Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Hannah Arendt Center, and Human Rights Project Present

Arendtian Praxis in Gay Politics

Hannah Arendt may seem an unlikely inspiration for gay liberation. But her star student at the University of Chicago, Michael Denneny (1943-2023), took from his decade of study with her a set of concepts that he would put into what he called “Arendtian praxis.” As he founded a series of pioneering institutions of the gay press in the 1970s and 80s, publishing and promoting writers like Andrew Holleran, Edmund White, and Larry Kramer, Denneny defined (in conversation with such friends as Michel Foucault and Richard Sennett) a vision of gay politics separated from the frameworks of the New Left. Denneny explained his work, and sought to reorient gay politics, in terms of Arendt’s ideas of “world,” “judgment” and “taste” (the subject of his unfinished PhD dissertation under her supervision). In doing so, he also reinterpreted these ideas in ways that subtly critiqued Arendt’s engagement with Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Directing readers back from her lectures on Kant to what he saw as more generative texts such as “The Crisis in Culture,” Denneny argued that Arendt offered crucial lessons for the revival of political freedom amid the collapse of “truth.” 

Blake Smith is a historian, essayist and translator. Formerly a fellow at the University of Chicago and European University Institute, he is a regular contributor to publications such as Foreign Policy, American Affairs, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The event is also co-sponsored by Out@Bard. Free and open to the public.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822.

Time: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 201

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