The Opening of the American Mind: Ten Years of The Point

by The Point, Jon, Anastasia

In a cultural landscape dominated by hot takes and petty polemics, The Point stands for something different. Informed by the conviction that humanistic thinking has relevance for everyday life, the magazine has long maintained a rare space for thoughtful dialogue between a wide range of political views, philosophical perspectives, and personal its contributors include liberals and conservatives, philosophers and activists, Marxists and Catholics, New Yorkers and Midwesterners. A little more than a decade since its founding on the campus of the University of Chicago, it offers a unique and revelatory look at the changing face of America, one that speaks not only to way American minds have been forced to “open” by a decade of trauma and transformation, but also to the challenge of remaining open to our fellow citizens during our deeply divided present.

Featuring award-winning and highly acclaimed essays from The Point ’s first ten years, The Opening of the American Mind traces the path of American intellect from the magazine’s inception in 2009, when Barack Obama was ascending the steps of the White House, to the brink of the 2020 election. The essays, chosen both for the way they capture their time and transcend it, are assembled into five sections that address cycles of cultural frustrations, social movements, and the aftermath of the 2016 election, and provide lively, forward-looking considerations of how we might expand our imaginations into the future. Spanning the era of Obama and Trump, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and renewed attention to reparations, this anthology offers critical reflections on some of the decade’s most influential events and stands as a testament to the significance of open exchange. The intellectual dialogue provided by The Point has never been more urgently needed, and this collection will bring the magazine’s vital work to an even broader readership.

Genres: Essays

363 pages, Paperback

Published November 6, 2020

Reviews

[Jatan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, erudite, and accessible collection of essays! The Point, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is probably one of the most intellectually curious `little' magazines around today. While shoddy, regurgitated (but still maddeningly eloquent) analyses often dominate the ideological mouthpieces of the American left today -- Jacobin, Current Affairs etc. -- this collection is a testament to the consistency with which the Point has enacted the Socratic call for "thinking as an activity that is not the prerogative of the few but an ever-present faculty in everybody" over the past decade.

For a taste, you could start here: https://thepointmag.com/politics/no-s...

[Nat]

I played on an intramural indoor soccer team at the U of C with one of the founding editors of The Point. We named our team The Intentionality All-Stars, after an article by John Haugeland. Our worst defeat was handed to us by the Econ Department team, who had a lot of South American players.

I'm seriously impressed that while we were playing soccer and I was working on my dissertation he and other grad students started a magazine that is still going more than 10 years later. Many of the essays in this collection have something to say about utopianism, and whether it's possible to imagine, let alone create, a world that's organized radically differently than our current one. I think just the fact that a group of grad students decided to start a magazine of ideas and have made it work for a decade is encouraging proof that at least small utopian projects are possible.