The Mysteries of Taylor Swift

Public Seminar has gone down the Taylor Swift rabbit hole. There are serious Swifties in the philosophy department at the New School for Social Research—and some serious dissidents, as James Miller discovers in a conversation with Jack Condie, Simon Critchley, and Gwenda-lin Grewal. The reason we can’t just be normal about Swift, Condie posits, is because she’s a modern-day Alcibiades. Claire Potter, meanwhile, argues that it’s the queerness of fandom, not the artist, that matters. And Rick Moody riffs on how a massive musical entity might prove her personhood.