New Books In Critical Theory

The ubiquity of technology that collects massive volumes of all kinds of data lends itself to one overarching question: “What?” As in what is the purpose(s) of this collection? What are the benefits? And, what are the impacts? In his new book, Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World (MIT Press, 2020), Jathan Sadowski explores this question and those related in an investigation of the expansion of “smart” technologies – networked devices enabling automated data collection and use. In exploring the interests inherent in the design and deployment of smart technology, Sadowski, a Research Fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Law at Monash University, investigates the political economy of digital capitalism, and the implications of continued reliance on and permeation of smart technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever thought about how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe goes largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, and yet women and girls are the first to be blamed the inevitable times when it fails. We need to change the story on rape prevention and ‘well-meaning’ safety advice, because this makes it harder for women and girls to speak out, and hides the amount of work they are already doing trying to decipher ‘the right amount of panic’. With real-life accounts of women’s experiences, and based on the author’s original research on the impact of sexual harassment in public, this book challenges victim-blaming and highlights the need to show women as capable, powerful and skillful in their everyday resistance to harassment and sexual violence. In this interview, Dr. Fiona Vera-Gray and I discuss the fear of crime paradox, factors that contribute to fear of crime, the concept of safety work, and how we can move forward in combating sexual

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post–Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery’s influence on specific institutions, such as P

The resurgence of the radical Right in America and Europe has drawn attention to the existence of political philosophers and writers whose names are only sometimes familiar and whose thought is generally unknown. It even comes as a surprise to some that the radical Right actually has a political philosophy, other than that of Nazism or of Mussolini’s Fascism, both of which in fact remain discredited and marginal. Instead, the resurgent Right draws on well-known thinkers like Nietzsche and Hegel, on less-known thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, and on the relatively obscure writings of living political philosophers such as Alain de Benoist in France and Alexander Dugin in Russia. And then there is a whole range of emergent thinkers, often American, some unknown, and some famous only for their media stunts. In his new book Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2019), Mark Sedgwick looks at the classic canon, at the most influential m

How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchester UP, 2019), Caspar Melville, co-chair of the Centre for Creative Industries, Media and Screen Studies at SOAS, University of London, explores three music scenes to tell the story of modern London. In doing so it rethinks the story of crucial cultural moments, such as the birth of acid house, and brings new depth and detail to research on cities and music. The book draws on extensive empirical material, foregrounding analysis of space, race, and music to deliver both a comprehensive history as well as a significant contribution to urban studies. The book is essential reading for music and social science scholars, as well as for anyone interested in London and its culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations - Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time Thomas Piketty, the French economist, was dubbed the modern Marx by The Economist in the wake of his bestselling Capital in the 21st Century, which presented historical data reaching back to the eighteenth century and focused on the dynamics of the distribution of wealth and income and the destabilizing force represented by: r > g – that is, the private rate of return on capital over time can be much higher than the rate of growth of income and output. Readers noted however, in addition to pointing out this ‘central contradiction of capitalism’ Professor Piketty was also clear that the purpose of social science is not to produce mathematical certainties that substitute for inclusive democratic debate. More importantly, he made the case for the progressive taxation of capital, and a

In early 2019, freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ed Markey proposed a bold new piece of legislation, now very well known as the Green New Deal. Intended as a means of combating climate change, it stunned a number of people due to its enormous ambition, including massive overhauls of our energy systems, as well as providing housing and healthcare for everyone. Naturally a piece of legislation this large raised a number of questions, which is what my guests today are here to discuss. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos, the authors of ​A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal​ (Verso, 2019). The book is short and accessible, written for everyone interested in understanding this vital piece of legislation, so if you are like me and you don’t understand the fine details of climate economics, you can still pick this up and gain a sense of what is to be done. The book also features a short forward by Nao

In The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (Verso, 2019), Max Blumenthal excavates the real, connected story behind the rise of Donald Trump, international jihad, Western ultra-nationalism and the many extremist forces that threaten peace across the globe: American imperialism. Washington’s secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign conflicts home to American soil. These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the in

Katherine Franke’s ambitious new book challenges Americans to face our collective responsibility for ongoing racial inequality. Rather than fall back on what Franke calls a “palliative history” that emphasizes granting freedom and rights after the Civil War, Franke insists that Americans acknowledge the failure to provide any meaningful reparation to formerly enslaved people in the 1860s. That failure has ongoing structural effects today. The book replots this history through archival research on two post-war communities in which property ownership produced increased autonomy for freed people. Franke contrasts free and freed – and calls this the dangling ‘d’ the residue of enslavement. Using a myriad of primary documents from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Davis Bend, Mississippi, Franke details the successes and failures of these communities as they governed and organized their land. Repair demonstrates how government officials recognized the need for reparations (a term they used) and repair in the f

In 2016, Jordan Peterson, a relatively obscure professor of psychology, released several videos on YouTube making critical remarks on political correctness and related political legislation. This would kick off a meteoric rise in fame, with sold-out live shows, podcasts, television interviews and a worldwide bestselling book. Along with his newfound fame, however, came a ​lot of criticism, much of it from progressive commentators, most recently in the form of ​Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson​ (Zero Books, 2020) The book features several contributions from four authors, as well as an introduction by Slavoj Zizek, who debated Peterson in 2019. It engages with Peterson’s core ideas, while offering critical analysis from leftist perspectives. Ben Burgis has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Miami. He is a science fiction writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Tor.com and in Prime Books. Burgis now teaches at Rutgers University. He is also the author of ​Give Them

