New Books in Critical Theory

Stuart Elden, "The Archaeology of Foucault" (Polity, 2022)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did Foucault’s thought develop in the 1960s? In The Archaeology of Foucault (Polity, 2022) Stuart Elden, a professor of Political Theory an...

Scott Branson, "Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life" (Pluto Press, 2022)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You may not realise it, but you are probably already practicing anarchism in your daily life. From relationships to school, work, art, even the way yo...

Mauro Resmini, "Italian Political Cinema: Figure of the Long '68" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini s...

Foluke Adebisi, "Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility" (Bristol UP, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Folúkẹ́ Adébísí’s Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility (Bristol UP, 2023) details the ways in which the...

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon, "After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon's edited volume After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP, 2022) demon...

The Good Enough Life

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: The Good-Enough Life (Princeton UP, 2022) by Avram Alpert. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel co...

Jacob A. C. Remes and Andy Horowitz, "Critical Disaster Studies" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This book announces the new, interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies. Unlike most existing approaches to disaster, critical disaster stud...

Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt, eds., "Class Warrior: The Selected Works of E. T. Kingsley" (Athabasca UP, 2022)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The socialist activist E. T. Kingsley occupies an odd place in the history of labor and the left. Often mentioned due to his prolific life of speaking...

Leslie M. Alexander, "Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation lit a beacon of hope for Black people throughout the African diaspora. Leslie M. Alexander's study ...

Kristin Hass, "Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices" (Beacon Press, 2022)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Blunt Instruments: Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices (Beacon Press, 2022) provides a field g...

Jill Jarvis, "Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and the Politics of Testimony" (Duke UP, 2021)

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and the Politics of Testimony (Duke UP, 2021), Jill Jarvis examines the crucial role that writers and artists have...

E. Cram, "Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (U California Press, 2022) deepens the analysis of settler coloni...

Todd McGowan, "Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets" (Columbia UP, 2016)

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you have ever gotten excited over buying a new object only to feel let down once you acquire it, then today’s discussion will be relevant to you....

ACLA 2023

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of High Theory is based upon a conference paper Saronik and Kim wrote for the American Comparative Literature Association Conference in 2...

David Houston Jones, "Visual Culture and the Forensic: Culture, Memory, Ethics" (Routledge, 2022)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between images and truth has a complicated history. In the Western tradition, the Kantian settlement on aesthetic judgment as detache...

Leigh Goodmark, "Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the st...

Daniel L. Hatcher, "Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems...

Nadia Abu El-Haj, "Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America" (Verso, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds b...

Max Kaiser, "Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Max Kaiser's book Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) takes a timely look at histories of rad...

Gediminas Lesutis, "The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering" (Routledge, 2021)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Based on critical theory and ethnographic research, Gediminas Lesutis' book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Sufferi...

Chrisanthi Giotis, "Borderland: Decolonizing the Words of War" (Oxford UP, 2022)

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every two seconds a person is displaced, caught in one of the more than 40 active conflicts around the world that show no sign of ending. Since 1994, ...

Nicholas Brown, "Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2019)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), Nicholas Brown offers a fresh perspective on aesthetic au...

Michael Walzer, "The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On 'Liberal' As an Adjective" (Yale UP, 2023)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The national purpose of the American state is to realize and then sustain the democracy and the equality that was the promise of our founding. I belie...

Jessica Wilson, "It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies" (Hachette Go, 2023)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies (Hachette Go, 2023) eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson ...

Mejdulene Bernard Shomali, "Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives" (Duke UP, 2023)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives (Duke UP, 2023), Mejdulene Bernard Shomali examines homoeroticism and non-nor...

Book Talk 58: Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What Is to Be Done? In her luminous biography Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (Yale UP, 2011), Vivian Gornick brings us back to this quest...

Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, "Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games" (MIT Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (MIT Press, 2023) by Dr. Mary Flanagan & Dr. Mikael Jakobsson is a s...

The Future of Nonviolence: A Conversation with Julie M. Norman

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, non-violent resistance has held a special place in the public imagination. What can be better after ...

Jessa Lingel, "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could h...

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, "The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left" (Hurst, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was th...

Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that B...

Seeing Truth in the Lab

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Max Liboiron founder of Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), a feminist, anti-colonial laboratory talks about making better science and how they are...

Can we Engage in Public Scholarship with Feminist and Accessible Communication?

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: Engage in Public Scholarship: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication, by Dr. Alex D. Ketchum. Public scholarship—s...

Nicola Rollock, "The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival" (Penguin, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do racial inequalities persist? In The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival (Penguin, 2023), Nicola Rollock, a Professor of Social Po...

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, "Decolonizing American Spanish: Eurocentrism and the Limits of Foreignness in the Imperial Ecosystem" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffrey joins the podcast to discuss the prevalence of English in the academic ecosystem and in research publishing. Jeffrey critiques the lackadaisic...

