New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
Matt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook” (U. of Chicago Press 2016)
19 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (Universit...
Bill V. Mullen, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line,” (Pluto Press, 2016)
17 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Born just five years after the abolition of slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois died the night before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speec...
Paul Benneworth et al., “The Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research” (Palgrave, 2016)
13 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future for Arts and Humanities in Europe? The podcast discusses these questions with Paul Benneworth, one of the authors, along with Magnu...
Banu Bargu, “Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons” (Columbia UP, 2016)
10 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Pol...
Sarah Jaffe, “Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt” (Nation Books, 2016)
07 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Jaffe has written Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (Nation Books, 2016). Jaffe is a Nation Institute fellow and an independent journalist....
Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” (Verso, 2016)
02 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mil...
Kirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales” (Intellect Books 2016)
19 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The value of the arts is a constant and vital question in contemporary culture. In Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre W...
Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)
15 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we under...
Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016)
07 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Widely known for his pioneering work in the field of settler colonial studies, Patrick Wolfe advanced the theory that settler colonialism was, “a st...
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)
06 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How did the preeminent theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault experience and observe the Iranian revolution? How did he find the revolution disrupti...
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)
27 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Math...
Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chicago Press, 2014)
27 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Was Hegel a medieval thinker? In The Birth of Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Andrew Cole puts forward a reexamination of Hegelian dialec...
Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016)
22 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
NB: Because Amherst College Press is open-access, this book is available free for download here. Just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on th...
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)
10 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for ...
Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
05 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How is the notion of the avant-garde in art relevant today? What can contemporary social movements learn from the Situationists? What is the meaning o...
Stuart Elden “Foucault’s Last Decade” (Polity Press, 2016)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Michel Foucault radically recast the project of The History of Sexuality? How did he work collaboratively? What was the influence of Antiquity...
Mary Hawkesworth, “Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied Politics” (Routledge, 2016)
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How can we explain the “occlusion of embodied power” and “lack of attention to race, gender, and sexuality” in the discipline of political sci...
Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling” (Lexington, 2015)
12 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Darian M. Parker joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, Sartre and No Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic An...
Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016)
09 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What can social theory offer to visions of an alternative society? In his new book, Social Theory for Alternative Societies (Palgrave, 2016), Dr Matt ...
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books, 2016)
08 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ibram X. Kendi is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History ...
John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, “Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco’s new book, Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 201...
Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution” (Polity, 2015)
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Television had been transformed by the rise of the format. In The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution Jean Chalaby, Professor of Inter...
Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
15 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Peter Trawny, professor of philosophy and founder and dire...
Jack Jacobs, “The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
02 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Jack Jacobs, Professor of Political Science at John Jay Co...
Eric Schickler, “Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965” (Princeton UP, 2016)
01 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Schickler is the author of Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965 (Princeton University Press, 2016). Schickler...
Russell Rickford, “We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2016)
31 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Russell Rickford is an assistant professor of history at Cornell University. We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radi...
Susan Cahan, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power” (Duke UP, 2016)
21 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Y...
Ayten Gundogdu, “Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants” (Oxford UP, 2015)
26 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How does one “rethink and revise the key concepts of Hannah Arendt’s political theory in light of the struggles of asylum seekers, refugees, and u...
Les Back, “Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters” (Goldsmiths Press, 2016)
23 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Why does higher education still matter? In Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters, Les Back, a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths’...
Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman, “The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada” (Fernwood, 2015)
15 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Two Canadian political science professors contend that the grotesque inequities of the capitalist system feed hatred, nourish misogyny, promote chroni...
Jeremy Ahearne, “Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
08 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How did two right wing presidents use culture to govern France? In Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2...
Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015)
02 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: ...
Katie Gentile, ed., “The Business of Being Made” (Routledge, 2015)
28 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Techn...
Nicholas Vrousalis, “The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
17 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In his book The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), Nicholas Vrousalis (Leiden University) provi...
Bernard Harcourt, “Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age” (Harvard UP, 2015)
17 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The landscape described in Bernard Harcourt‘s new book is a dystopia saturated by pleasure. We do not live in a drab Orwellian world, he writes. We ...
Malcolm James, “Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City” (Palgrave, 2015)
16 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lectu...
Garrett M. Broad, “More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change” (U of California Press, 2016)
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified ...
Lynne Pettinger, “Work, Consumption and Capitalism” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What do jeans tell us about the contemporary world? They provide the starting point for Lynne Pettinger‘s Work, Consumption and Capitalism (Palgrave...
Linsey McGoey, “No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy” (Verso, 2015)
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (Verso Books, 2015), Linsey McGoey proposes a new way of discussin...
Mark Schuller, “Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti” (Rutgers UP, 2016)
28 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed and destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Mark Schuller‘s book Humanita...
Mark Carrigan, “Social Media for Academics” (Sage, 2016)
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How can academics respond to the rise of social media? Or should they respond at all? In Social Media for Academics (Sage, 2016), Mark Carrigan, from ...
Eben Kirksey, “Emergent Ecologies” (Duke UP, 2015)
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among...
Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015)
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bow...
Emma Jackson, “Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility” (Routledge, 2015)
08 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the experience of young homeless people? What does this experience tell us about space, place and society? In Young Homeless People and Urban ...
Roshanak Kheshti, “Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music” (NYU Press, 2015)
01 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost ...
Lisa McCormick, “Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
18 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The competition seems to be a crucial part of the classical music world. In Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music (Cambr...
Colette Soler, “Lacanian Affects: The Function of Affect in Lacan’s Work”, trans. Bruce Fink (Routledge, 2016)
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Affect is a weighty and consequential problem in psychoanalysis. People enter treatment hoping for relief from symptoms and their attendant unbearable...
John M. Chamberlain, “Medical Regulation, Fitness to Practice and Revalidation: A Critical Introduction” (Policy Press, 2015)
10 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How is the medical profession regulated in a ‘risk society’. This is the core question of John M. Chamberlain‘s Medical Regulation, Fitness to ...
Amy Allen, “The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory” (Columbia UP, 2016)
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How can we de-colonize critical theory from within, and reimagine the way it grounds its normative claims as well as the way it relates to post- and d...
Nadim Bakhshov, “Against Capitalist Education: What is Education for?” (Zero Books, 2015)
02 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nadim Bakhshov joins the New Books in Network to discuss his book Against Capitalist Education: What is Education for? (Zero Books, 2015). The book po...
David R. Brake, “Sharing our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social Media” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
29 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With the growth of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we are increasingly heading toward a radically open society. In Shari...
Nicola Rollock et al. “The Colour of Class: The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes” (Routledge, 2014)
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The experience of the African American middle class has been an important area of research in the USA. However, the British experience has, by compari...
Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Finn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our atten...
David Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
03 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMilla...
Leigh Claire La Berge, “Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s” (Oxford UP, 2014)
27 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What stories do we tell about finance? How does financial print culture shape our lives? Our guest today explores the narratives we have been told, an...
Oli Mould, “Urban Subversion and the Creative City” (Routledge, 2015)
21 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Every city seems to be ‘creative’, whether because it has a creative brand, a creative quarter or is home to creative industries. In his new book ...
Neil Roberts, “Freedom as Marronage” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)
18 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be free? How can paying attention to the relationship between freedom and slavery help construct a concept and practice of freedo...
Jason W. Moore, “Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital” (Verso, 2015)
03 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), author Jason W. Moore seeks to undermine popular understandin...
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban Revolution” (PM Press, 2015)
01 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What are the alternatives to the current neo-liberal cultural settlement prevailing in much of the global north? In To Defend the Revolution is to Def...
Philip Roscoe, “A Richer Life: How Economics Can Change the Way We Think and Feel” (Penguin, 2015)
19 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
So many of our social questions are now the subject of analysis from economics. In A Richer Life: How Economics can Change the Way We Think and Feel (...
Katie Ellis, “Disability and Popular Culture: Focusing Passion, Creating Community and Expressing Defiance” (Ashgate, 2015)
08 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Popular culture has been transformed in its attitudes towards disability, as representations across media forms continues to respond to the contempora...
Am Johal, “Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene” (Atropos Press, 2015)
08 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The French philosopher Alain Badiou is not best known for his engagement with ecological matters per se. Badiou’s insights regarding being, truth, a...
Hilary Neroni, “The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film” (Columbia UP, 2015)
27 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Did you notice that after 9/11, the depiction of torture on prime-time television went up nearly seven hundred percent? Hilary Neroni did. She had jus...
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, “The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty” (U of Minnesota Press, 2015)
22 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Owning property. Being property. Becoming propertyless. These are three themes of white possession that structure Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s brillian...
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, “Performing Policy” (Palgrave, 2014)
20 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How has American cultural and artistic policy changed over the last 25 years? Performing Policy: How Contemporary Politics and Cultural Programmes Red...
Kate Pahl, “Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
06 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Literary practices are often associated with specific social groups in particular social settings. Kate Pahl‘s Materializing Literacies in Communiti...
Eugene Thacker, “Horror of Philosophy” (Zero Book, 2011-2015)
28 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Eugene Thacker‘s wonderful Horror of Philosophy series includes three books – In the Dust of this Planet (Zero Books, 2011), Starry Speculative Co...
Isabelle Dussauge, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, and Francis Lee, “Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine” (Oxford UP, 2015)
26 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Valuation is a central question in contemporary social science. Indeed the question of value has a range of academic projects associated with it, whet...
Lois Lee, “Recognizing the Non-religious: Reimagining the Secular” (Oxford UP, 2015)
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does non-religion mean? In a new book Recognizing the Non-Religious: Reimagining the Secular (Oxford University Press, 2015), Lois Lee, one of th...
Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, “New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India” (Oxford UPs 2015)
08 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 2015), edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen ...
Liz McFall, “Devising Consumption Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending” (Routledge, 2014)
02 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The role of financial services in individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives is more important than ever. In Devising Consumption: Cultural Econ...
