Critical Inquiry

"Over the past two centuries it has become the predominant narrative mechanism by and through which we determine our affective and intellectual relations to others, both fictional and real." From our new issue, read Loren Glass's "Close Third": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/73…

Spring issue has arrived! Read new work by Loren Glass, Mercedes Bunz, Alexandre Gefen, Lawrence Venuti, Maxwell Gontarek, Emily McAvan, James I. Porter, and Boris Maslov. criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/past_issues/is…

"Lebovic offers a compelling account of temporality as the shared substrate of living existence from which we might assemble alternative grounds for politics." New in review, Tsiona Lida on Nitzan Lebovic's Homo Temporalis: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/tsiona_lida_re…

"This articulation of saint and nation, I would argue, began at the very end of the nineteenth century with the Cuban war of independence against Spain and the Americans." From our Spring 2009 issue, read Marc Blanchard's "From Cuba with Saints": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"In an era of ecological crisis, his patient efforts to reconstruct the dialectic of Enlightenment naturalism offer vital resources for reimagining our place in the web of life." Alex Betancourt on Richard J. Bernstein's The Vicissitudes of Nature: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/alex_betancour…

@readalanread @KingsCollegeLon Thanks for your interest in Flusser translation. It was published in 2005.

Wonderful to read this essay but Flusser has surely enjoyed more than ‘scant attention’ as it suggests. The Flusser Archive in Berlin, the glorious ‘Flusseriana’, the Flusser Club, & our previous monarch’s high-regard at the opening of the Performance Foundation @KingsCollegeLon

"The houses and squares of Cologne, the cathedral are seen as surface phenomena, as congealed, materialized masks, as a kind of archaeological kitchen trash." From our Winter 2005 issue, read Vilém Flusser's "The City as Wave‐Trough in the Image‐Flood": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Every book I've written or every project I've undertaken – they have all started, unselfconsciously, from a sense of loss." Read Dipesh Chakrabarty's interview by Melanie Sehgal and Martin Mulsow. Now on the CI blog. critinq.wordpress.com/2026/03/06/a-m…

"Although both multistable images . . . are ambiguous, they seem to observe the gestalt principle of exclusive allocation: it is impossible to see both images at once." From Winter 2008, read Ingrid Monson's "Hearing, Seeing, and Perceptual Agency: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"The first chapter, on Bosch, is not only the longest but the beating heart of the book, pumping agonistic blood into the whole." New in review, Andrei Pop on Joseph Leo Koerner's Art in a State of Siege: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/andrei_pop_rev…

"Abstraction is a metaphor, not a style; the connection of one abstract work to another is by family resemblance, in Wittgenstein's sense." From our Spring 2013 issue, read Charles Bernstein's "Disfiguring Abstraction": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Panofsky's worry about Heidegger is a concern about the risks of what he interprets as an underlying lack of interest in constraints." From our Spring 2012 issue, read Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz's "The Genesis of Iconology": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Joyce Suechun Cheng discovers the movement’s iconography of 'masks,' which act as a kind of carapace, alternately protecting and disclosing the surrealist subject." New in review, Jacob Stewart-Halevy on Joyce Suechun Cheng's The Persistence of Masks: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jacob_stewart_…

Spring 2026 issue is coming soon!

"The suicide weapon can be ruthless and terrifying. It can be callously exploited by older men who have no intention of doing the killing themselves. It can be used by anyone, anywhere." From our Autumn 2008 issue, read Ian Hacking's "The Suicide Weapon": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…