What does it mean to ‘think together’ at a time of increasing social and political divisions? Organized by Jana Bacevic, a member of our editorial board and fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, this event series explores the concept of thinking together in collectives defined by political, ideological, and normative plurality.
Thinking is usually conceived as an activity that happens in or even requires solitude. Yet, we are never truly alone when we think. Thinking relies on political and social infrastructures - institutions, networks, conferences - but also involves other people. At a time when communities are increasingly structured by political divisions, what does thinking together involve? What are its challenges? What would the work of thought look like if we saw it as fundamentally relational, rather than individualistic?
Through digital dialogues focusing on particular contexts and modes of thought - from reading and writing, through law and art - we ask: how can we coexist with others in spaces of thought?
In this opening event for the “How to Think Together” series, we ask how collectives think together, reflecting on thinking together as deliberation. Sonali Chakravarti and Philip Lindsay will discuss forms of ‘thinking together’ in collectives from juries to citizen assemblies, and the lessons and challenges for political futures. How do collectives resolve disagreements? What can this teach us about the nature of thinking?
Sonali Chakravarti is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and the author of Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger after Mass Violence (2014) and Radical Enfranchisement in the Jury Room and Public Life (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Her writing on transitional justice, the emotions, and the jury system have appeared, among other places, in Constellations, the Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities, and Theory & Event. She is currently working on a book about what impartiality means for jurors in light of potential jurors’ greater awareness of racial discrimination in the legal system.
Philip Lindsay leads the Democracy Innovation Hub at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. In 2022, the Hub hosted a three-day workshop, “Citizens’ Assemblies: A Workshop to Revitalize Democracy,” which brought together over 50 public servants, elected officials, and community advocates. In 2023 the hub ran the same workshop with over 120 participants in New York City. These workshops led to the implementation of two deliberative budgeting processes in NYC government, and to an active cross-sector working group that is exploring the potential of assemblies in the city. Philip also co-taught the course “Democratic Innovation and Citizen Lotteries: from Ancient Athens to the French Climate Assembly.”
Jana Bacevic is assistant professor at Durham University, UK, Associate fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College, and member of the editorial board of The Philosopher. Her work is in social theory, philosophy of science, and political economy of knowledge production, with particular emphasis on the relationship between epistemological, moral, and political elements.