3E operates internationally through an online grouphub (Basecamp) and a Slack channel for those interested in participating in day-to-day organizing and sharing. Activities are collectively organized through email lists, project writeboards, and messageboards on Basecamp, and through discussions on Slack.
3E inherited close-reading practices from many years of experience in its parent organization, the SenseLab (2003–2019). The approach is one of “hypothetical sympathy”: diving collectively into the complexity of the text to positively reconstruct its movement of thought, refraining from critique or personal opinion until the text has spoken through the group. “In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held” (Bertrand Russell).
Reading groups are networked live internationally via Zoom. A number of reading groups initiated and coordinated by different constellations of 3E participants are normally operating at any one time. Special reading groups take place during in-person events at 3E, providing an opportunity for remote participation in on-site events. To keep informed of their schedule, please consult the 3E website and/or contact us to join our Basecamp in order to receive email notices.
We currently have four groups engaged in close-reading study:
The Being of Relation and the Black Study reading groups. We have been holding a minor sociality practice of reading together since autumn 2024, meeting consistently every Thursday and Friday, though no regular attendance is required at all – you can drop in whenever you are able if lured into this! The experience was born out of the need to find refuge and resistance in a practice that animates the attuning of differences – in relation – around the close reading of a text,
in times of trouble and distress. On Thursdays we read from Erin Manning’s The Being of Relation at 8.30pm (CET) / 2.30pm (EST) and on Fridays we have been engaging with black study. At the moment reading from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons (chapter General Antagonism) at 4pm (CET) / 10am (EST). If you drop a line to 3ecologiesinstitute@
The Diagrammatic Thought Reading Group meets fortnightly on zoom, Fridays from 4pm to 5pm (EST). The group has been meeting since 2018. The focus has been the work of Alfred North Whitehead for many years but from time to time we discuss other process philosophy authors such as William James, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. We practise close reading, and we advance slowly but surely, always discussing only a few pages at the time. Everyone is welcome, come as you are! (Especially if you are new to process philosophy.) It is always a pleasure to encounter fresh questions and take a new look at the texts. We are currently spending time with Modes of Thought (Whitehead) after many years studying Process and Reality (Whitehead). For more information, you can contact 3ecologiesinstitute@
The Melbourne SenseLab/3E Reading Group, active since 2015, meets fortnightly on zoom, Fridays 2–3:30pm (Eastern Australian time). The Latrobe University reading group, active since 2018, meets weekly on zoom, Mondays 1:30–3pm. In both groups we practice slow reading, reading the texts aloud together and stopping often to discuss. Anyone is welcome to join the groups, no experience or prior knowledge is needed. We read process philosophy related texts with a creative practice or activist inclination. As of April 2025 the Friday group is reading Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s All Incomplete and the Monday group is reading Suely Rolnik’s Spheres of Insurrection. For more information, you can contact 3ecologiesinstitute@
Since April 2014 the Europe SenseLab/3E Resonant Readings Group has been active, reading contemporary philosophy on a monthly basis. The group’s coordinator is Christoph Brunner. It was based at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland from 2014 to 2016; Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany) in cooperation with the ArchipelagoLab for Transversal practices; and, since September 2024, is located at the Erasmus School of Philosophy, Rotterdam (Netherlands), in cooperation with the Rotterdam Arts and Sciences LAB (RASL). The group is online, can be joined by anyone interested, and decides collectively on the readings, mostly entire books. From June 2025 we will read Brian Massumi’s The Personalty of Power: A Theory of Fascism for Anti-Fascist Life. For more information, you can contact 3ecologiesinstitute@
The Thinking-Feeling reading group, led by Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, continues the work of the primary reading group at SenseLab, which began in 2004. The group paused for a break in 2022, and will resume operation in the near future.
A sampling of texts we have read together:
Édouard Glissant Poetics of Relation; Fred Moten & Stephano Harney The Undercommons; Cedric Robinson Black Marxism; Spinoza Ethics; selected essays by C.S. Peirce; A.N. Whitehead Process and Reality; Félix Guattari Schizoanalytic Cartographies; Deleuze & Guattari Anti-Oedipus; Deleuze & Guattari A Thousand Plateaus; Deleuze Empiricism and Subjectivity; Deleuze Nietzsche; Deleuze Expressionism in Philosophy; Deleuze The Fold; NietzscheThus Spoke Zarathustra; Nietzsche Last Notebooks; Guattari Chaosmosis; Bernard Cache Earth Moves; Foucault The Order of Things; Leanne Betasamosake Simpson Dancing On Our Turtle’s Back; Miguel Norambuena De l’animation psychosociale à la clinique du quotidien; Peter Pal Pelbart Cartographies of Exhaustion; Eduardo Viveiros de Castro Cannibal Metaphysics; Eduardo Kohn How Forests Think; Maurizio Lazzarato Signs, Machines, Subjectivity.
View More Past Gatherings, Reading Groups, Talks, Workshops Here.
