NB Critical Theory (2025)

04/10/2022

In OBJECT ORIENTED DIALECTICS: Hegel, Heidegger, Harman (Mimesis, 2022), Charles William Johns, in the style of Derrida, looks over the absence or spectre of the signifier ‘dialectic’ in both Martin Heidegger and Graham Harman’s work, arguing that such a negation of the term turns out to be more of an intentional repression than any passive act of neglection. Johns insists that such repression finds its way into their writing as an alternative interpretation of their core concepts altogether. Less a Hegelian critique of such thinkers and more a Heideggerian and Harmanian resuscitation of the dialectic in Hegel as a realist method capable of integration into contemporary philosophy, this book will be invaluable to anyone interested in the crossroads of contemporary strands of idealism, materialism and realism and the place of the dialectical method today. Listen in 👇
https://newbooksnetwork.com/object-oriented-dialectics

01/08/2022

Freedom is often considered the cornerstone of the American political project. The 1776 revolutionaries declared it an inalienable right that could neither be taken nor granted, a sacred concept upon which the nation was established. The concept and actualization of freedom are also to be defended by the state. However, when such a concept has been arrogated, litigated, and delegitimized by a state that ignores its very definition, the concept of freedom comes under critical examination. Political theorist Elisabeth R. Anker has a new book dissecting the core of this conception of freedom.

UGLY FREEDOMS (Duke University Press) explores who defined and continues to define freedom, she also examines freedom’s rhetorical capacity, and thus its potential for weaponization. Anker illuminates how the tainted gestation of freedom birthed a status quo based on the individualistic and conditional conception of ‘freedom’ that has long been tangoing with white supremacy, colonialism, climate destruction, capitalism, and exploitation. Such a dance is by design and has been constant throughout U.S. history. Delve deeper on the author-interview podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/elisabeth-r-anker-ugly-freedom-duke-up-2022

01/08/2022

Who runs American politics?

In PRODUCING POLITICS: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Privileged Few Shape Politics for All of Us (Beacon Press), Daniel Laurison explores the hidden world of campaign professionals to offer a new sociological perspective on how contemporary politics works. The book explores how ‘politicos’ get their jobs, how they judge work and worth, and the importance of their actions to political campaigns, showing the inequalities at the heart of the profession. Alongside new theorizations of campaigning and of politics itself, the book offers essential reading across social sciences and arts and humanities, as well as to anyone interested in politics today. Laurison is our guest on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/producing-politics

20/07/2022

As we lose more individual animals and entire species to catastrophic climate change, habitat destruction, toxic dumping, and other human activities, it becomes increasingly difficult to register the full scope of the crisis.

In ANIMAL CRISIS: A New Critical Theory (Polity), Alice Crary and Lori Gruen reinvigorate the discourse of animal ethics with a critical theoretical approach that gives us new ways of thinking about what is owed to animals. By theorizing the links between human and non-human animal liberation, they offer ways of understanding why it can be so hard to see, hear, or feel the value and dignity of the animals right in front of us. Offering practices of interspecies solidarity, Crary and Gruen show us that we can transform the crisis we are in, but we must dismantle human supremacism to even connect with the need. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/animal-crisis

06/07/2022

It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spectacle of current events and pressed into new connection with them. The self-image of art as a social good is collapsing under the weight of capitalism’s dysfunction.

In ART in the AFTER-CULTURE: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy (Haymarket Books), art critic Ben Davis makes sense of our extreme present as an emerging "after-culture"—a culture whose forms and functions are being radically reshaped by cataclysmic events. In the face of catastrophe, he holds out hope that reckoning with the new realities of art, technology, activism, and the media, can help us weather the super-storms of the future. Tune in as Davis joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/making-art-in-terrible-times

01/07/2022

Labour has taken an about-turn. From Adam Smith’s proposal for specialisation which saw the factory line reorganised so that each worker needed to understand only a small aspect of the production process, many industries now rely on access to specialised skills and resources that are commanded at-hoc in discrete, time- and output-bound chunks.

This is the logic of projects. The workforce no longer dedicates itself to the making of a singular commodity, as it was the case with Smith, but bids for discrete pieces of work when those are in demand. In some industries, for example, in the art world, the workforce is also charged with building the demand for their work by initiating the project which would then employ them.

THE ABC of the PROJECTARIAT: Living and Working in a Precarious Art World ( Manchester University Press) by Kuba Szreder contributes new thinking on and practical responses to the widespread problem of precarious labour in contemporary art. It is both a critical analysis and a practical handbook, speaking to and about the vast cohort of artistic freelancers worldwide. Kuba Szreder speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the artistic project, and the effects of projectarisation on workers’ solidarity, communal governance, and the precarity of artistic activity. Tune in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-abc-of-the-projectariat

29/06/2022

Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, ABOLITION GEOGRAPHY: Essays Towards Liberation (Verso) presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.

