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Thomas Kemple

Thomas Kemple is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the rhetorical, literary and deconstructive dimensions of classical and contemporary social theory. His book on the melodramatic form of Marx’s political, economic and philosophical thought developed an interpretive method he is now employing to examine the allegorical structure of Weber’s sociology of the cultural vocations of modernity. Besides exploring the silenced or suppressed dimensions of the foundational, classical and canonical texts of social science in light of recent critical and analytical perspectives, he has also brought these insights to bear on the recovery of lost concepts, alternative genealogies, and forgotten figures in the field. A major concern throughout these studies is with how the visual framing of sociological theorizing provides both a mirror and a window onto the class structures and civil statuses of (post)modern capitalist societies, particularly with respect to the competing claims of ethnicity and race, gender and sexuality, and generation and age. He is the author of Reading Marx Writing: Melodrama, the Market, and the ‘Grundrisse (1995) and editor of The Vocation of Reason: Studies in Critical Theory and Social Science in the Age of Max Weber (2004), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Talks & Events

  • Speakeasy: Territory

    JAMIE HILDER, AM JOHAL, THOMAS KEMPLE, GERMAINE KOH, KARA UZELMAN
    January 25–January 26, 2007

    THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 8PM

    Am Johal (Writer/Social Activist), Thomas Kemple (Sociologist), Germaine Koh (Artist/Curator)

    FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 8PM

    Jamie Hilder (Artist/Critic), Kara Uzelman (Artist)

    Rethinking how civic space is defined, Speakeasy: Territory is a series of talks and readings that address the mutable definition of “territory.” Questioning whether “territory” is a spatial, geographic, political, economic, or social construct, urban space will be taken up as a contestable subject.

    In 2005 Artspeak hosted the inaugural Speakeasy: Serial Space. Through six presentations, this event approached space as an endless repetition of particular spaces that appear throughout our conventions of “urban” or “nature.” Speakeasy: Territory series encourages artists, writers, and activists to continue this thinking within urban terrain, building on the past and on the exhibition Territory held at Artspeak, Presentation House Gallery, and public sites around the city in the summer of 2006.