What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth and co-director of the 1752 Group, explores the intersections of class, race, and gender to explain the exclusive, and excluding, nature of classical music in contemporary society. The book is based on a detailed study of young people’s engagement with classical music, along with a broader understanding of music education and the sociology of culture. The book is also deeply engaged with the question of what, if anything, classical can do to transform, rather than reproduce, social inequalities. It is essential reading across both music and sociology, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary culture and social inequality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical pattern of what sociologist Marco Garrido calls the “patchwork city.” Synthesizing literature in political sociology and urban studies, Garrido shows how experiences along the housing divide in Manila constitute political subjectivities and shape the very experience of democracy in contemporary Philippines. The Patchwork City: Class, Space and Politics in Metro Manila (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is a beautifully written ethnography is divided into two parts. In the first part, Garrido documents the fragmentation of Manila into a mélange of spaces defined by class, particularly slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. He calls the pattern of urban fragmentation “interspersion” and persuasively argues that it is a spatial form distinct to cities in the Global South. This distinction is marked not by increasing

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order? Valerie M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen's new book The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide (Columbia University Press, 2020) is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development. Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society’s choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, wors

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook and a few collaborators dive deeply into more than 75 paradoxes in mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the social sciences. As each paradox is discussed and resolved, Cook helps readers discover the meaning of knowledge and the proper formation of concepts―and how reason can dispel the illusion of contradiction. The journey begins with “a most ingenious paradox” from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Readers will then travel from Ancient Greece to cutting-edge laboratories, encounter infinity and its diffe

Has can the performing arts confront racial inequality? In Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce (Routledge, 2020), Tobie S. Stein, Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater, Brooklyn College, CUNY, analyses the longstanding failure of America’s performing arts industry to address issues of diversity. Drawing on interviews with 70 practitioners, as well as a rich and detailed engagement with the structures of the performing arts industry and cultural policy, the book makes clear the unequal opportunities and career paths that result from racial inequality. The book also draws on co-authors to reflect historical, institutional, and international perspectives, adding depth and breadth to an already excellently extensive account. It is an essential read across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in arts and culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do prisoner laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers. Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment (University of California Press, 2020) explores this world of coerced labor through an unexpected and compelling comparison of these four groups of workers, for whom a different definition of "employment" reigns supreme—one where workplace protections do not apply and employers wield expansive punitive power, far beyond the ability to hire and fire. Because such arrangements are common across the economy, Hatton argues that coercion—as well as precarity—is a defining feature of work in America today. Theoretically forceful yet vivid and gripping to read, Coerced compels the reader to reevaluate contemporary dynamics of work, pushing beyond concepts like "career" and "gig work." Through this bold analysis, Hatton offers a trenchant window into this world of work from the pe

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

Joshua Foa Dienstag, Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA, considers, in his new book, the interaction between our experiences in watching films and our positions as citizens in a representative democracy. In both situations, as an audience member watching a movie and as a citizen in a representative republic, we need to understand the interactions we have with others, and consider how we experience representation, in politics and in film. These are not necessarily spaces and concepts that are usually woven together, but Dienstag makes the case that they should be considered in regard to each other because they both are forms of representation, and important emotional dimensions are threaded through each form. Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity (Oxford University Press, 2019) begins by diving into the idea of representative government, especially in contrast to idealized notions of direct democracy. Dienstag examines some of the history of political thought about

In her recently published Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame (Indiana University Press, 2019), Áine O'Healy explores how filmmakers in Italy have probed the tensions accompanying the country’s shift from an emigrant nation to a destination point for over five million immigrants over the course of three decades. Migrant Anxieties traces a phenomenology of anxiety that is not only present at the sociopolitical level but also interwoven into the narrative strategies of over 30 films produced since 1990, throwing into sharp relief the interface between the local and the global in this transnational era. Starting with the representation of post-communist migrations to Italy from Eastern Europe and subsequent arrivals from Africa through the controversial frontier of Lampedusa, O’Healy explores topics as diverse as the configuration of migrant labor, affective surrogacy, Italian whiteness, and the legacy of Italy’s colonial history. Showing how contemporary filmmaking practices in Italy are

Relying on Carl Jung’s theory of the complex, as well as the archetypal narratives of the Greek character Pan, Sukey Fontelieu’s The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror (Routledge, 2018) seeks to examine a collection of social and political traumas, both personal and collective. The book examines the development of our personal and social identities in psychoanalytic terms, as well as their historical development through large and defining political events, such as the treatment of indigenous populations, foreign military interventions, and the increasing levels of violence at home. The result is a book that sees our current situation as having been in development for quite some time, and that will require deep personal reflection if we are to move forward. Sukey Fontelieu, PhD attended the University of Essex and Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently a professor in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Program at Pacifica. Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.  Learn more about your a