Damien M. Sojoyner, "Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This highly original story reflects on how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and ...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some...

Frances Howard, "Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference" (Policy Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can the arts make the world a better place? In Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference (Policy Pr...

Mary Crossley, "Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These ...

Bernard D. Geoghegan, "Code: From Information Theory to French Theory" (Duke UP, 2023)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan traces the shared intellectual and political history of computer scientists, cyberneticists, anthropologists, linguists, a...

The Future of Democratic Capitalism: A Discussion with Martin Wolf

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Does China show that capitalism works better without democracy? What can be done to secure the future of open societies in which there is wealth, tole...

David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations a...

Patricia Saldarriaga and Emy Manini, "Infected Empires: Decolonizing Zombies" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Let’s talk about zombies! Scholars Patricia Saldarriaga and Emy Manini have produced an engaging and important analysis of the idea of zombies, and ...

Shannon Philip, "Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shannon Philip's book Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony (Cambridge UP, 2022) tells t...

Chris Bongie, trans. and ed., "The Colonial System Unveiled by Baron de Vastey" (Liverpool UP, 2014)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Long neglected in mainstream history books, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is now being claimed across a range of academic disciplines as an event...

David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossi...

Nicholas Mirzoeff, "White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness" (MIT Press, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the author of How to See the World comes a new history of white supremacist ways of seeing—and a strategy for dismantling them. White suprema...

Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical...

John Peters and Don Wells, "Canadian Labour Policy and Politics" (UBC Press, 2022)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has awakened them to the dangers attendant to a lot of the working conditions in society today—for others, it has ma...

Helen Yaffe, "We Are Cuba!: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World" (Yale UP, 2020)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced the start of a crisis that decimated its economy. Helen Yaffe examines the astonishing de...

Making Meaning Episode 14: The Challenge of Choice

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The vast range of choices we can make about our lives is one of the great blessings of modernity. But that very freedom makes it hard to know what to ...

Marnia Lazreg, "Foucault's Orient: The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan" (Berghahn Books, 2020)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the ...

The Future of the Liberal Order: A Discussion with James E. Cronin

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Has the liberal order been taken for granted? The post war consensus and the impact of the cold war may have helped establish a way of doing politics ...

Philip Nel, "Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books" (Oxford UP, 2017)

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A signific...

Historians Examine Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Popp, a professor of history at Copenhagen Business School, and Jonathan Coopersmith, a professor (retired) of history at Texas A&M, talk about...

Piro Rexhepi, "White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality Along the Balkan Route" (Duke UP, 2022)

12 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality Along the Balkan Route (Duke UP, 2022), Piro Rexhepi explores the overlapping postsocialist ...

Chantelle Gray, "Anarchism After Deleuze and Guattari: Fabulating Futures" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Deleuze and Guattari never identified as anarchists, nor do they seem to know much about its historical development or continued praxis. Yet their ind...

Jennifer Clary-Lemon and David M. Grant, "Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2022) brings together emerging and established voices at the nexus o...

Hannah Noel, "Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Deflective Whiteness: Coopting Black and Latinx Identity Politics (Ohio State UP, 2022), Hannah Noel repositions Whiteness studies in relation to...

Martin Scott and Kate Wright, "Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone" (Routledge, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can the news better reflect important global issues? In Humanitarian Journalists Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone (Routledge, 2022), Drs M...

Leslie Bow, "Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy" (Duke UP, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy (Duke UP, 2022), Leslie Bow traces the ways in which Asian Americans become objects ...

Dianne M. Stewart, "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage" (Seal Press, 2020)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African...

Bruce Kuklick, "Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the time Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, Americans have been obsessed with and brooded over the meaning of fascism and how it might migrat...

Robert J. Dostal, "Gadamer's Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic (Northwestern University Press, 2022), Robert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive an...

Chris Boesel, "In Kierkegaard's Garden with the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard" (Fortress Academic, 2021)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even relig...

Making Meaning Episode 3: The Weight of the World

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The ideology of capitalism, which drives us to find happiness in endless exertion and economic gain, dulls our emotions and blinds us to the source of...

Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps, "Heterotopic World Fiction: Thinking Beyond Biopolitics with Woolf, Foucault, Ondaatje" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps's book Heterotopic World Fiction: Thinking Beyond Biopolitics with Woolf, Foucault, Ondaatje (Academic Studi...

Where is the Left? The Rise and Decline of Social Democratic Movements

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week on International Horizons, David Abraham from the University of Miami discusses the origins of social democratic parties in Europe and the p...

Gyan Prakash and Jeremy Adelman, "Inventing the Third World: In Search of Freedom for the Postwar Global South" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the Third World? The term has essentially been scrubbed from our collective consciousness. What once used to be something concrete seems to ha...

Christiaan De Beukelaer, "Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping" (Manchester UP, 2023)

05 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How can we build greener infrastructure in the face of the global climate emergency? In Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping (...