Edited and introduced by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, ABOLITION GEOGRAPHY moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an “anti-state state” that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.

In this interview, we spent time unpacking how the book came to be, its focus, and its central concept: abolition geography. Among other things, we discussed the meaning and merits of taking a specifically geographical approach to abolition, Ruthie’s activist and intellectual influences, and the role of scholars in bringing about a more just world. Tune in 👇👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/abolition-geography

22/06/2022

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age’ is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. SCORCHED EARTH: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support.

This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Author-interview podcast link ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/scorched-earth-2

08/06/2022

The history of revolutionary politics is rich enough that it includes the full spectrum of inspiration and tragedy. Those with revolutionary aspirations have a number of rocks in their shoes to deal with, perhaps most famously the failure of the Soviet Union and the shadow of Stalinism. Those looking to remain faithful to the spirit of revolutionary Marxism while still seriously reckoning with the tragedies of the past will need to develop new routes, and for that to happen, alternative figures and histories will need to be turned to.

One such figure many have found inspiration in is James P. Cannon, the American activist and agitator, most famous as the leading founder of American Trotskyism, and no one knows his life and times better than Bryan D. Palmer, here to discuss the first entry in his multi-volume biography of Cannon. The volume discussed in this episode, JAMES P. CANNON and the ORIGINS of the AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY LEFT, 1890-1928 (University of Illinois Press), covers Cannon’s life from his birth in a small town in Kansas to his expulsion in 1928 from the Communist Party. It’s a story of a small-town local agitator who ends up mired in international controversy, surrounded by factional infighting in his own country but also deeply rooted in the revolutionary degeneration happening in Moscow as Stalin took over the party. Learn more on the podcast ⤵️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/james-p-cannon-and-the-origins-of-the-american-revolutionary-left-1890-1928

06/06/2022

Andy Hines' new book, OUTSIDE LITERARY STUDIES: Black Criticism and the University (University of Chicago Press), uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from “outside” venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in the classroom at a communist labor school under FBI surveillance, and in a host of journals. From these vantages, Black writers not only called out the racist assumptions of the New Criticism, but also defined Black literary and interpretive practices to support communist and other radical world-making efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Hines’s book thus offers a number of urgent contributions to literary studies. Learn more on the podcast ⬇️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/outside-literary-studies

01/06/2022

Pierre Penet and Juan Flores Zendejas' new book, SOVEREIGN DEBT DIPLOMACIES: Rethinking Sovereign Debt from Colonial Empires to Hegemony (Oxford University Press) revisits the meaning of sovereign debt in relation to colonial history and postcolonial developments. It offers three main contributions. The volume historicizes a research field that has so far focused primarily on the post-1980 years. A focus on colonial debt from the 19th century building of colonial empires to the decolonization era in the 1960s-70s fills an important gap in recent debt historiographies. Economic historians have engaged with colonialism only reluctantly or en passant, giving credence to the idea that colonialism is not a development that deserves to be treated on its own. This has led to suboptimal developments in recent scholarship.

The second contribution adds a 'law and society' dimension to studies of debt. The analytical payoff of the exercise is to capture the current developments and functional limits of debt contracting and adjudication in relation to the long-term political and sociological dynamics of sovereignty.

Finally, SOVEREIGN DEBT DIPLOMACIES imports insights from, and contributes to the body of research currently developed in the Humanities under the label 'colonial and postcolonial studies'. The emphasis on 'history from below' and focus on 'subaltern agency' usefully complement the traditional elite-perspective on financial imperialism favored by the British school of empire history. Delve deeper on the author-interview podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sovereign-debt-diplomacies

31/05/2022

In conversations about polarised political issues, phrases like ‘it’s not about race, it’s about class’ have become the perfect way to induce a stalemate. It seems as though the traditional, materialist critique of inequality has been supplanted by a fast-evolving set of reflections on group identity. Mainstream politics makes fast and loose assumptions about the relationship between class and identity, and economic conditions and culture. These assumptions are fodder for the culture wars.

In THE IDENTITY MYTH: Why We Need to Embrace Our Differences to Beat Inequality (Constable & Robinson), David Swift covers the four different kinds of identity most susceptible to rhetorical and cultural manipulation – class, race, s*x, and age. He considers how the boundaries of identities are policed and how diverse versions of the same identity can be deployed to different ends. Ultimately, it is not that identities are simply more ‘complex’ than they appear. Rather, there are commonalities more important to the creation of solidarity.

