Roots and rugs: a postcard from Mexico

by Alonso Casanueva Baptista

Each rug is crafted by a single artisan who works on the loom for weeks or months, eight hours a day, every day. Dalila seemed particularly happy about this fact, underscoring how her sense of autonomy and creativity in composing the theme, motifs, colour scheme… would make up the final creation, one that cannot be replicated. Whether the design follows traditional rule or adapts to a recent trend, it is the artisan who will pour their personal inspiration onto the loom.

Paths to Nowhere: An Interview with Raymond Geuss about Tracks in Chaos

by Howard Prosser

Raymond Geuss’ latest book, Tracks in Chaos: Philosophical Orientation and Political Reflection, published by Polity in 2026, provides the basis for the present interview. Bringing together a set of essays on philosophy, politics and social theory, the book returns to problems that have long animated Geuss’s work: orientation, critique, authority, morality and political judgement.

Brisbanity: David Malouf’s Topography of the Mind

by Peter Murphy

Malouf grew up in Brisbane and identified deeply with the city. In his collection of essays, The First Place (2014), Malouf paints a remarkable picture of Australia … He points to the distinct differences in topography between Australian cities, and he makes the interesting claim that the hilly features of Brisbane and its meandering river shape, in some elemental way, a distinctive manner of thinking about the world.

Essay: Everlasting Inscription (铭刻未央)

by Darren Jorgensen and Tami Xiang

Wang Qingsong’s monumental photography unveils the deep structures of Chinese history and society. The title of the first survey of Wang’s work in Australia, exhibited at the Cullity Gallery in the School of Design at the University of Western Australia, is Everlasting Inscription. It attempts to describe Wang’s resistance to the forgetting of Chinese history, while illuminating the structural legacies by which life in China assumes its collective shape.

Call for Papers: International Conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe – Social Modernization and Cultural Modernity

The International Conference on Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe will be held during November, 2026 in Chengdu, China. This will be an opportunity for the presentation of new work and research results across a wide variety of Eastern Europe Marxist Critical Theory Studies, to enhance the world-wide field of Marxist critical theories, to share studies of critical theory of Eastern Europe, and to promote the construction of Chinese Marxism and its aesthetics.

Event: Displaced Ecologies – Bauman Memorial Conversations

Thesis Eleven is delighted to share details of the first public event in the inaugural Bauman Memorial Conversations, a new biennial series of public dialogues hosted by the Bauman Institute.

The 2026 Conversations, “Thinking Displacement,” will explore displacement in its human, ecological, and intellectual dimensions. The first conversation will be held online on March 25, 2026.