Now that the government of the United States has finally shut down, the time is ripe for some revolutionary ideology. October's Not School activities offer at least two reading groups that should aid in that concern. One is a brand new group which will be reading The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by none other than that superstar philosopher whose nose hairs tickle him oh so much, Slavoj Zizek. And our Marx group who just read the Communist Manifesto during September is still in active discussion mode, so it appears that the group may continue this month as well.
There are also offerings for the less than radical among us as well. The long running Fiction group will within days be wrapping up discussion of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but appears to have chosen for their next book a novel called Kindred by Octavia Butler.
The Philosophers of Technology have decided on a short reading this month: Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology." And though some of us thought it was high time to start reading some Nietzsche, our Intro Readings in Philosophy group has deferred at least another month and is instead starting Volume 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action by Jurgen Habermas, which I'm sure will be great.
And finally, the group I'm most excited personally to be taking part in this month is the Philosophy of Mind group where we'll be starting to tackle the book Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity by Thomas Metzinger, which is quite a tome, but we'll be spreading the reading out over 2 or 3 months.
All these groups are just getting started, so this is a perfect time to become a PEL Citizen and join in on some of these discussions. Hope to see you there!
-Evan Gould
http://douglaslain.net/pop-left-9-iek-dreaming-dangerously/