The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s China Initiative
The Telos circle falls outside many conventional intellectual categories. During the Cold War, this quality enabled us to form a bridge between Eastern Europe and the Anglosphere. We fostered work by Soviet-bloc intellectuals, helping Western readers understand the ideological dynamics at play behind the Iron Curtain; we supported a wide variety of dissidents in their opposition to bureaucratic centralization, as we have likewise for opponents of bureaucratic centralization and fascist tendencies in the West; and we brokered an encounter between Marxism and phenomenology that was central to opposing the Soviet state—while also influencing critical thinkers in the liberal democratic world. Much of that bridge was built through translation work, which laid the basis for our esteemed translation fund.
We believe that the future of TPPI now lies in a parallel engagement with China, to which we have given steadily increasing focus for the past ten years in our annual conferences. These meetings have laid the basis for seven special issues of the journal Telos entirely or significantly engaged with China, as well as numerous individual articles in the field. We now seek to become a key bridge for a mutually regarding, critical discussion of social and political theory between China and the West, well beyond the circles of East Asia specialists. The Telos China Initiative will include a wide variety of programs to be developed over a five-year period beginning in 2024.
Conference
The 2025 annual Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference in New York will be organized around the theme of "China Keywords," which we have already begun exploring in our monthly webinar series. Click here for more details about the conference, the call for papers, and the submissions guidelines. The conference will be held on March 21–22, 2025.
Webinars
China Keywords: A TPPI Webinar Series
Each webinar in the “China Keywords” webinar series will introduce and explore a single concept essential for understanding contemporary Chinese social and political theory. The series will illuminate these concepts with an eye toward non-specialists in the West, while also addressing deep contestations of interest to experts in the field. The webinars will take place monthly, on the third Thursday of every month. Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on upcoming webinars and other TPPI events.
Webinar 1: Tianxia
With Ban Wang and Ian Buruma
Moderated by Eric Hendriks
March 21, 2024
With Yan Xuetong
Moderated by Eric Hendriks and Logan West
April 18, 2024 Webinar 3: The Greeks
With Shadi Bartsch
Moderated by Eric Hendriks
May 16, 2024 Webinar 4: River Elegy, 河殇
With David Moser
Moderated by Eric Hendriks
July 18, 2024 Webinar 5: Information Sovereignty (xìnxī zhǔquán, 信息主权)
With Johannes Thumfart and Mark D. Stahlman
Moderated by Eric Hendriks
November 18, 2024
Register here!