New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
Vanessa A. Bee, "Home Bound: An Uprooted Daughter's Reflections on Belonging" (Astra, 2022)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vanessa A. Bee is a consumer protection lawyer with a freelancing habit. Primarily interested in inequality, corporate power, the American Left, and W...
Gareth Dale, et al., "Revolutionary Rehearsals in the Neoliberal Age: Struggling to Be Born?" (Haymarket Books, 2021)
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The last several decades have seen a mass consolidation of wealth among a few, the rest of the world left to various degrees of dispossession. On top ...
Mairead Sullivan, "Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger Between Feminist and Queer" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The loss of lesbian spaces, as well as ideas of the lesbian as anachronistic, has called into question the place of lesbian identity within our curren...
Aaron Moulton, "The Influencing Machine" (Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2022)
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, a network of twenty Soros Centres for Contemporary Art sprung up across Eastern Europe: Almaty, Belgrade, Budapest, Kiev, Ljubljana, Pra...
Tommie Shelby, "The Idea of Prison Abolition" (Princeton UP, 2022)
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By any reasonable metric, prisons as they exist in the United States and in many other countries are normatively unacceptable. What is the proper mora...
Abdul Alkalimat, "The Future of Black Studies" (Pluto Press, 2022)
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The marginalisation of Black voices from the academy is a problem in the Western world. But Black Studies, where it exists, is a powerful, boundary-pu...
Ed Cohen, "On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know" (Duke UP, 2022)
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagn...
Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For some, automation will usher in a labor-free utopia; for others, it signals a disastrous age-to-come. Yet whether seen as dream or nightmare, autom...
Sayan Dey, "Green Academia: Towards Eco-Friendly Education Systems" (Routledge, 2022)
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Green Academia: Towards Eco-Friendly Education Systems (Routledge, 2022) can be read as a systemic long-term counter-intervention strategy against a...
The Partially Examined Life: A Conversation with Wes Alwan
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The Partially Examined Life" is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 3 of 3
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 3 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate, "White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located ...
Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, "The Philosophy of Marronage" (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pedro Lebrón Ortiz's book The Philosophy of Marronage (Filosofía del cimarronaje) theorizes the broader context behind the notion of "cimarronaje...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 2 of 3
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 2 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
Arya Aryan, "The Post-War Novel and the Death of the Author" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Arya Aryan's The Post-War Novel and the Death of the Author (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) not only discloses and examines different functions and conce...
The Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States: Part 1 of 3
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Part 1 of 3. In the spring of 1942, James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, gave a series of lectures in New York on the first decade of ...
Geert Lovink, "Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism" (Pluto Press, 2019)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is the internet making us so unhappy? Why is it in capital’s interests to cultivate populations that are depressed and desperate rather than dri...
Jacob Kramer, "The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance" (Temple UP, 2015)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Freedom and the Radicals: Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Views of Radicalism, and the Origins of Repressive Tolerance (Temple University Pre...
Quito J. Swan, "Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colonialism, and the African World" (NYU Press, 2022)
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colon...
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Chokepoint Capitalism is Strangling Creative Industries
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the creative industries look like an hourglass. On the one side, you have creators; on the other, the rest of us. In the middle, Rebecca Gibli...
Clara E. Mattei, "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to...
Ben Pitcher, "Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does Prehistory mean to us now? In Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), Ben Pitcher, ...
Avgi Saketopoulou, "Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia" (NYU Press, 2023)
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Arguing that we have become culturally obsessed with healing trauma, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023) calls a...
Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, "Metamodernism: The Future of Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous cat...
Barbara Katz Rothman, "The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic" (Stanford UP, 2021)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Kat...
Marco Codebò, "Novels of Displacement: Fiction in the Age of Global Capital" (Ohio State UP, 2020)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Novels of Displacement: Fiction in the Age of Global Capital (Ohio State UP, 2020), Marco Codebò assesses the state of fiction in our time, an a...
AJ Withers, "Fight to Win: Inside Poor People's Organizing" (Fernwood, 2021)
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has been one of the leading organizations in the struggle for social justice within Canada for several de...
Mathias Thaler, "No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-changed World" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. In No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a ...
Max Haiven, "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Palm oil is a commodity like no other. Found in half of supermarket products, from food to cosmetics to plastics, it has shaped the world in which we ...
Barbara Harris Combs, "Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in U.S. Society (U Georgia Press, 2022) asserts that anti-Black racism is not better than it used to b...
Jasmine Calver, "Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism: The Comité Mondial Des Femmes Contre la Guerre et Le Fascisme, 1934-1941" (Routledge, 2022)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Women played an essential role in the international struggle against fascism during the interwar period, though their work has been neglected in broad...
