Over the course of a year, Shifter hosted a series of public discussions, each concentrated on unraveling a keyword – a term that carries with it both a sense of urgency and agency in our present climate. By inviting artists, writers, activists, philosophers and others to propose terms and lead discussions, we opened up our editorial process to the motivations of others. The yearlong series culminates in Shifter’s 22nd issue Dictionary of the Possible. This dictionary catalogs the keywords taken up for discussion over the course of a year, accompanied by a list of questions provoked during each discussion. Rather ...

Shifter’s 13th issue focuses on the importance and impact of this philosopher, who, though unknown, seems to have been one of the most important thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century. Belissop’s thought has been instrumental in changing the entire terrain of intellectual, artistic and activist practice over the past seven decades of her immense production. Her revolutionary work in activist “interventionism,” and her Marxist, materialist commitment never seemed to conflict with her important contribution to experimental poetry. Her philosophical treatises managed to comfortably accommodate both psychoanalysis and neuro-psychology while simultaneously problematizing both disciplines. Her expertise and influence ...

The intimate is one of proximity and familiarity. As a relational category, intimacy is a quality of closeness, attachment, and belongingness. To be intimate with someone or some thing is to have an innermost connection. Intimacy, or intimus, designates interiority or an inward sensation, as in under one’s skin. To intimate is also to communicate with a hint, to imply subtly. This process requires a codified reception, a circle of acknowledgement and recognition. Intimacy not only designates issues pertinent to the discussion of home, sexuality, identity, the slippage between the private and public, but also relationships made out of kinship, ...

In Learning and Unlearning, which began as a series of discussions held from 2017-19, we ask questions about world-making. By unlearning our relationship to the places and temporalities we occupy, can we learn new ways of inhabiting the world? And by reconsidering our relation to work and well-being, can we find new ways to see, feel and understand the world? This recalibration of how we see the world and consequently how we live our lives is the central concern of the artists, educators and thinkers whose writings follow. Unlearning, for us, is not a reactionary opposition to intellectualism and the academy. ...

Most libraries around the world use the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDCS) to list and categorize books. The DDCS is a library classification system developed by Melvil Dewey in 1876. By categorizing items within a library it serves as a tool for people searching for specific knowledge. It was an attempt to organize all knowledge into ten main classes, which are further subdivided into 100 divisions and 1000 sections. This makes the DDCS appear purely numerical and infinitely rational. However, DDCS is regularly revised, reflecting how culture, ideology, and the perception of knowledge change over time. As a result of ...

When Will shot Joan he did not mean to. He wanted to shoot the apple balanced on her head. The cactus wine may have put the gun in his hand. The spirit may have provided the reckless confidence. And in the spirit of its will he pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger. It may have been at the moment he squeezed the trigger, or perhaps a split second before, that the world had already begun to rip. Space and time had torn the future into an infinite set of possibilities. The set could be divided into two subsets: He ...