Thesis Eleven wishes a very warm happy birthday to Ágnes Heller on the occasion of her 90th birthday today.

Ágnes has lived through much of the Twentieth Century and continues to live well into the Twenty-first. She has experienced the worst of modernity but stayed focused on its best. Her intellectual contribution provides us with many warnings but also with much hope. It is a gift that we receive with gratitude and responsibility.

Her generosity played a important role in encouraging and supporting the creation of Thesis Eleven almost 40 years ago and continues to provide us with friendship and intellectual sustenance until today. Thesis Eleven is proud to have contributed to a small chapter of Ágnes’s life.

Today we share a toast with Ágnes in gratitude and celebration of her admirable contributions and generous life. Happy birthday, Ágnes!

In celebration of her 90 years and Thesis Eleven’s 40 years we will be welcoming Ágnes back to Australia in November this year.

[Update: Due to Ágnes’s recent death, events this coming November will be reworked into a celebration and memorial of her life and work]

She will join us for a series of events organised by Thesis Eleven to be held in Melbourne and in Sydney. We will have an opportunity to reflect on this relationship, the Australian sojourn of the Budapest School and to continue conversations begun at the 2018 Conference on Eastern European Critical Theory at Sichuan University.

We look forward to sharing more details of these events soon.