Madeline Lane-McKinley, "Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times" (Common Notions, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Comedy is so frequently the topic of cultural dialogue, but it is rarely taken seriously as an object of study. Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing ...
Denise Ferreira Da Silva, "Unpayable Debt" (Sternberg Press, 2022)
03 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Unpayable Debt (Sternberg Press, 2022) examines the relationships among coloniality, raciality, and global capital from a black feminist “poethica...
Irene Hilden, "Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive: Dealing with the Berlin Sound Archive's Acoustic Legacies" (Leuven UP, 2022)
03 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condit...
Mathematical Morality: The Ideology that Justifies Billionaires
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can billionaires justify the endless accumulation of wealth? Effective altruism. An almost religious philosophical belief. Sam Bankman-Fried, the ...
On Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth"
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1925, on the French occupied island of Martinique, one of the most prominent voices in post colonial theory was born, Frantz Fanon. He was born to ...
Hilan Bensusan, "Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Hilan Bensusan clarifies the logic and structure of an essentially situated and i...
Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the ...
The Future of Multiculturalism: A Discussion with Patti Tamara Lenard and Peter Balint
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is the best way to achieve societal harmony in a place in which groups of people with different identities are living together. Should minority g...
Marquis Bey, "Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender" (Duke UP, 2022)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (Duke UP, 2022), Marquis Bey meditates on the antagonistic relationship between blackness and c...
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (wh...
On Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We moderns often tell ourselves a story that goes something like this: The past was barbaric, especially when it came to punishing criminals or persec...
Sophie Lewis, "Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation" (Verso, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What if family were not the only place you might hope to feel safe, loved, cared for and accepted? What if we could do better than the family? We need...
Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hatred of Sex (U Nebraska Press, 2022) links Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy of the constitutive disorder of democracy with Jean Lapla...
Riché Richardson, "Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body" (Duke UP, 2020)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body (Duke UP, 2020), Riché Richardson examines iconic black women lead...
Louise Ashley, "Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work" (Bristol UP, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can we make the finance industry fair? In Highly Discriminating: Why the City Isn’t Fair and Diversity Doesn’t Work (Bristol UP, 2022), Louise ...
Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, "Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation" (Tilted Axis Press, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961 that 'Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,' meaning that the violence of colonialism can only be counteracted in ...
Science Against the People: Anti-Capitalist Science
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s difficult to criticise science from the left. Right-wingers attack science and liberals defend it. Science for the People is a radical movement...
Matthew Crain, "Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The contemporary internet's de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily pr...
Jeffrey Bellin, "Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How it Can Recover" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel, in-the-trenches per...
Igor Shoikhedbrod, "Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality and Rights" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Is Marx relevant today, after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe? Is Marx’s political theory compatible with individual rights? You will be...
Therí Alyce Pickens, "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" (Duke UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke UP, 2019), Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the ...
Bradley Onishi, "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--And What Comes Next" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical sub...
Neta Yodovich, "Women Negotiating Feminism and Science Fiction Fandom: The Case of the 'Good' Fan" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do women balance feminist identities whilst being science fiction fans? In Women Negotiating Feminism and Science Fiction Fandom: The Case of the...
On Edward Said's "Orientalism"
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 17th century, European countries began colonizing countries east of Europe. They imposed their own ideas over local cultures and extr...
Helen De Cruz ed. "Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thought Experiments to Broaden your Mind" (Oxford UP, 2021)
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thought experiments are tools philosophers and scientists use to investigate how things are, without actually having to go out and experiment in the r...
Can We Square the Circle? Universalism Versus Communitarianism
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The political Left has long faced tension regarding its universalistic commitments and those to the nation it inhabits. The dilemma is captured succin...
Željka Matijasević, "The Borderline Culture: Intensity, Jouissance, and Death" (Lexington, 2021)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Borderline personality disorder is no longer a secret. Many people who are not therapists know what it is and see it as a fitting description for thei...
Aufhebunga Bunga and Global Politics
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Aufhebunga Bunga is the global politics podcast at the End of the End of History. In this episode, Alex Hochuli, George Hoare, and Philip Cunliffe t...
Peter Rehberg, "Hipster Porn: Queer Masculinities and Affective Sexualities in the Fanzine 'Butt'" (Routledge, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to forget that the cultural archetypes that pass for queerness today have historical roots. Some of these roots are mere years away from t...
Graham Harman, "Architecture and Objects" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects (...
David Caute, "Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century" (Verso, 2022)
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the popular imagination MI5, or the Security Service, is know chiefly as the branch of the British state responsible for chasing down those who pos...
Vivek Chibber, "Confronting Capitalism: How the World Works and How to Change It" (Verso, 2022)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it so d...
Chris Salter, "Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, ...
Red Cat
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Leigh Claire La Berge talks about red cats: communist cats, revolutionary tigers, radical felines of all stripes. The ...
