditions: it is through aesthetic mediation that spectators and readers are able to engage empathically with deeply disturbing figures such as Medea, Macbeth, or Humbert Humbert."

New in review, Fredrik Renard on Stefano Ercolino and Massimo Fusillo's Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/fredrik_renard_reviews_negative_empathy_in_literature_and_the_arts/

"What I will call ongoingness is a practice of time, in time, with the emphasis on affirmation, on repeating and extending the present. It's the power to affirm what’s living. It’s what, in q***r life around here, we call the carry. Hold something, hold yourself, and get it from here to there, with some flourish, some style, some expression of the body’s capacity to keep, and keep on."

From our new issue, read McKenzie Wark's "Miss Destiny" - Critical Response to Emily McAvan's “Theses on the Future History of Trans People”: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/741138

"If historic progression through generations has transformed the Zionist settlers into Israeli nationals and rendered Palestinians unrecognizable among and unto themselves in the various contexts of displacement, how then might we envision a liberated Palestinian nation when the homeland no longer houses the notion of home for generations of Palestinians who grew up in displacement?"

From our new issue, read Maurice Ebileeni's "Digital Palestine and the National Imagination": https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/741164

"Affect theory came packaged in its own dense stylistics, which Downing gently mocks in pleasurably crisp prose. Under the auspices of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, difficult-to-follow allusions to flows and forces became a hallmark; Sedgwick’s influence produced writing so impressionistic—titles like 'An Inventory of Shimmers' headed position statements—that no one knew what claims were being made."

New in review, Laura Kipnis on Lisa Downing's Against Affect: https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/laura_kipnis_reviews_against_affect/