This course centres on two of the most important analyses of capitalism recently published: Mladen Dolar’s Rumors (2025) and Alenka Zupančič’s Disavowal (2024).

 

Both books probe the roots of our contemporary catastrophe: the relation between recurrent crises of war, genocide, economic inequality, ecological devastation; the ‘rumorization of society’, the proliferation of ‘fake news’ on the internet and social media; the relativization of facts/truth in ‘postmodern’ political, academic, artistic, and everyday discourse; and, in reaction, the proliferation of conspiracy theories amongst upsurging populist movements across the world.

 

We’ll carefully unpack Dolar’s and Zupančič’s arguments with supplementary readings and viewings, with the aim of creating more forceful analytical, artistic, and activist interruptions of the catastrophic present we live.  

About the Professor

Rohit Goel is Director/Professor of the Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR). He is the editor of Future Perfect: Catastrophe and Redemption in the Contemporary (Kaph 2023) and the co-editor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, Politics (Bloomsbury 2019). Rohit has taught courses in critical theory, historiography, and politics at the University of Chicago, Sciences Po Paris, the American University of Beirut, and Jnanapravaha Mumbai. He received the Fulbright IIE and Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) fellowships to pursue years of Arabic language study in Syria and was awarded the Fulbright DDRA and Andrew C. Mellon Fellowship for PhD dissertation research in primary sources in Lebanon. He completed his BA from Harvard College and, as Harvard University’s Paul Williams Fellow to Emmanuel College, was granted an MPhil in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge

Certificate

Students will receive a Certificate of Completion upon successful attendance of a course or a Certificate of Completion and Letter of Evaluation if they successfully attend and complete the final assignment. Those who complete three courses (attendance and writing) in the Theoretical Explorations over two calendar years are eligible for a BICAR Diploma in Theoretical Explorations.

Refund Policy

We will refund your mode of payment — minus a 25% processing fee — if you choose not to take this course after the first session. Or, you can ‘roll over’ your balance to another or future BICAR course without a fee deduction. 

Groups of four or more participants who enrol together will receive a 25% discount.

Register

To register, we can facilitate two modes of payment — either a direct bank transfer to our Indian account or we also have a PayPal link: