Annual Retreat

December 8–13, 2026 | 29 Palms, California

The PSSSR is organizing a Retreat of the Left to provide a convivial environment in which to do serious intellectual work, engaging in the exploration of theoretical and political issues that, for various reasons, are not addressed in other spaces. Our goal is to build a new political subject: one that is resilient and clear-eyed in the face of our violent and irrational political present. Further, we offer this retreat to thinkers who we believe will constitute a new intelligentsia, one committed to amity, integrity, and truth-seeking in ideology critique.

In an era of professional and social media surveillance, neither academia nor legacy media are capable of cultivating the kind of rigorous critique we so desperately need. PSSSR's Inaugural Flagship Retreat takes advantage of the beauty and remoteness of California’s High Desert, inviting participants to spend six days cultivating strong intellectual and social bonds in a stunning natural environment.

The Program

The core of the Retreat of the Left is a symposium facilitated by Catherine Liu, with the support of Neil Gong and Mark Andrejevic. These are scholars whose prescient work goes beyond the empty platitudes that keep professionals comfortable in their roles while the world spins further and further into chaos. Gong’s seminar will address social care after liberalism. Andrejevic examines the state of automated surveillance provided by the structural affordances of social media.

The PSSSR’s Retreat of the Left is grounded in the conviction that clarity and sound judgment come from rest, reflection, and friendship. Serious political thinking requires structured respite from our everyday lives: we want to provide that for participants, who will be selected through an application process. Space is limited, but we are working on gathering more resources to make the retreat available to more people.

Schedule

Dec 8 | Arrival, welcome dinner, short orientation seminar

Dec 9 | Opening seminar, then Neil Gong presents (working lunch, Q&A); free afternoon; dinner

Dec 10 | Mark Andrejevic seminar; free afternoon; dinner

Dec 11 | Prepare presentations: private meetings with Catherine and co-facilitators

Dec 12 | Attendee presentations; celebration dinner

Dec 13 | Parting breakfast, departure

Mornings are structured around seminar and discussion. Each session will be followed by a working lunch.

Afternoons are unstructured: field trips, hikes, or independent reading and reflection will be offered. Planned field trips include the Integratron, the Noah Purifoy Museum, High Desert Test Sites, and hikes of varying degrees of difficulty in the park itself.

Speakers

Catherine Liu is the Founder and Director of PSSSR, and Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and has published widely on critical theory, art criticism, psychoanalysis and Left historiography. Her forthcoming book Traumatized: the New Politics of Public Suffering will be published in September 2026 by Verso. Liu will be serving as the retreat's host and seminar leader.

Neil Gong is Associate Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego, where he researches psychiatric services, homelessness, and how communities seek to maintain social order. His book Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics (University of Chicago Press, 2024) offers an ethnographic account of homelessness in Los Angeles and compares the management of serious mental illness in public safety net and elite private psychiatric programs. Gong will present ideas from his book, outlining the failures of liberal policy and the ways in which suppression of debate and dissent blocks us from understanding—much less solving—social crises at scale. Seminar: Dec 9.

Mark Andrejevic is Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College. He is the author of Reality TV: the Work of Being Watched (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) and Automated Media (Routledge, 2024). Automated Media develops an original framework for tracing the evolution of automated media and examining its social, political, and cultural consequences. Centering critical theory in media studies, Andrejevic will present ideas from this book alongside his theorization of the relationship between labor and reality television. Seminar: Dec 10.

The Setting

Serving as the northern gateway to Joshua Tree National Park, few California cities bear such deep traces of its indigenous past as Twentynine Palms, the location of both the Campbell House Inn and the 29 Palms Inn. A century ago, studio-era Hollywood disappeared into the California desert when it needed distance from the media and film industry’s surveillance. The PSSSR's Inaugural Flagship Retreat borrows that location for a different kind of escape: six days away from the institutional and social media scrutiny that keeps the Left performing politics instead of practicing them. The 29 Palms Inn and the Campbell House Inn provide locations that offer a true starting point for planning the future of the Left.

Who Should Attend

Seminar leaders Neil Gong and Mark Andrejevic will join a cohort of people from various professions who are already engaged in the work the PSSSR exists to support. This is a forum for understanding the current political landscape and building a shared strategy of resistance.

The PSSSR team is finalizing selection criteria and the application process, but the standard is already set for whom the School primarily serves: people without—or with limited access to—elite institutional networks, not those fluent in citing them.

Applications & Logistics

• Applications open: 10am PDT, August 10

• Apply online a via this application

Deadline for applications: 5pm PDT, September 15.

All expenses paid, excluding cost of flights. There will be a limited number of $500 travel stipends available by application. Transportation will be provided to and from the Palm Springs International Airport.

Support

This retreat is only possible because of the generosity of our supporters. Every donation helps create the time, space, and community needed for serious intellectual work. If you value the PSSSR's mission, please consider supporting the Retreat with a donation.