Listen in as David Swift speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the crisis of class and the deceptive allure of identity politics on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-identity-myth

20/05/2022

The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politics.” Others, both centrists and conservatives, associate universalism with twentieth-century totalitarianism and hold that it is bound to lead to catastrophe.

Through a wide range of examples in contemporary politics, film, and history, UNIVERSALITY and IDENTITY POLITICS (Columbia University Press) offers an antidote to the impasses of identity and an inspiring vision of 21st century collective struggle. This book develops a new conception of universality that helps us rethink political thought and action. Todd McGowan argues that universals such as equality and freedom are not imposed on us. They emerge from our shared experience of their absence and our struggle to attain them. McGowan reconsiders the history of Na**sm and Stalinism and reclaims the universalism of movements fighting racism, s*xism, and homophobia. He joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/universality-and-identity-politics

20/05/2022

In RACE, MEDIA, and CULTURE (SAGE Publications), Anamik Saha provides an account of the role that media plays in both circulating and shaping ideas about race and racism in the contemporary world. Saha argues that we need to move beyond a focus on representation to engage with how media makes race. As Anamik describes in the interview (link below), alongside providing a much-needed summary of existing work on the media, race and racism, the book also breaks new ground theoretically. By synthesising approaches from postcolonial studies, critical political economy and cultural studies, Saha puts forward an approach he calls ‘postcolonial cultural economy’, one which attends to the specific conjunctural context within which race is made and contested; the intertwined, but separate, forces of capitalism and racism; and which gives equal importance to the role that media production, texts, and consumption as forces which shape race and racisms. Listen in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/race-culture-and-media

16/05/2022

The Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky exerted a powerful influence on the world, even if his historical and theoretical contributions have often been downplayed, and people who wish to be associated with him are few and far between today. There are a number of factors that have contributed to this marginalization, but correcting it will require revisiting his thought in a careful and contextualized manner in order to better understand his ideas, salvage the underlying core and adapt it for the 21st century.

One person attempting to do this is Juan Dal Maso in his new book, HEGEMONY and CLASS STRUGGLE: Trotsky, Gramsci and Marxism (Palgrave Macmillan). Dal Maso encourages us to see these figures in new light, and in doing so develop a Marxist conception of class struggle that can help bring us into the 21st century. Give the author's NBN interview a listen 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/hegemony-and-class-struggle

16/05/2022

SISSY INSURGENCIES: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness (Duke University Press) focuses on the figure of the "sissy" in order to rethink how Americans have imagined, articulated, and negotiated manhood and boyhood from the 1880s to the present. Rather than collapsing sissiness into homos*xuality, Ross shows how it constitutes a historically fluid range of gender practices that are expressed as a physical manifestation, discursive epithet, social identity, and political phenomenon. He reconsiders several black leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and athletes within the context of sissiness, from Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and James Baldwin to Little Richard, Amiri Baraka, and Wilt Chamberlain. Demonstrating that sissiness can be embraced and exploited to conform to American gender norms or disrupt racialized patriarchy, he also shows how it constitutes a central element in modern understandings of race and gender. Give Ross' NBN interview a listen ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sissy-insurgencies

12/05/2022

What are the hidden histories of how the modern world functions?

In PROXIES: The Cultural Work of Standing In (MIT Press), Dylan Mulvin explores the objects, places, practices, and people that do the work of standing in. Theorizing the ‘proxy’, the book uses case studies of the metric system, the Lena Image, and the Standardized Patient Program to uncover and critique the standards underpinning contemporary communications. The book offers critique and resistance, ultimately pointing the reader to the possibilities of a different world. Available open access, the book is essential reading across the arts and humanities and social sciences, as well as for engineering, computer science, and anyone interested in how society operates. Learn more about it on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/proxies

12/05/2022

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. The obsession intensifies with every new crisis and the mobilization of yet more powers of war and police, from quarantine to border closures and from vaccination certificates to immunological surveillance.

Engaging 4 key concepts with enormous cultural weight – Cell, Self, System and Sovereignty – THE POLITICS of IMMUNITY: Security and the Policing of Bodies (Verso Books) moves from philosophical biology to intellectual history and from critical theory to psychoanalysis to expose the politics underpinning the way immunity is imagined. At the heart of this imagination is the way security has come to dominate the whole realm of human experience.

In this interview, Catriona Gold speaks with Mark Neocleous about his fascinating and wide-ranging book. Tune in ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-politics-of-immunity

NB Critical Theory

04/10/2022

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20/07/2022

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29/06/2022

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01/06/2022

31/05/2022

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