Darts Transit Commission: Silicon Valley’s Car Culture
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paris Marx is one of the sharpest modern writers on Silicon Valley and transit. We have been talking a lot lately about the idea of techno-utopian thi...
Bartholomew Ryan, "Kierkegaard's Indirect Politics: Interludes with Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin and Adorno" (Brill, 2014)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1848, as political movements and events were sweeping Europe and Marx and Engels penned their famous Communist Manifesto, Kierkegaard wrote in a l...
Halloween Special: Jacques Derrida’s Cat
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Saronik talks with Kim about Jacques Derrida’s cat. Derrida writes about his cat, who makes him rather anxious, in “The Animal That Therefore I Am...
Andreas Malm, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" (Verso, 2021)
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and p...
Saskia Warren, "British Muslim Women in the Cultural and Creative Industries" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is religion important in understanding creative industries? In British Muslim Women in the Cultural and Creative Industries (Edinburgh Universit...
Adrian Hon, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All" (Basic Books, 2022)Adrian Hon, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All" (Basic Books, 2022)
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be f...
Kyle Stevens, "The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory" (Oxford UP, 2022)
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. ...
Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, ...
Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, "Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Characterized by shared, self-managed access to food, housing, and basic conditions for a creative life, the commons are essential for communities to ...
Cameron Awkward-Rich, "The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment" (Duke UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke UP, 2022), Cameron Awkward-Rich thinks with the bad feelings and mad habits of thought t...
Josh Bowsher, "The Informational Logic of Human Rights" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become ve...
Arcia Tecun et al., "Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A search for new ways to talk about race in Aotearoa New Zealand brought together this powerful group of scholars, writers, and activists. For these a...
Arthur Bradley, "Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure" (Columbia UP, 2019)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In ancient Rome, any citizen who had brought disgrace upon the state could be subject to a judgment believed to be worse than death: damnatio memoriae...
Asim Sajjad Akhter, "The Struggle for Hegemony in Pakistan: Fear, Desire and Revolutionary Horizons" (Pluto Press, 2022)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The collapse of neoliberal hegemony in the western world following the financial crash of 2007-8 and subsequent rise of right-wing authoritarian perso...
Robin McCoy Brooks, "Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe, and Social Action" (Routledge, 2021)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Robin McCoy Brooks' book Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe, and Social Action (Routledge, 2021) uses psychoanalytic theory to explore how political subje...
Julie Sze, "Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger" (U California Press, 2020)
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political m...
Bhaskar Sunkara, "The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality" (Basic Books, 2020)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality (Basic Books, 2020), Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's ...
Rafico Ruiz, "Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier" (Duke UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth century, the evangelical Protestant Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, crea...
Ramzi Fawaz, "Queer Forms" (NYU Press, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ramzi Fawaz, Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that weaves together the more contemporary history of feminis...
Geert Lovink, "Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet" (Valiz, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new norma...
Nissim Mannathukkaren, "Communism, Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory: The Left in South India" (Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2021)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nissim Mannathukkaren's book Communism, Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory: The Left in South India (Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2021) is a the...
Bruce Robbins, "Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction" (Stanford UP, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These confli...
Christopher Lukman, "Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games" (Lit Verlag, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Christopher Lukman about his new book Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games (Lit Verlag, 2022). In light...
Asha Rogers, "State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How does the state support writers? In State Sponsored Literature: Britain and Cultural Diversity after 1945 (Oxford UP, 2020), Asha Rogers, Senio...
Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made ...
Mark Neocleous, "A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of the Social Order" (Verso, 2021)
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of Social Order (Verso, 2021) offers a critical look at policing and the power of the state, exa...
Standpoint Theory
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soham Sen talks about standpoint theory, a method of understanding the ways in which individual and collective experience influence public discourses....
C. Thi Nguyen, "Games: Agency as Art" (Oxford UP, 2020)
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Games are a unique art form. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be and what to care about during the game. Game designe...
Clémentine Deliss, "The Metabolic Museum" (Hatje Cantz, 2020)
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Metabolic Museum (Hatje Cantz, 2020), Clémentine Deliss, a curator, researcher, and former director of the Frankfurt Weltkulturen Museum, ex...
NBN Classic: Dominik Finkelde, "Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan and the Foundations of Ethics" (Columbia UP, 2017)
02 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. How are we to conceive of acts...
NBN Classic: Jonathan Erickson, "Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience" (Routledge, 2019)
01 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Imagination is one of the most...
Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert, "Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)" (Verso, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cann...
Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk...
David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn, "Capitalism and Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad" (Fernwood, 2021)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many Canadians think of their country as a paragon of liberal democratic values at home, and a moderating force on the world stage—not so, argues th...
Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean, "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing" (Verso, 2022)
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in t...