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Using Judith Butler’s introduction to their collection of essays on the idea of a “subject” [Senses of the Subject, 2015], this reading group will attempt to think about the tension between one’s environment and one’s individual sense of self. In the mathematics of becoming a person, how much is a question of nature? How much is nurture? And how does one begin to narrate one’s story, as a subject, with a ‘subjectivity’? These questions are posed, keeping in mind the themes that resonate in the Youth Takeover 2023 (and the cohort’s conversations these past few months): about time, place, memory, community and meaning. All of these topics, ultimately, tie into making or attempting to make a sense of one’s self, in relation to one’s context.

The Reading Group is organised and hosted by the Assembly 2022-2023 member Karno Dasgupta as part of the 2023 Youth Takeover.

Pre-registration is needed. Attendees will be contacted prior to the session with the suggested reading material.

Karno Dasgupta is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist from Nepal/India, based in Abu Dhabi. Their practice moves through film, writing and curation. Schooled in performance studies, he intends to examine how aesthetics intersects with public policy, human rights and anthropocene futures. Often in the interstice of proposition and application, pondering an ethical life between the immediacy of the ordinary and the immensity of catastrophe, they hope for their work to have been for good. Along with the Assembly at Jameel Arts Centre, Karno is a divisional research fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi (also his alma mater).