William Davies, “The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being” (Verso, 2015)
18 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Are you happy? In his new book The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (Verso, 2015), William Davies, a senior ...
Christopher Vitale, “Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age” (Zero Books, 2014)
12 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Networks seem to be the dominant metaphor for contemporary society. In Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age (Zero Books, ...
Craig Martin, “Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
04 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you need help being more focused at work, are having a spiritual crisis, or want to understand how you can change your inner self for the bett...
Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013)
26 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Theoretical and historical accounts of postcatastrophic societies often discuss melancholia and trauma at length but leave processes of mourning under...
Joe Deville, “Lived Economies of Default: Consumer Credit, Debt Collection and the Capture of Affect” (Routledge, 2015)
20 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Credit, debt and default are embedded into everyday life, whether as a constant part of people’s daily routines or as a constantly discussed topic i...
Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere” (Polity, 2014)
08 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How is “the public sphere” best conceptualized on a transnational scale? Nancy Fraser (The New School for Social Research) explores this pressing ...
Christian Fuchs, “Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media” (Routledge, 2015)
28 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Social media is now a pervasive element of many people’s lives. in order to best understand this phenomenon we need a comprehensive theory of the po...
Robin James, “Resistance and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism and Neo-Liberalism” (Zero Books, 2015)
02 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How are contemporary pop culture ideas about resilience used by Neoliberal capitalism? Robin James addresses this question using philosophy of music (...
Nick Crossley, “Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion” (Manchester UP, 2015)
18 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Can sociology explain punk? In a new book, Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool, a...
Deborah Cowen, “The Deadly Life of Logistics” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)
09 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest today tells us that the seemingly straightforward field of logistics lies at the heart of contemporary globalization, imperialism, and econo...
Timothy Jordan, “Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society” (Pluto Press, 2015)
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Struggles over information in the digital era are central to Tim Jordan‘s new book, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital...
Zoe Thompson, ‘Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industrial Britain’ Ashgate 2015
11 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What is the fate of culture and urban regeneration in the era of austerity? In Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industria...
Amanda Rogers, “Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance” (Routledge, 2015)
25 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Identity, performance and globalisation are at the heart of the cultural practices interrogated by Amanda Rogers in Performing Asian Transnationalisms...
Helena Gurfinkel, “Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature” (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014)
16 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What is a father? In Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014), Helena Gurfinkel o...
Nick Turnbull, ‘Michel Meyer’s Problematology: Questioning and Society” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
07 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
To be human is to question. This act of questioning is the essence of philosophy, as it allows ontology and epistemology to exist. For example, to und...
Victoria Hesford, “Feeling Women’s Liberation” (Duke University Press, 2013).
06 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria Hesford is an associated professor of Women and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University in New York. Her book Feeling Women’s Liberation (...
Jen Harvie, “Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism” (Palgrave, 2013)
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Arts and culture are under threat in the age of austerity. This threat is underpinned by the misuse of the idea of participation in contemporary perfo...
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire” (Verso, 2013)
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capit...
Martin Shuster, “Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism and Modernity” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)
02 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The work of Theodore Adorno is well established as a crucial resource for understanding the complexities of contemporary capitalism, playing a foundat...
Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014)
16 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to a...
Robert Hewison, “Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain” (Verso, 2014)
19 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How did a golden age of cultural funding in UK turn to lead? This is the subject of a new cultural history by Robert Hewison. Cultural Capital: The Ri...
Steven Fielding, “A State of Play” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014)
12 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
To understand contemporary politics we must understand how it is represented in fiction. This is the main argument in A State of Play: British Politi...
Beth Driscoll, “The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty-First Century” (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014)
03 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It is a cliche to suggest we are what we read, but it is also an important insight. In The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twe...
Sam Friedman, “Comedy and Distinction” (Routledge, 2014)
21 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What is funny? What makes you laugh? We think of laughter as being universal idea that applies to everyone, no matter their age, ethnicity, gender or ...
Bruce Fink, “Against Understanding. Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key” (Routledge, 2014)
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What can possibly be wrong with the process of understanding in psychoanalytic treatment? Everything, according to Bruce Fink. In Against Understandin...
Randal Marlin, “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion” (Broadview Press, 2013)
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been 100 years since the start of the First World War, a conflict that cost millions of lives. In his recently revised book, Propaganda and the...
Bonnie J. Mann, “Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror” (OUP, 2014)
12 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of 9/11, the American political landscape and its discourses took a peculiar turn. America’s national sovereignty-conceived as the ...
Marisol Sandoval, “From Corporate to Social Media” (Routledge, 2014)
05 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What would a truly ‘social’ social media look like? This is the core question of From Corporate to Social Media: Critical Perspectives on Corporat...
Kathrin Yacavone, “Benjamin, Barthes, and the Singularity of Photography” (Bloomsbury, 2013)
29 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Kathrin Yacavone‘s Benjamin, Barthes, and the Singularity of Photography (Bloomsbury, 2013) is an engaging study that explores connections between t...