Author presentation and discussion with Jamieson Webster and Evan Calder Williams
Free admission
April 15, 2025, 7pm
172 Classon Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11205
USA
Join us for a presentation by Aaron Schuster on his latest book How to Research Like a Dog: Kafka’s New Science (MIT Press, 2024), followed by a conversation between the author, Jamieson Webster, and Evan Calder Williams.
How to Research Like a Dog proposes a new and surprising inspiration for philosophy today—the canine thinker from Kafka’s story “Investigations of a Dog.” Written toward the end of Kafka’s life, “Investigations of a Dog” is one of the lesser-known and most enigmatic works in the author’s oeuvre. Kafka’s quixotic tale of adventures-in-theory is that of a lone, maladjusted hound who challenges the dogmatism of dog science and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world. Schuster uses the investigative canine as a guide dog to rediscover Kafka’s fictional universe, while taking up the cause of this ingenious, possessed, melancholy, comical, and revolutionary thinker.
The ambition of Kafka’s new science is not to become the Queen but the demon of the sciences, a folisophie (follysophy) as Lacan once quipped. Cutting across philosophy, psychoanalysis, art, and literature, the book envisions what such a new science could be—called by the dog the “science of freedom”—enlisting new comrades in the dog’s struggle.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program [at] e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator that leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.