The Best of The Point Magazine

John Guillory’s forthcoming book Professing Criticism will force professors to rethink graduate education and challenge literary scholars to confront the paradoxes inherent to the discipline.

When I was in college, at the end of the last century, the prevailing school of literary interpretation was called “New Historicism.” The foundational assumption …

This is the final column in a four-part series by Helena de Bres on academic philosophy and the meaning of life.

This is part of a series of columns on public philosophy by Agnes Callard; read more here. Racism doesn’t tend to make me angry. You might […]

Time seems to have come to a halt. Ennui builds—and yet, the stillness is rife with threat.

Enter the basement of the Centre des Archives Nationales in Beirut and you’ll immediately notice the large white sacks, overflowing with documents and papers, strewn across the main hall.

This essay appears in issue 29’s tech symposium. To read the rest of the issue when it comes out, subscribe now. Less than a hundred […]

Is decolonization, in its present guises, really so progressive? One of the most ambitious counterarguments is presented by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò in his provocative new book, “Against Decolonisation.”

A few days after my youngest brother died last August, I started to think about Lazarus all the time.

The critical tide is turning, once again. The professional critics—and not just the old, curmudgeonly ones—are fed up with moralizing, and they are willing to […]

It’s not always clear what the average person is after when seeking life guidance from philosophers.

“I can’t account for what kind of encounter someone will have with what I write in turn. All I can do is have a good time telling readers about what I see in a work and hope that it’s interesting…

What’s the difference between education and indoctrination? We have been arguing about this question since the emergence of public schooling in the mid-nineteenth century.

We all responded to the events of 2020 in our own ways. Like many others, I spent large parts of my days searching through news […]