New Books In Critical Theory

Through a creative focus on skin, in Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production of US biomedical knowledge and commercial cosmetics. She uncovers the efforts of wartime scientists in the US Military Dermatology Research Program to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers' skin. These dermatologists sought relief for white soldiers while denying that African American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were also vulnerable to harm. Their experiments led to the development of pharmaceutical cosmetics, now used by women in Ho Chi Minh City to tend to their skin, and to grapple with the damage caused by the war's lingering toxicity.  In showing how the US military laid the foundations for contemporary Vietnamese consumpti

In Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2023), Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to ​Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it. Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm

In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers and performers sought to convey the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to the labor, movement, speech, sound, and ritual of everyday “folk.” Many critics have perceived these representations of folk culture as efforts to reclaim an authentic past. Imani D. Owens recasts Black creators’ relationship to folk culture, emphasizing their formal and stylistic innovations and experiments in self-invention that reach beyond the local to the world. Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean (Columbia UP, 2023) explores how Black writers and performers reimagined folk forms through the lens of the unruly―that which cannot be easily governed, disciplined, or managed. Drawing on a transnational and multilingual archive―from Harlem to Havana, from the Panama Canal

"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsiders, and, in spite of other differences, they share fragments of a common ethic in their working life, and a kind of moral complicity." – Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict. There are many more examples of professional solidarity, however fragmented and tentative, sharing the link of a common ethic that helps make systems, and the analysis of them, possible in the larger political economy. Writing from a law professor’s vantage point, Katharina Pistor, in her new book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2019) explains how even though law is a social good it has been harnessed as a private commodity over time that creates private wealth, and plays a significant role in the increasing disparity of financial outcomes. As she points out in this interview, and her chapter ‘Masters of the Code’, it is ‘critic

How can we build a more equal economy? In Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy (U California Press, 2024), Neil Lee, a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, explores the question of how societies have fostered and supported innovation. The book challenges conventional assumptions that innovative economies must be unequal. Drawing on 4 detailed, and critical, case studies- Switzerland, Austria, Taiwan and Sweden, the book shows how Europe has good models of innovation; how the state matters; and how innovation and shared prosperity policies are mutually reinforcing. Accessible and clearly written, the book will be essential reading across social sciences and public policy, as well as anyone wanting a blueprint for equitable economic development, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The book advocates for the relevance of Hegel’s dialectical method to questions of contemporary theory and politics. It seeks to disabuse readers of common misapprehensions concerning Hegel’s philosophy, such as the familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema to which the dialectic has so often been reduced, and to show that the concept of contradiction understood in Hegelian fashion is intrinsically subversive of authority. By championing contradiction over ‘difference’ it defies the rhetoric of much leftist theory as it has been formulated in the wake of so-called ‘post-structuralism’. Emancipation After Hegel also combines sophisticated discussion of matters like the limits of formal logic and the history of German Idealism with playful allusions to Star Trek characters and classic films like Casablanca and Bridge on the River Kwai. Bill Schaffer is a semi-retire

Just in Time - the urgent need for a just transition in the Arab region. The newly published book Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate justice in the Arab Region (Pluto Press, 2023) edited by Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell questions the development of sustainable energy production in the middle eastern and north African region. Positioning itself as part of a wider discussion of just transition, it provides wonderful insight into the colonial and capitalist narratives used to legitimise projects coming from the Global North. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that there is a need to deconstruct environmental orientalism to tackle questions of power at a local, regional, and international level. Hamza Hamouchene is a researcher, activist and the programme coordinator for Africa at the Transnational Institute, based in the UK. Originally from Algeria, he brings wide understanding of climate and social justice.  Sarah Vogelsanger is a master student at SOAS in "Environment, Politics, and Devel