Sennett and Foucault on Sexuality and Solitude (1979)

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1979, sociologist and NYIH founder Richard Sennett, and philosopher Michel Foucault, discussed the connections between the history of sexuality and...

Discordia Revisited: The Concordia Netanyahu Riot of 2002

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

20 years ago at Concordia University in Montreal pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with police over whether Benjamin Netanyahu should be allowed to s...

Alexandre I. R. White, "Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease" (Stanford UP, 2023)

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a ...

Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno –...

Matthew Galway, "The Emergence of Global Maoism: China's Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949-1979" (Cornell UP, 2022)

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do ideas manifest outside of their place of origin, and how do they change once they do? The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism...

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, "Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War" (Columbia Global Reports, 2022)

29 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Art has a long history of engaging with conflict and violence. From the antiquities, through Goya, to Guernica, our museums are filled with depictions...

Corey Lee Wrenn, "Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony" (SUNY Press, 2021)

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Irish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread ...

Frank Wolff, "Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund" (Haymarket Books, 2021)

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Frank Wolff's ground-breaking Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund (Haymarket Books, 2021) in...

Podcast Series: Hell on Earth--The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hell on Earth: The 30 Years War and the Violent Birth of Capitalism is a new 10-part series from the creators of Hell of Presidents — one of Ent...

Karyne E. Messina, "Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy" (Routledge, 2022)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame-Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022) ...

Hil Malatino, "Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fatigue, disorientation, numbness, envy, rage, burnout. What good could come from thinking about trans experience and these bad feelings? In Side Aff...

The Future of the European Left

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why is it so hard for left wing parties in the West to win elections? Some such as the UK Labour Party have headed to the centre. The history of Labou...

The Thought of Ivan Illich

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Author L. M. Sacasas talks about the life, thought, and legacy of the Catholic priest, philosopher, and social critic Ivan Illich with Peoples & Thing...

The Myth of Modernity: Is There a Bigger Picture?

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many think modernity is about the rise of science, the spread of democracy and capitalism, or the decline of religion or superstition. But those stori...

Steffen Mau, "Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century" (Polity Press, 2022)

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It is commonly thought that, thanks to globalization, nation-state borders are becoming increasingly porous. In Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of ...

Robert Ovetz, "We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few" (Pluto Press, 2022)

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We have been ruled long enough. It is time to govern ourselves. If we are to get past the Constitution and all systems based on constitutions, we need...

Michael Joseph Roberto, "The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940" (Monthly Review Press, 2018)

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shocked and appalled a number of people, forcing a critical reevaluation of what was possible, and what we ought ...

Eric A. Stanley, "Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable" (Duke UP, 2021)

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Content note: This episode contains discussions of suicide, as well as allusions to graphic anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Black violence Advances in LGBTQ r...

Carwil Bjork-James, "The Sovereign Street: Making Revolution in Urban Bolivia" (U Arizona Press, 2020)

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early twenty-first century Bolivian social movements made streets, plazas, and highways into the decisively important spaces for acting politic...

Chris Bilton et al., "Creativities: The What, How, Where, Who and Why of the Creative Process" (Edward Elgar, 2022)

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does creativity work? In Creativities: The What, How, Where, Who and Why of the Creative Process (Edward Elgar, 2022), Chris Bilton, a Reader a...

The Future of Inequality: A Discussion with Mike Savage

13 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Most people in developed countries think inequality is increasing. And most would also agree that in terms of the global poor, the last 20 years have ...

Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...

Demeritocracy: Should We Still Believe in Meritocracy?

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Total faith in meritocracy leads to the dangerous belief that all social winners and losers are wholly deserving. Instead, we need an economy of grace...

Philippe-Richard Marius, "The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society (University Press of Mississippi, 2022), Philippe-Ri...

Neoliberalism and Higher Education

08 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is a roundtable discussion on the influence of the neoliberal project on higher education. Our guests are Professor Emeritus Frank Fear f...

Peter Hudis, "Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades" (Pluto Press, 2015)

07 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a Caribbean and African psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary whose works, including Black Skin, White Masks and Th...

White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect?

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. Guests Joshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of Hi...

Carlos Alberto Sánchez, "A Sense of Brutality. Philosophy after Narco-Culture" (Amherst College Press, 2020)

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary popular culture is riddled with references to Mexican drug cartels, narcos, and drug trafficking. In the United States, documentary filmm...

Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps, "Heterotopic World Fiction: Thinking Beyond Biopolitics with Woolf, Foucault, Ondaatje" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After more than a century of genocides and in the midst of a global pandemic, Lesley Higgins and Marie-Christine Leps' book Heterotopic World Fictio...

(In)efficiency: Should Efficiency be a Moral Value?

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Efficiency has moved from a technique for measuring machines to a widely held moral value. But at what cost? Guests Jennifer Alexander, Associate Pro...