Corey Robin & Eddie Glaude (Brooklyn College) (Princeton University)
on
The Reactionary Mind

Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is “boring,” said the founding father of the American right. “Devoting your life to it,” as conservatives do, “is horrifying if only because it’s so repetitious. It’s like sex.” With this unlikely conversation began Robin’s decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what’s truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them?
For Robin, the answer lies in reaction. His recently reissued The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump argues that “conservatism is a meditation on – and theoretical rendition of – the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.” He will discuss the nature of conservatism and Trump’s relation to its history with Eddie Glaude, author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul.

November 15th / 7:30 P.M.
Brooklyn Public Library 10 Grand Army Plaza 100% free and open to the public