In this episode of High Theory, Matt Seybold tells us about Criticism, the glue that holds the bricks of culture together. Cultural critics are a necessary component of the intellectual ecosystem, who have the power to analyze both the material conditions and the myths that make up our world. Matt is the host of the American Vandal Podcast at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College. In his recent podcast series, Criticism, LTD, Matt investigated the state of criticism in the academy and the public sphere. There is a nifty substack newsletter with the transcripts from Criticism, LTD, if you’re keen. Kim and Saronik were among the many podcasters, public intellectuals, and critics that Matt interviewed for the series, and we’re excited to have him back on High Theory to tell us about his investigations. In the episode he offers a recuperative reading of Mark Twain’s acerbic take on critics in his late notebooks: “The critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug; he deposits his egg in somebody else’s du

Kareem Khubchandani’s book Decolonize Drag (OR Books, 2024) explores the intricate interplay among gender, colonialism, and drag performance. It illustrates how gender serves as a tool of colonial governance, stifling diverse forms of expression, while also delving into how contemporary drag both mirrors and disrupts these entrenched institutional hierarchies. Through the lens of select performers, Khubchandani unveils how they use their art to satirize, deconstruct, and resist colonialism and the manifestations of white supremacy embedded within society. Central to the narrative is Khubchandani’s drag alter ego, LaWhore Vagistan, whose firsthand experiences shed light on encounters with depoliticized iterations of drag that fall short of its transformative potential, leaving her disheartened and bewildered. Decolonize Drag advocates for the proliferation of more inclusive and accessible avenues for gender expression while also contemplating how the meaning and impact of drag evolve across different social an

Today I talked to Josh Fernandez about his new memoir The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist (PM Press, 2024). Josh Fernandez is a community college professor in Northern California who finds himself under investigation for “soliciting students for potentially dangerous activities” after starting an antifascist club on campus. As Fernandez spends the year defending his job, he reflects on a life lived in protest of the status quo, swept up in chaos and rage, from his childhood in Boston dealing with a mentally ill father and a new family to a move to Davis, California, where, in the basement shows of the early ’90s, Nazi boneheads proliferated the music scene, looking for heads to crack. His crew’s first attempts at an antifascist group fall short when a member dies in a knife fight. A born antiauthoritarian, filled with an untamable rage, Fernandez rails against the system and aggressively chooses the path of most resistance. This leads to long spates of living in his car, stru

Developing Africa? New Horizons with Afrocentricity (Anthem Press, 2024) is written for those who are interested in theoretical debates as they relate to the field of Development Studies. It is aimed at academics and all those who work in the field of development, politicians, policy-makers and civil servants who need to familiarize themselves with key historical development debates, especially those relevant to Africa. The book takes an Afrocentric intellectual standpoint, grounded in the theory of Afrocentricity, in its interrogation of the idea and processes of development in Africa. It also adopts an historical approach in its interrogation of the idea of African development as a by-product of political deliberations. This book is about how the discourse of development as a field of study needs to be re-oriented towards African-based epistemologies to dismantle coloniality, in opposition to the historical embeddedness of development discourse in Eurocentrism. This book contests the limitation of the moder

Soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality have been documented by social scientists – but the public conversation and scholarship on inequality has not examined the role of state law and state courts in establishing policies that significantly affect inequality. Political scientists James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson analyze their original database of nearly 6,000 decisions made by over 900 judges on 50 state supreme courts over a quarter century to demonstrate how state high courts craft policy. The fifty state supreme courts shape American inequality in two ways: through substantive policy decisions that fail to advance equality and by rulings favoring more privileged litigants (typically known as "upperdogs").  The book focuses on court-made public policy on issues including educational equity and adequacy, LGBTQ+ rights, and worker's rights. The conventional wisdom assumes that courts protect underdogs from majorities but Gibson and Nelson demonstrate that judges most often fa

Creative storytelling is the beating heart of Darwin's science. All of Darwin's writings drew on information gleaned from a worldwide network of scientific research and correspondence, but they hinge on moments in which Darwin asks his reader to imagine how specific patterns came to be over time, spinning yarns filled with protagonists and antagonists, crises, triumphs, and tragedies. His fictions also forged striking new possibilities for the interpretation of human societies and their relation to natural environments. After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP, 2022) gathers an international roster of scholars to ask what Darwin's writing offers future of literary scholarship and critical theory, as well as allied fields like history, art history, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, the history of race, aesthetics, and ethics. It speaks to anyone interested in the impact of Darwin on the humanities, including literary scholars, undergraduate and gra

Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighborhood that is home to the city’s English-speaking Black community, face each other across Montreal’s Lachine Canal, once an artery around which work and industry in Montreal were clustered and by which these two communities were formed and divided.  In Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), Steven High challenges the deepening divergence of class and race analysis by recognizing the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles, and racial inequality. Drawing extensive interviews, a massive and varied archive of imagery, and original photography by David Lewis into a complex chorus, Steven High brings the two communities to life, tracing their history from their earliest years to their decline and their current reality. He extends the analysis of deindustrialization, often focused on

In Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), Calvin John Smiley explores the lives of people who were formerly incarcerated and the many daunting challenges they face. Those being released from prison must navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas, in a journey that is often confusing, complex, and precarious. Calvin John Smiley is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed: a provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century - widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of millions of workers around the world - many economists and business leaders still preach dogmas that lack evidence and create political catastrophe: Private markets are always more efficient than public ones; investment capital flows efficiently to necessary projects; massive inequality is the unavoidable side effect of economic growth; people are selfish and will only behave well with the right incentives. But a growing number of people - academic economists, business owners, policy entrepreneurs, and ordinary people - are rejecting these myths and reshaping economies around the world to reflect ethical and social values. Though they differ in approach, all share a vision of the economy as a place of moral action and account

Can we predict the future? In The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future Through Science (Cornell UP, 2023), Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, an Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University, tells the story of Soviet and Post-Soviet attempts to order economy and society using a variety of scientific and management techniques. The analysis is wide ranging, demonstrating the contemporary importance, as well as the historical context, of prediction and its associated intellectual and governmental champions. Rich with details, as well as accessible and fascinating, the book is essential reading across history and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in how we know the past present and future of the modern world. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic problems of employment disparities and exploitative labor practices. Compounded by the devastating #MeToo revelations, these problems led to a wide-scale call for change.  Courtney Brannon Donoghue's book The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere (U Texas Press, 2023) traces female-driven filmmaking across development, financing, production, film festivals, marketing, and distribution, examining the realities facing women working in the industry during this transformative moment. Drawing from five years of extensive interviews with female producers, writers, and directors at different stages of their careers, Courtney Brannon Donoghue examines how Hollywood business cultures “value" female-driven projects as risky or not bankable. Industry claims that “movies targeting female audiences don’t make money" or “women can't direct big-budget blockbuste

George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America’s Drug War, with Oxford University Press. George has been teaching and writing in the realms of evidence, prosecution practice, and criminal legal history since 1995. He began practice as a prosecutor in Massachusetts and later taught at the law schools of Boston College, Harvard, and Yale. Beware Euphoria is the most recent among a slew of other books, articles, and essays that he’s published over the years, and perhaps the most contrarian. In this interview, George discusses his research methods and how he came to the conclusion that the history of America’s drug war, while racially motivated, was not meant to target minorities, but protect the morals and health of America’s white youth. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book,

American households have a debt problem. The problem is not, as often claimed, that Americans recklessly take on too much debt. The problem is that US debt policies have no basis in reality. Weaving together the histories and trends of US debt policy with her own family story, Chrystin Ondersma debunks the myths that have long governed debt policy, like the belief that debt leads to prosperity or the claim that bad debt is the result of bad choices, both of which nest in the overarching myth of a free market unhindered by government interference and accessible to all.  In Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice (U California Press, 2024), Ondersma offers a compelling, flexible, and reality-based taxonomy rooted in the internationally recognized principle of human dignity. Ondersma's new categories of debt--grounded in abolitionist principles--revolutionize how policymakers are able to think about debt, which will in turn revolutionize the American debt landscape itself. Stephen Pimpare