For Meeting 1, we will read two pieces that set us up for thinking about "Transformative Action in the Face of Debt." The first is Tristan Bradshaw and Ben Brown's "Critical Antiquities and Radical Readings: Ancient Greek Political Thought with and against Marx." The piece will introduce readers to the ambitions and methods of Critical Antiquities through its examination of Marx's use of ancient thought in his critique of capitalism, especially his conceptualisation of the commodity. The second reading is from the co-authored book, The Asset Economy. There, Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings will help us begin theorising debt in our local and recent context. They argue that recent accounts of social inequalities in the contemporary economy (including Thomas Piketty's in Capital in the Twenty-First Century) have failed to study the policies that have led to the current "asset economy" with debt at its heart. They aim to rectify this and further claim that commodity-based critiques of capitalism have blinded analysts to the current situation. Given Bradshaw and Brown's study of Marx on the commodity, what lessons must be learned here for a Critical Antiquities approach to debt?

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Main Readings:

- Tristan Bradshaw and Ben Brown. Forthcoming. "Critical Antiquities and Radical Readings: Ancient Greek Political Thought with and against Marx." In C. Atack (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Political Thought.

- Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings. 2020. The Asset Economy. Polity: pp. 1-7; 12-32.

Supplementary Readings:

- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V Chapter 5.

- Aristotle, Politics, Book I Chapter 9.

For Meeting 2, we will continue the attempt to theorise and analyse debt in our local and recent context with Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings' book, The Asset Economy. The authors' main concern is to account for the forms of social stratification that are being forged by the current system of debt and asset appreciation. We will read this with a view to understanding the way that the contemporary subject and especially their range of actions is being configured by the political economy of debt. But we will also be looking for the contradictions and other weak points where alternative forms of thinking, acting, and becoming seem possible, even if only barely. This will be a solid grounding for the following weeks where we expand our historical horizon to consider debt and power in early-modernity and pre-modernity. Our hope is we will better see the way that debt operates in the present and also estrange us from those operations, especially in the hope that this manoeuvre can disclose what our own alternative forms of life can look like.

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Main Readings:

- Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings. 2020. The Asset Economy. Polity: pp. 33-79.

Supplementary Readings:

- Susanne Soederberg. 2013. Debtfare States And The Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline And The Surplus Population. Routledge: Introduction and Part 1.

- Maurizio Lazzarato. 2015. Governing by Debt (Volume 17) Semiotext(e): Introduction and Chapter 1.

N.b. Following Meeting 3 we will hold a Q&A session with Melinda Cooper (Sociology, ANU). It will be in AD Hope Conference room, 2pm-3pm.

Having spent two previous meetings thinking about the recent history of debt in relatively local and familiar contexts, in Meeting 3 we will futher historicise debt by studying it in the broader modern and early-modern periods. Our source for doing so will be Tim DiMuzio and Richard Robbins' book, Debt as Power. DiMuzio and Robbins helpfully relate the ways that debt has been deeply impacting human lives and livelihoods in the recent global, not just local, context. Moreover, they seek to theorise debt as power by studying its imbrication in state politics, especially through war and colonialism, in the modern and early-modern periods. One of the virtues of DiMuzio and Robbins' book lies in its desire to consider what can be done in the face of debt as power, a question we will return to with gusto in the Can Assembly.

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Main Readings:

- Tim DiMuzio and Richard Robbins. 2015. Debt as Power. Manchester University Press. Selections.

Supplementary Readings:

- Jacques Le Goff. 1990. Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages.

David Graeber's classic book begins with all of the vibes of a Critical Antiquities approach. Graeber relates that at a garden party he got discussing his activist work that helped bring down the IMF. But pressed to give an answer to the question, "Must one pay one's debts?", Graber delves into the long history of debt to consider its nature, forms, operations, and trajectories over 5000 years. This text has generated new lines of research in Classics and Ancient History, among other fields, especially as scholars consider what affinity may exist between the modern "economy" and ancient social formations. John Weisweiler's recent edited book looms large here. But we may want to take a step back and ask, "Is that the most interesting, important, and pressing way to pursue Graeber's invitation to think about debt?" Or, in other words, What does a Critical Antiquities approach do with Graeber and with the (ancient) history of debt?

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Main Readings:

- David Graeber. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years. Melville House. Selections.

Supplementary Readings:

- Michael Hudson. 1993. "The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations." Research Paper Presented at the Henry George School of Social Science, 1992.

- John Weisweiler. 2023. "The Currency– Slavery– Warfare Complex: David Graeber and the History of Value in Antiquity." In J. Weisweiler (ed.), Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Oxford University Press.