New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
William Viney, “Waste: A Philosophy of Things” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
15 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What is waste? William Viney‘s Waste: A Philosophy of Things (Bloomsbury, 2014) explores the meaning of waste across a variety of contexts, includin...
Vernadette V. Gonzalez, “Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines” (Duke UP, 2013)
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez‘s Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2013), examines the ...
Karl Spracklen, “Whiteness and Leisure” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
12 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Our taken for granted assumptions are questioned in a new book by Karl Spracklen, a professor of leisure studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in E...
John Protevi, “Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
22 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Right now, humanists across very different disciplinary fields are trying to create the kinds of cross-disciplinary conversations that might open up n...
Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014)
12 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in...
William E. Connolly, “The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism” (Duke UP, 2013)
30 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Connolly‘s new book proposes a way to think about the world as a gathering of self-organizing systems or ecologies, and from there explores th...
David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)
19 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell...
William Davies “The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition” (Sage,
29 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Logic of Competition (Sage, 2014), William Davies, from Goldsmiths Col...
M. Gail Hamner, “Imaging Religion in Film: The Politics of Nostalgia” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
19 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When we watch film various visual elements direct our understanding of the narrative and its meaning. The subjective position of each viewer informs t...
Brett Scott, “The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money” (Pluto Press, 2013)
19 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press, 2013). Scott is a journalist, urban de...
Patricia Ventura, “Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism” (Ashgate, 2012)
07 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Culture is inescapably linked to questions of political economy. In Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism (Ashgate, 2012), Patricia...
Lynne Huffer, “Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex” (Columbia University Press, 2013)
23 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In her fourth book, Lynne Huffer argues for a restored queer feminism to find new ways of thinking about sex and about ethics. Are the Lips a Grave? ...
Bradley Garrett, “Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City” (Verso, 2013)
15 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
More and more of the world is living in cities, yet we rarely stop to examine how our spaces are organised and controlled. In a remarkable new book, E...
Sarah Franklin, “Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship” (Duke University Press, 2013)
09 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Franklin‘s new book is an exceptionally rich, focused yet wide-ranging, insightful account of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the worlds that...
Timothy Morton, “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
23 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
So much of Science Studies, of STS as a field or a point of engagement, is deeply concerned with objects. We create sociologies and networks of and wi...
Timothy Shenk, “Maurice Dobb: Political Economist” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013)
22 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb is now largely forgotten. That’s too bad for a number of reasons. He was a brilliant thinker who wrote so...
Constance DeVereaux and Martin Griffin, “Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy” (Ashgate, 2013)
14 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World (Ashgate, 2013), a new book by Constance DeVereaux (Col...
Anastasia Karandinou, “No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture” (Ashgate, 2013)
30 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The intersection of empirical research and critical theory is the basis for Anastasia Karandinou‘s new book No Matter: Theories and Practices of th...
Tony Bennett, “Making Culture, Changing Society” (Routledge, 2013)
13 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Making Culture, Changing Society (Routledge, 2013), Professor Tony Bennett aims to change the way we think about culture. The book us...
Greg Hainge, “Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)
19 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What is noise? In his new book Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Greg Hainge, Reader in French at University o...
David Beer, “Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation” (Palgrave, 2013)
21 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (Palgrave, 2013) is written by David Beer, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at York Universit...
Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture” (NYU Press, 2013)
27 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other...
Brian Michael Goss, “Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century” (Peter Lang, 2013)
22 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Michael Goss, professor of communication at St. Louis University in Madrid, has taken one of media’s most studied theories and given it a face...
Stacy Alaimo, “Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self” (Indiana UP, 2010)
08 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Indiana University Press, 2010), Stacy Alaimo approaches the concepts of “...
Michael Serazio, “Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing” (NYU Press, 2013)
03 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
“Power through freedom.” Michael Serazio‘s Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing (NYU Press, 2013) traces the mushrooming world of...
Dominic Pettman, “Human Error” (UMinnesota, 2011)/”Look at the Bunny” (Zero Books, 2013)
31 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
“The humans are dead.” Whether or not you recognize the epigram from Flight of the Conchords (and if not, there are worse ways to spend a few min...
Amir Eshel, “Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
22 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In his very recent work, Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past(University of Chicago Press, 2013), Amir Eshel presents us with ...
Nicholas De Villiers, “Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
11 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Nicholas de Villiers takes ...
Avner Baz, “When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy” (Harvard University Press, 2012)
31 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2012), Avner Baz sets out to make a case for the re...
Ulrich Plass, “Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature” (Routledge, 2007)
25 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature (Routledge, 2007), Ulrich Plass makes the case for the importance and relevance...
J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
23 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz (University of Chicago Press, 2011), J. Hillis Miller sets outs...
Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
16 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
As the last of what Wendy Steiner refers to as “a loose trilogy” with her earlier works, The Scandal of Pleasure (1995) and Venus in Exile (2001),...
Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011)
20 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Pipes matter. That’s right: pipes. Anyone who has spent time in Russia knows that the hulkish cylinders that snake throughout its cities are the lif...
Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
14 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview. For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing v...
Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
26 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of so...
Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human: A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer” (Penguin, 2011)
23 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Can computers think? That was the question which provoked English mathematician Alan Turing to come up with what we call the Turing Test, in which a c...
Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
12 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by that time a rock-star intellectual and darling of the American student mov...
John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008)
16 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the w...